The other day when Anita provided us with three simple questions, I thought  
it meant simple answers. However, now I see most of the twenty or so 
responders  went deeply into their career outlines. I am wondering what happened to the 
900  other people who are supposedly lurking on this list???
 
Here is an outline of my background. I have been actively working in the  
field since 1968 and found employment since 1969. For the first six years, I  
maintained a balance between prehistoric and historical archaeology (back before  
anyone agreed on calling it historical versus historic). This meant taking 
field  and lecture classes concerning the Royal Presidio de San Diego, as well 
as  joining field projects with the San Diego Museum of Man in Southern 
California  and Mexico. I published my first article on a blend of historic and 
prehistoric  sites found in a survey of a desert valley in 1970 and developed a 
sense that  the anthropological approach of studying human behaviors was 
undeveloped in the  field at that time. Anita won't let me tell you about my 
experiences in  prehistoric work, but while advancing in the ranks at the Presidio, I 
met Jack  Williams (he was 13 at the time) and eventually worked my way up to 
field  foreman with a series of publications and papers on researching Mexican 
Majolica  as a means of testing frontier change and this led to my 1975 thesis 
at San  Diego State University (Coyote Press and the University of South 
Carolina keep  copies for distribution). Then life got political and, following 
the teachings  of Tom King, I secured a position with California Highways and 
then the County  of San Diego in the fledgling field of cultural resource 
management. All the  while, I produced journal articles on prehistoric ceramics, 
settlement patterns,  and historic ceramics (well over fifty now, but no longer 
counting). For  twenty-four years, I battled lawyers, real estate developers, 
managers et al in  the pursuit of good environmental documents with scholarly 
archaeology reports  and watched others increase the site records from 1,200 to 
more than 16,000  archaeology sites. To keep my hands in the field, I 
volunteered evenings and  weekends and vacation time to train avocationals, Sierra 
Clubbers,  ethnobotanists, et al in field survey in the high desert and 
published a few  papers correlating natural resources with land use patterns (sorry 
Anita, but we  found mines, graves, and a few dead scholars out there). Then, 
about 25-years  ago, one of my volunteer projects got the better of me and my 
crew of 90 found  the ruins of a 18th century Spanish fort, mid 19th century 
whaling station,  Chinese fishing camp, U.S. Lighthouse, and early 20th century 
Army post and all  my spare time went into sixteen years of supervising field 
crews, analyzing, and  writing reports. My work at the County required me to 
return to a public history  program graduate certificate at SDSU, which led me 
deeper into history  work. Through Legacy grants, I got the Navy to fund 
adaptive reuse of a  handball court and underground morgue for collections 
management and published a  few more papers. I retired in 1998 and went full bore into 
completing that  analysis and published the Spanish architecture part this 
year. Bored in  retirement, I took on a series of historical archaeology projects 
and then a job  with the Navy for a few years before going into private 
practice. I still  volunteer my time with non-profit organizations and have a 
number of papers in  the hopper. Too bad I could not tell you about the prehistoric 
work I have done.  Speaking of done, I am not there yet.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.