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Mark Barnes - Episode 54
75 Plays9 years ago
Profiles in CRM features short interviews with CRM professionals from all experience levels and educational levels. I ask a standard list of questions and see how each person answers them based on their experience.
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Transcript
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You
Podcast Introduction
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are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is Mark Barnes and you're listening to Profiles in CRM.
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Welcome to Profiles in CRM, episode 54. I'm your host, Chris Webster. Profiles in CRM asks CRM professionals nine simple questions. The answer's very wildly depending on their experience and education.
Anonymity in Contract Archaeology
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Because of the nature of contract archeology and how small this field really is, some people choose not to reveal their name or their company they work for. Stay to the end of the show to hear how you can have a chance to answer these same questions. All right, we're here on Profiles and here is the first question.
Meet Mark Randolph Barnes
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What is your name and who do you work for? Well, my name is Mark Randolph.
00:00:42
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Barnes, B-A-R-N-E-S. I kind of work for myself. I do a little bit of contracting on the side. I'm retired after nearly four decades with the federal government agency in particularly the National Park Service.
Barnes' Educational Journey
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Okay and we'll get into that in a moment with some of the other questions but for now what's the highest degree you've earned? I got my AA
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Associate Arts at Sacramento City College. I got my BA MA at the University of Arizona in Tucson. And in 1983, I got my PhD at the Catholic University of America in the District of Columbia, where Richard Nixon's daughter, I think, was married. And they've referred to me as the Topan Southern Baptist at that Jesuit school.
00:01:35
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Nice. Nice. Yeah, I've got a friend doing it, getting his PhD in Tucson right now, actually. You said that, so. Oh, cool. Yeah. Sounds like a good place to do that. So, okay. So how long, well, you already kind of answered this, but how long did you work in cultural resource management? I was actually working in cultural resource management without realizing it. It goes back to 1967.
Early Career Reflections
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when I was working on the Tucson urban renewal excavations. And it took about two years for us to ask our person who was in charge, Jim Maris, who just passed away a few years ago, why are we digging up 42 city blocks in downtown Tucson? And he thought we were asking about his research design and we said, no, no, what
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is the reason you're paying us to do this. And it wasn't until later that I realized it was a 106 project. It was HUD's urban renewal. And they were tearing up hundreds of Adobe historic structures to make this giant downtown visitor center complex. And we excavated 42 city blocks, measured all the buildings.
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And that go back to 1967. And that was the beginning of it. Then I had another two years where I took off, I call it my sabbatical, where I had to wear a green uniform. And I was in the United States Army Judge Advocate General Corps where I learned about law, which set me up very well for when I became, came out of service and in 1974,
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I was the first full-time archaeologist at the National Register of Historic Places.
Nationwide Experience in Cultural Resource Management
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Wow, okay. And from there, I worked in grants and aid. I worked in contracting for surveys where federal agencies would give money to the Park Service for surveys for cultural resources. Evaluation, surveys, location, identification, evaluation, and data recovery.
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And then my last 10 years I was working on technical assistance to states for developing state plans and also produced about 100 national historic landmark studies and many of what about half a dozen which have become since become national parks.
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Wow, that's awesome. And I want to talk to you about that NRHP thing later. For now, we'll proceed on with the questions. So the next one, and again, you've kind of answered this, but where have you worked? What states have you worked in? And then you can include other countries and or territories if they apply. Well, my first big work, and this was five years, not five summers, five full years digging in downtown Tucson.
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And that goes from 1967 to 72. We refer to ourselves as Tucson urban renewal diggers. So I'll leave the inaccurate as a few. But anyway, that was my first big project. And that's what I wrote my dissertation on was the ceramics from the Presidio at Tucson. And when I got to the register,
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I worked with every single state and every single one of the six territories because I was reviewing national registered nominations and determinations of eligibility. When I got to grants and aid, I again worked with all the states and territories. And then when I got to, I volunteered to go out to New Mexico.
00:05:39
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I was working pretty much in the southwestern United States on grants and also technical assistance and contracting and then I transferred over to Atlanta and again I worked in contracting for federal agencies and from there I also started doing landmarks in the southeast, although on occasion I did
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stuff outside the Southeast. I did the National Historic Landmark nomination for site. You're probably familiar with called Borax Lake. I have heard of it. And yeah, if you know Mike Marotto, you've heard of that one. So anyway, I've actually worked in every state in terms of technical assistance, national industry nominations, grants and aid, state planning, you name
Government Roles and Projects
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it. Nice.
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So there you are. It's hard for me to say I worked in this state in this excavation because I've done it all. Yeah. Well, when you've been doing this for 40 years.
00:06:46
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Yeah Okay, well on to the next question then in all that time i'll kind of modify this a little bit What's the position that you usually have in? Uh, well in your work right now, it sounds like you're you're somewhat self-employed But um, I guess when you were when you were still working for someone else What was the position you had and we usually refer to you know project manager principal investigator type terms, but you know, whatever makes sense Well, of course in the government they give you these
00:07:14
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Inocuous titles, right and so I was like archaeologist I would and when I worked at the National Register when I worked at Grant I was archaeologist and Finally when I got to Atlanta and I got white hair to get call me senior archaeologist nice Okay, and so so basically the park service will give you these innocuous titles and then say oh
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We want you to go down to the Virgin Islands of Puerto Rico about, you know, a third of the year. Is that all right? Uh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So basically that's, that's what it is. That's your title. Um, you might be, for instance, like I did a project, multi-million dollar project for doing a management
00:08:09
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and research designed for archaeological resources on all the dark home facilities to the U.S. Army, where they make, store, and test ammunition, everything from 22 calibers to 15 inch naval shells. Nice. My title is archaeologist. Of course. So it's not like, you know, principal investigator
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You know, you're that mature archeologist. Yeah. Yeah. We speak a different language. If you've ever read any government issued reports, you'll know we write in the third person government. So it's kind of a weird way to write. And I've been trying now that I'm retired to get down that right more humanistically.
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So that's, that's basically, I was either an archeologist or later in my career, a senior archeologist.
Understanding Government Pay Scale
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But one thing that people might be able to understand is like, where, what was your GS range? Was that in like the low teens kind of thing? No. Uh, I got in originally when I first started doing part-time work at the Southwest regional office, uh, where they had the Western archeological center.
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Used to be up in Coolidge and they moved it down to Tucson so they could kind of pull in students from the University of Arizona. I was like at GS5 and toward the end I was at GS12. Okay, okay. That will probably make sense to a lot of people. Yeah, I think that would. But when you're at GS12 and you've worked that many years, you're actually making GS13, GS14 money.
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Right, because there's the two things with government pay scales. There's the time that you've been there and then your GS level. Exactly. I don't think a lot of people understand is they go, oh, he's a GS9, but he'll make $60,000, $70,000.
00:10:13
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Yeah. Yeah. No, I was in the, uh, I was in the Navy actually. And I, I experienced that you get, uh, you get E fives, especially E fives in the Navy and E sixes that were in for, you know, 15 years as an E five, but the E five is making way more money than say the person that went that shot up real fast to E six, because they've only been in for 10 years total, but this guy's been in for 15 years. So yeah, that's, that's exactly right. Time, time means a lot. We, we had to defend a lot of people who are E fives and below at court commercials.
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I know how that works. I mean, they go up, and then they screw up, and they go down, and then they come back up, and they screw up, but they go down. It was military justice is the justice of military music is the music. What can I tell you? Right, right. They might be able to take your rank away, but they can't take how long you've been in.
00:11:02
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Yeah, and or the fact that your heart is still beating and they name you need you for the next, you know, invasion.
Significant Contributions and Impact
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Exactly. Exactly. All right. Moving on to the slightly more fun questions. What is the best thing that's happened to you that's related to being an archaeologist? And this can be personal or professional. Wow. Yeah, it's a big question for someone that's been in a long time. Yeah, on a personal level, over 40 years, I have met some of the greatest people in the world. Mm hmm.
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I have met some of the greatest people in the world and I've just had this wonderful opportunity to do what I think is amazing stuff. And it's meeting a guy named Gonzalez who is the architectural historian on the state preservation office in Illinois and convincing him it's easier to do an acquisition grant than a building restoration grant.
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And so we buy two square miles of Cahokia. Nice. You know, that, that sort of thing. Yeah. And, and to be able to do a grant or a contract and then make a really nice discovery or to make a presentation for a bronze plaque for a property and then saying,
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Yeah, we really ought to make this a national park or state park or this will lead us to doing this. Um, you know, it's, it's just, I've been trying to pull through all my stuff. I've accumulated for 40 years and it's amazing. The stuff, the park services, well, you didn't get in jail and you didn't screw up so badly. So now we're going to have you do this. And it's just,
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Some people don't really look at it, but I just thought it's a great opportunity to have fun and meet some great people and to learn about stuff I never knew existed. Yeah. Did you know that they found a Viking coin in a prehistoric site in Maine at the Goddard site? I don't know. I'm familiar. Well, I'm somewhat familiar with the Goddard site. That sounds familiar, but I don't know that I knew about the Viking coin.
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Yeah. They even sent me a picture of it because I said, Oh gee, I wish I had a picture of it. Okay. We'll send you a picture. Yeah. And then one side it's a cross and the other side it's a horse's head. Nice. And you could see that someone had drilled it for like a necklace and then it broke off and then it got lost. And that means it was traded all the way down. Yeah. So it, you know, it's just finding these, having an opportunity to do this stuff and just,
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to listen to archeologists and historians and architectural historians all over the country who are fascinated by what they're doing and to just be a part of their enthusiasm.
Improving CRM Archaeology
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That's probably the greatest thing I've ever had an experience in dealing with. Nice. Nice. Yeah, that's pretty fantastic.
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What is the biggest thing that you would change? Well, I'm going to read the question. So what is the biggest thing that would change that would make being a CRM archaeologist better? And you can qualify this as like maybe a government archaeologist specifically. Sure. Sure. In terms of what I would change is I've been a big supporter of the national register. I've been a big supporter of the landmarks. I've been a big supporter of the World Heritage. In fact, I mentioned in the World Heritage domination from poverty point.
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as the person who helped provide lobby information for the nomination. I would like people to understand that it's not about research. The register, the landmarks, it's not about research. It's about developing a nomination to help preserve this property so that research can be conducted in the future.
00:15:12
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And you know, a lot of people think, Oh, well you have to dig the site to find out everything. Well, you know, not really. And the other thing would be, we're not interested in trying to tell you what type of research you use for your nomination. Your research is just as valid as the next guys. We just haven't proved it yet. And if we let the site be destroyed, how are we ever going to figure out who's right?
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So when we would do these nominations, I would say, look, in the past, this was a very important nomination for developing the cultural chronology of lower, whatever. And now we've got some more information from the site, and it potentially, based on the state's plan, could answer these questions that were developed in 2008. But we don't want you to waste your time
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developing a research design for the future that may not actually be valid and would just take too much time and money to do. So it's not really about research, about planning. So for instance, one thing I would like to see done is you probably have executed number of sites on 106 projects, but there's still a site there. And I would like to see
00:16:39
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the rules changed so that you would get money to nominate that site. So it doesn't get forgotten. You'd be surprised. I'm dealing with a guy on a landmark shipwreck and he just found out he was wanting to help me develop the landmark. He just found out or approved two permits for STC cables to run right over the site, the shipwreck.
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You know, even though the bronze plaque is right there on the shore. So I think, you know, this is one example of, boy, somebody really messed up. Well, think about all the sites out there that you partially dug. There's still research potential with these things in the future.
Post-Retirement Research
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There's still some material that's intact there and you had to walk away.
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Well, and how hard is it to move cables off a shipwreck? I mean, it's way more difficult to move, uh, to move like a big trench for a pipeline because you can't just put a corner in it, but it seems like, yeah, that seems logical. Yeah. So I would, I would like to see people realize if it's there, it probably should be nominated. But again, that's part of where I'm coming from is planning to make sure the people in CRM will actually have something to investigate in the future.
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All right, so this is somewhat of a silly question, but for an archaeologist, not necessarily. What is your career goal in CRM? Now, I know you've already worked, like you said, four decades in this. So I guess what's next for you? You know, where would you what do you like to do? Well, I'm actually doing it. Yeah. For example, you know, you get, like I said, this opportunity to meet all these people with this great enthusiasm for these sites and you
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but you don't get an opportunity to get as deeply involved. Okay. So what I'm doing now is the research. So for instance, I just got an email from Stacy Hachorn, the state archaeologist from Alabama, and it's a picture of Cherkava Apaches in Fort Mount Vernon, Alabama.
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after they had surrendered to General Nelson Miles, they transferred them to Alabama. Eventually they went to St. Augustine and then as prisoners of war, they were housed at Fort Sill until the first couple of decades of the 20th century. The Chira Kahua have never seen this picture of them at Fort, at Mount Vernon. And so I said, I know a woman who is in my
00:19:26
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high school class who married a chair calla and i sent it to him and she says the tribal chief wants to call you about this picture nice pretty amazing you know and so these are the kinds of things people i've developed his relationship with they say we would like you to work on this study we'd like you to work on this could you help us with this you know
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And so it might be a New Deal architecture at El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico. It might be helping to do a nomination for Passo de Indio site, which is a stratified 12 meter deep archaeological site. The biggest site in the Caribbean ever found. Wow, 12 meters. Yeah, deep.
00:20:25
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And they would come in the start of the Archaic and they'd have a little settlement and they would get this incredible storm and the whole thing would get buried. And then they come back, the incredible storm, get buried, get buried, get buried, get buried.
Land Transfer to State Parks
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And they found that through a highway project and they could have just done data recovery
00:20:48
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I walked away, but we said, we think we want to develop this program for this in the future. So it's now on the national register at the national level of significance. So it's, these are the kinds of things that I really enjoy is to actually have the opportunity to get more in depth with these things and to write them up. And, um,
00:21:14
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You know, like, uh, I did one on a paleo site in North Carolina called the Hardaway site, which was the type site for Lake paleo early and middle archaic. And it was owned by the alcohol aluminum company.
Advice for Undergrads in Archaeology
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They were happy to have it made a landmark. And when they had to do a re-reg on a dam nearby for FERC, they said, you know, I got an idea. Let's just give this land to the state. Mm-hmm.
00:21:42
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as part of their state park land holding. And they did it because we made it a landlord. So you never know what, what sins will be visited before your head for having done something like that in the future. So anyway, I guess that's, that's kind of what I'm saying is that this great opportunity to
00:22:09
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Go back, look at the stuff I've done for four years and say, you know, that would make a great article. And I'm doing it.
00:22:16
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It's nice to be able to, to look back and, and, and to do stuff like that. Cause often, as you know, whether you're working for a private firm or for yourself or for the government, you often just don't have time. There's another project right around the corner sitting on your desk ready to go. So, and this is a good reason why people should, uh, hang on to a lot of information that they collect over the years and things. So you can go back to these projects and give it a better treatment. If that's, if that works out.
00:22:42
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That's right. Just one more question for you. So if you could give an undergrad thinking about a career in CRM, one piece of advice, what would that be? Well, actually, it looks like this summer I will be teaching undergraduate and graduate students in CRM for the, I've been doing that for almost 30 years. So I get lots of advice, but
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The one that I think is most important falls within a couple of very minor points. Number one, you have to understand that you're doing this. You're doing all this survey. You're doing all this, and whether it's a survey for buildings, sites, traditional cultural products, whatever it is, you're doing this because there is legislation backing you up to require you to do this.
00:23:41
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And you need to understand how this legislation was created and what you're expected to do because that's how you're going to get a job. Right. You know, you go to these other classes and they'll teach you how to do a survey. They'll teach you how to do an excavation. They'll tell you the point types, but you need to figure out when Teddy Roosevelt signed the 1906 Antiquity Act,
00:24:10
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What was the intent of that? How did that get going? How has it been modified up to the point?
Impact of Individuals in Archaeology
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What are the interests of modifying in the future and how this can then translate into what you do with your job and knowing this is going to be so much better. Uh, the other thing I want to let them realize is
00:24:36
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Archaeology is pretty interesting from the standpoint of a single individual can still accomplish a lot. As I said, I was the first archaeologist, the National Register. In the two years I was there, I reviewed 2,600 National Register nominations. Did 400 pieces of correspondence, almost 400 determinations of eligibility.
00:25:08
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today nationwide, maybe 30 sites a year being nominated. So that means it would take the same individual 80 years to do what I didn't do. So, you know, you have the potential to do a great amount of work to do very important things or not. Okay. Or not. And,
00:25:36
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You know, you could, you could decide to do this or not do it. And so I said, you can be a Frank Pinkley who created all the national monuments for prehistoric archaeological sites and historic sites in the Southwest. In spite of the director of the Park Service telling him don't do this, we're only interested in large grassy exercise areas like Grand Canyon.
00:26:06
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He says, no, it was the same thing. One person did that. And so that's why they buried Pinkley at Casa Grande, which was his first place he was superintendent. Do you think it was hard to get the women from World War II who were pilots to be buried at Arlington? It's really tough to get someone buried at a national park.
00:26:30
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I imagine. But they made it for, for Pinkley, who everybody in the Park Service returned to him as the boss.
Show Notes and Contact Information
00:26:37
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Not the guy back in New Jersey who does the, born in the USA, but the boss, Frank Pinkley. So that's the kind of thing is understand how this came about and understand that you as an individual can make a really major impact.
00:27:00
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Show notes for this and all episodes can be found on the Archaeology Podcast Network website at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/. At that page you'll also find a form that you can fill out so you can be interviewed on the show. Interviews take less than 30 minutes and you don't need any special equipment. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the field.
00:27:21
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The show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com