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Ryan J. Howell - Episode 59
45 Plays7 years ago
Ryan J. Howell, owner/operator of Black River Cultural Resources, interviews on Profiles in CRM.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
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are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. The Archaeology Podcast Network is sponsored by Codify, a California benefit corporation. Visit codify at www.codifi.com.
Profiles in CRM Overview
00:00:21
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Welcome to Profiles in CRM, Episode 59. I'm your host, Chris Webster. Profiles in CRM asks CRM professionals nine simple questions. The answer is very wildly, depending on their experience and education. Because of the nature of contract archaeology and how small this field really is, some people choose not to reveal their name or the company they work for. Stay to the end of the show to hear how you can have a chance to answer these same questions.
Interview with Ryan Howell Begins
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All right, we're here on Profiles, and here is the first question. What is your name and who do you work for? My name is Ryan Howell. I'm the owner operator of Black River Cultural Resources.
00:00:50
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Awesome. And what's the highest degree you've earned? MA in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin. Awesome. How long have you been working in CRM? See, I started field teching back in 1994. So 22 years now. Wow. Nice. Awesome. And where have you worked? Like what states have
Roles and Experiences in CRM
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you worked in? Well, I've worked all over the place, Alaska to the Caribbean and pretty much everywhere in between.
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Awesome. Awesome. Lots of experience. Okay. So, uh, I'll ask this question. I think you just answered it already, but what is the position you usually have in CRM and what is the highest position you've attained? So you own your own company. So, you know, answer appropriately. I, I, uh, I mainly do more of the business consulting and kind of administrative, uh, tribal consultation stuff now.
00:01:32
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So I guess you'd call me a consultant for lack of a better title. Okay. But when I'm working in the field and actually on the ground running projects, I'd fall into that principal investigator project manager slot. Okay, gotcha. All right, so those are the setup questions. Now some of the more fun questions. What is the best thing that's happened to you that's related to being an archaeologist and that can be professional or personal?
Challenges in CRM
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I really like working with tribal communities and I've really gotten to be interested and specialized in tribal consultation and gotten the opportunity to meet and learn a lot from elders and typos throughout the United States and kind of see their perspective on the past.
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And that's something I really enjoy about the CRM aspect of archaeology. OK, awesome. What is the biggest thing that you would change that would make being a CRM archaeologist better? Well, I'd really like to see our entry level and our early career folks get paid and get the benefits of soil scientists, geologists, biologists that you see on the same projects. From a business manager point of view, it's hard to retain
00:02:39
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retain and develop good leadership level folks. And as people who are starting out, it's just hard to make a living in this business.
Future Aspirations in CRM
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Yeah. That's a good point. Um, and extremely correct. That's what you've seen from other interviews. Um, all right. So what is your career goal in CRM or have you reached the top? I don't know if I've reached the top. I pretty much reached where I wanted to get. Right. Right. Uh,
00:03:04
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You know, I've pretty well done what I've wanted to do in this field.
Advice for Aspiring CRM Professionals
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Right now, I'm just kind of interested in doing good work, you know, interesting projects. I have been toying with the idea of maybe, you know, as my knees slowly fall apart more, going back and doing some part-time teaching or, you know, some lecturing in CRM or something like that to kind of train the next generation.
00:03:25
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Okay, awesome. All right, final question. If you could give an undergrad thinking about a career in CRM, one piece of advice, what would that be? Well, I'd probably give two. First would be get your field school right away or your field training right away and get it in the region you want to work and hopefully with a professor who works in CRM or teaches CRM technique in their field school. As an employer, a lot of times I'll see resumes from people who have a
00:03:53
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field school in Pompeii or Israel or something like that. And I know they're not going to be qualified to operate a shovel and do what I need them to do. And while that's great to have that experience as an undergrad, if you really want to get into CRM early and start working on it as a career, you need to stay local and realize that CRM is the end goal. It's not something that you fall into when your academic dreams go the other way.
00:04:22
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The other one would be as you're starting out, start developing what I like to call like a super specialty. Either get, you know, focus on getting a GIS certificate, develop an artifact analysis specialty, maybe desktop publishing, something like that, you know, kind of your second card as a CRM professional. When I started out, I was a lithic specialist and I got hired onto a lot of projects that I probably wouldn't have otherwise got hired onto because I had that skill set.
00:04:50
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and I eventually use that skill set in getting into grad school too. So having that gives you other options in your career and you know things like GIS and desktop and computer work things like that are cross skills that you can use you know in the winter when you can't find work maybe you can you know parlay those and do another
Podcast Participation and Credits
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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.
00:05:34
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The show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and edited by Chris Sims. 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