My wife, Wanda, and my sons, Brett and Finn, spent many field sessions with me, and put up with my absences as well. As a Korean War veteran, I got a late start at higher education. It seemed that each time I earned a degree, there was no employment opportunity in whatever field I had just completed. Throughout this period, I continued working on advanced degrees, and in my final years at the University, I was a graduate teaching assistant in both the geology department and the anthropology department. It was then that I decided to go into teaching and research, a combination I have enjoyed since.
Archaeological geology is, of necessity, a hybrid of at least two disciplines.
As I have already indicated, my teaching experience, as a graduate student, and later as a professor, encompassed more than one discipline. At Northern Arizona University, I initiated a graduate program in Quaternary studies, integrating anthropology, biology, geography, and geology. More fundamentally, even the artifacts recovered, including ceramics, are in large part geologic origin. What puzzles and alarms me is that most archaeological, and nearly all civil engineering programs fail to include geology in their programs of study. I feel this is a major error in our system of higher education.