Archaeologists for hire are history’s bodyguards

By Andy Piper   |   July 2, 2009   |   4:00 PM

Editor’s note: In the spirit of Independence Day, we’re running a series of profiles on Colorado independents — people who’ve stepped away from the mainstream and struck out on their own.

“A stone ax! I just found my first ax!” Nathan Pierantoni calls out. “Right here next to this really big rattlesnake skin!”

He is deep in an outcrop of sandstone boulders, and all that can be seen is his waving hand. Teammates Suzy Huizinga and Kelly French scramble through the rocks to look at the ancient tool he’s found.

“Although,” Pierantoni then adds, “I don’t even know if you’d call it an ax, because it’s so blunt?” The scientist in him is already questioning his first assumption.

Pierantoni, French and crew chief Huizinga are part of an archaeological crew recording a historic Anasazi relic site located along a path planned for energy exploration, somewhere in a sun-baked piñon forest near the Colorado-New Mexico border. They represent no university. They are collecting for no museum. They are paid by an independent company and are archaeologists for hire.

Truth is, the vast majority of archaeologists working in the U.S. are in the private sector. Call them consulting archaeologists, contract archaeologists, cultural resource management (CRM) consultants or, as they often call themselves, just plain “shovel bums.”

“The number of people doing archaeology in museums and universities pales in comparison to those working in CRM archaeology,” said Steve Nash, chairman of the anthropology department and curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

As of June 30, there were 13,511 members in Yahoo’s Shovelbums group, which publishes job listings in the discipline nationwide. In Colorado, the state archaeologist’s office lists more than 75 current permits for professional archaeological work, and 48 of those permits are for private firms such as Alpine Archaeological Consultants, Centennial Archaeology Inc., Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, or Sagebrush Consultants LLC.

Pierantoni, French and Huizinga are paid by Aztec Archaeological Consulting LLC, working on behalf of Green River Energy Resources Inc. University of Colorado graduate John Cater is a partner in Aztec Archaeological, based in Aztec, N.M., 30 miles south of Durango. The company was founded in January 2003 while he was working on his doctorate from Leicester University.

“Archaeology is what I’ve wanted to do since I was 8 years old,” Cater said. “I discovered a stone knife on my parents’ property, and where most kids would put it on a stick and play with it, I looked at it and could only think of two questions — who made this, and how old is it? I’ve been pursuing those two questions ever since.

“I started out in an academic setting, first as a student and then running CU’s archaeological field school. But you find out very quickly that there aren’t too many jobs in academia. So if you want to continue pursuing archaeology, you go into contract work.”

The law of the land

The boom in archaeology-for-profit is a result of federal and state laws requiring that almost all projects undertaken on government land or with government money take steps to protect objects or sites of historic importance. (See related story.)

“It goes back to the 1950s,” Cater said. “Really, all the way back to the 1906 antiquities laws. Subsequent laws simply strengthened the need.”

Anyone wanting to build a pipeline or a highway, or do seismic exploration for gas and oil, or sometimes even just build a golf course is required to conduct an archaeological survey of the land in order to rescue, protect or avoid anything with archaeological significance. So the developers hire archaeologists. Even in a bad economy.

“The work does tend to ebb and flow, but there has always been work,” Cater said. “When drilling slows down, pipeline and exploration work tend to pick up. With the stimulus package, there are going to be projects — roads and power lines and other development — into the foreseeable future.”

The West’s hefty mix of mineral and energy resources, government-owned land, and ancient American Indian sites make this an especially active region for contract archaeology.

“We do some work for the agencies that administer federal land, but 99.9 percent of our work is under hire by private industry,” Cater said. “Usually, we’re part of a larger package that also includes environmental specialists studying impacts on plant and wildlife.”

So who calls the shots?

“This is always the conundrum,” he said. “We represent the government agencies, we have to make sure the laws are followed, but we are hired and paid by the oil and gas industry, the developers, whoever is doing the undertaking.

“Quite often, that becomes an issue, because the client is paying the bill. We have to tell them you can’t do X, Y or Z — and they don’t always like that. My reply is, ‘You’re paying us to keep you out of trouble.’ ”

In high demand

Huizinga, French and Pierantoni are one of Cater’s crews, part of a major project surveying and recording Anasazi and Navajo sites ahead of seismic exploration for energy resources. Their work is a good example of preserve-in-place archaeology — mapping, sketching and photographing objects but collecting nothing.

“Most of our work involves the non-collection of artifacts, unless it’s something spectacular — we are doing an inventory,” Cater said. “We try and get the power line or pipeline or road to avoid impacting the site. But sometimes you’ll find things like whole pots, and you can’t just leave them there because they’ll either get broken or looted, so we take those and turn them over to the state.”

Huizinga, the team’s crew chief, has worked for Aztec for two years. The Littleton native, who has a bachelor’s degree from CU, would like to get a master’s degree, but in the meantime there’s a huge demand for her services.

“Crew chiefs have to have a certain amount of experience before they can get a permit to head a crew, and those folks are few and far between,” Cater said.

Pierantoni, who teaches science at Heights Middle School in Farmington, N.M., spends summers working for Aztec, and French, who just graduated from college, is getting three months of field experience before going to graduate school this fall.

Ties to academia would seem to be a natural fit for Cater’s work, but he remains somewhat ambivalent about the relationship.

“We do have relationships with schools of archaeology,” he said. “But there is a huge disconnect between academic institutions and cultural resource management. They feel CRM is not scientific enough.”

But Cater’s work may have more fans among academic archaeologists than he knows.

“John’s a good example of a contract archaeologist who knows what quality work is,” said Payson Sheets, a professor of archaeology at CU. “Within the category of contract archaeology, there is a full range, from exceptionally well-trained people doing high-quality research, to those that are not. The good news is that the people who are doing quality work are doing really good work.”

Nash agrees.

“I just read two pieces about CRM work last night: an item in American Archaeology and a letter to the editor of the Archeological Record,” he said. “There has traditionally been a bias against contract archaeologists with the idea that they are not doing research-driven projects, but just working for profit.

“But really over the last four decades, the trend in a lot of people’s thinking is that a tremendous amount of good archaeological work is being done in the CRM context. It’s critical work that’s preserving information about an archaeological record that’s going to be destroyed otherwise. It’s an incredible service to the discipline.”

More than just an academic discussion

CU’s program works closely with contract archaeology firms, Sheets said.

“Our students often do field work with them over the summer and then spend the school year writing up reports on what they discovered,” he said. “The good news, in terms of students, is that those who major in archaeology are guaranteed a job in contract archaeology, even with only a bachelor’s degree. There are more jobs than people qualified to fill them.

“We now offer a dual degree program combining an MA in archaeology and an MBA from the business school, with an eye to graduates going into contract archaeology.”

CU isn’t alone. Northwestern University’s Department of Anthropology also lists contract archaeology as a specific career path, with its own suggested undergraduate curriculum.

This increased academic recognition, combined with the realities of antiquities law, indicates that contract archaeology is here to stay.

“I have a great deal of admiration and affection for people who have chosen to do this work independently,” said Susan Collins, Colorado’s state archaeologist. “It is a necessary development if we are really going to protect our heritage. Otherwise, the highways, the dams, the pipelines would not be receiving the kind of review they receive today.

“The academic world could not do this work as a summertime pursuit. I think they (contract archaeologists) perform a very, very valuable service.”

Related story: Shielding the treasures of our past

Related resources:

Contract archaeology coloring book

Current professional archaeology permits in Colorado

Categories: Features, Region, Video

Tagged: anasazi, antiquities, archaeologists, Archaeology, artifacts, Aztec, cultural resource management, john cater, shovel bums