Preserving cultures through archaeology

Archaeology might seem like an unrealistic career path, so when a student expresses an interest to Anthropology Professor Wes Bernardini, Ph.D., he jumps into action.

“I try to immediately give them opportunities for hands-on experience,” Bernardini said. For the last 25 years, he has collaborated on research with the Hopi tribe, bringing on students like Jamie Nord Parra ’19 to help with reviewing archeological field notes, cataloging artifacts, and completing site records. During her year as Bernardini’s research assistant, Parra sharpened these skills and now uses them every day in her job as an archaeologist with Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc.

“I graduated from University of Redlands with real world experience in research skills, laboratory analysis, and museum collections management because of Professor Bernardini,” Parra said. He “really opened my eyes to archaeology as a potential career path within anthropology,” she continued, and “encouraged me to apply to archaeology programs for graduate school. His career advice changed my life.”

In her current role, Parra prepares cultural resource technical reports as part of a project’s environmental regulatory compliance under state or federal laws. She serves a diverse roster of clients, including public agencies, private developers, and tribal governments. With Bernardini as her advisor, Parra wrote her senior honors thesis on the relationships between Indigenous tribes and museums during the process of repatriation of cultural resources and ancestral remains. She interviewed tribal representatives and museum curators, setting her up for success with the work she does now.

“This experience helped teach me how to communicate and listen respectfully with Native American communities and instilled a passion to serve communities in an ethical, transparent, and culturally appropriate manner as a cultural resource specialist,” Parra, who previously worked as tribal archaeologist for Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation, said.

The path Briar Meszaros ’23 took to archaeology was less straightforward. An international relations major, she planned on a career in policymaking and started an internship in Washington, D.C., shortly after graduation. “It took about one month of wearing a suit and sitting in an o!ce every day for me to realize this was not the lifestyle for me,” Meszaros said.

Bernardini taught one of her favorite classes at Redlands, Human Origins, and she remembered something he had told her: as an archaeologist, she could work outside every day. “I am an outdoor enthusiast,” Meszaros said, and “if life could be picture perfect for me, that would mean getting to hike every single day.” She called Bernardini, who put her in contact with the hiring manager at Statistical Research Inc. “Within two weeks I was in Plumas National Forest about to begin my first cultural resource management project, and my new life,” Meszaros said. “I felt so happy and so free, and that’s how I still feel today.”

As a crew lead, Meszaros travels to sites across the West Coast and Southwest—in the last two years, she’s lived and worked in Northern and Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington—and surveys the area with her team. “Along the way we record any features or artifacts we see on the ground,” she said. “Site recording includes measuring, photographing, and typing features and artifacts, and recording where we find them using ArcGIS Field Maps. By the end of the day we may have walked up to 10 miles, depending on how much there was to record.”

Not every student who tries archaeology settles on it as a career, but “all of them took something valuable from the experience,” Bernardini said. “In archaeology, there’s a lot of independence, and you are expected to be self-motivated, driven, resilient, and able to work in tough conditions day after day. But you never do archaeology alone, so you also learn how to be a good team player and to fill a role that supports the larger project. These are life skills no matter what career you choose.”