About This Blog

The purpose of this blog is to provide cultural resource professionals with practical information that is usually left out of formal education programs. I have found that universities generally do not adequately prepare students for careers in Cultural Resources Management (CRM). I have also found that, when aspiring field archaeologists ask older archaeologists for career advice, the advice that is given is almost always something along the lines of “learn the legislation that regulates CRM archaeology,” so you can more readily rise within the bureaucratic ranks of the government agencies and private companies that employ archaeologists.

This is not bad advice, but I do think it “puts the cart before the horse,” in a way. I believe it would be better for the discipline as a whole if aspiring archaeologists focused on learning the subject matter itself—including the science of archaeology, and the cultural material of the ancient people whom we study—before learning how to navigate the bureaucracies that entangle the CRM world.

As I mentioned above, universities don’t really prepare students for CRM archaeology. A student can go so far as to get a Master’s degree and still know almost nothing about the Indigenous cultures of North America and the artifacts that they’ve made. Especially if that student chose to attend a field school at an ancient Greek or Roman site somewhere in Europe (and I know from firsthand experience that these field schools do not prepare students for CRM in the United States). Other students might know a fair amount about Indigenous material culture, but know nothing about the science of the soil in which they’re excavating, and as a result, their research methods are based on fundamental misunderstandings of the way the natural world works, even to the point of being pseudoscience.

The sad truth is that many field archaeologists simply don’t know the relevant subject matter, regardless of whatever advanced degree they may hold, and they end up doing poor work when they enter the world of CRM. They record archaeological sites that don’t even exist and fail to notice the sites that do exist. And their interpretations of the sites that actually do exist are often based on blatant misconceptions. I’ve seen it over and over and over again.

Which is why I’m trying to find a polite way to explain to aspiring field archaeologists that they should probably learn the actual subject matter, before advancing on to positions that require them to learn the nuances of the National Historic Preservation Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and all the other various laws that we have to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, you still need to learn these laws, but I think it’s more important to learn the subject matter first. The purpose of these laws is (among other things) to protect archaeological sites, and if you don’t even notice the archaeological sites in your survey areas, or end up recording sites that aren’t really sites, that really defeats the purpose of these laws in the first place. It doesn’t matter how well you know the legislation if you don’t even properly recognize the sites that the legislation is intended to protect. That’s why I say that emphasizing the legislation first is “putting the cart before the horse.” This is how you end up with regulating agencies staffed with archaeologists who don’t really know what they’re doing, reviewing reports written by archaeologists who may or may not know what they’re doing (many archaeologists who work as reviewers for regulating agencies are excellent at what they do, but a fair few are woefully ignorant).

Not to mention the fact that CRM archaeology requires more than just an understanding of the archaeological subject matter itself. We need to pick up a variety of other practical skills, related to topics such as field safety, landowner relations, and compass navigation, etc. I think it’s understandable that most universities don’t focus on these “nitty gritty” details; every job probably requires some skills and tidbits of knowledge that you just have to learn on the job. But at the same time, students should know what they’re getting into. Aspiring archaeologists should know about the physical hazards and hardships of CRM archaeology before they graduate, and if they’re not learning these things from their professors, maybe they can learn from this blog. After all, the hazards of CRM archaeology can be fatal, and there are some lessons you should not have to learn the hard way.

So I started this website in the hopes that I could provide new field archaeologists with useful information that might not only make them more competent as archaeologists, but also keep them safer and happier. This is my own project; it is not affiliated with any university, company, or government agency. I have tried to include sources as much as possible, but much of the information in this website comes from my own personal experience, meaning that there is no source I can cite, other than my own memory (and memories are fickle). This website is NOT to be used as a source for college papers or CRM reports, but ideally it might direct you to peer-reviewed sources that you can use for those purposes.

About the Author

My name is Brad Husemann and I’ve spent over a decade working in Cultural Resources Management as an archaeological field technician, GIS technician, and project archaeologist. I’ve participated in fieldwork in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Gulf Coast, Appalachia, the Midwest, the Great Plains, the Great Basin, and the Southwest. I studied History as an undergraduate at Bradley University in Peoria, IL, and I studied GIS at the graduate level at the University of West Florida, where I earned a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Science in Archaeology. I completed a Master’s in Anthropology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 2021. I currently work for a small CRM firm in Texas, running their SE Texas operations out of my home office in Houston. Prior to my career in Cultural resources Management, I was a machinist and MIG welder in a fabrication shop.