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.
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