About Jim

I've been interested in archaeology since I was a child. My first discovery was an obsidian projectile point (arrowhead) in the mountains of Eastern California - must have been all of 9 years old at the time. I caught the bug and never looked back. Throughout grade school and high school, I visited museums, archaeological sites, and volunteered on archaeological salvage projects with UCLA as a high school junior and senior.

My formal education included three summer 'field schools' (UCLA/UCSB, UC Berkeley, and University of Calgary) from 1969 - 1972; two years of volunteering at the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology (The Lowie Museum) at UC Berkeley, and completion of undergraduate and graduate school at Cal Berkeley (earning my Ph.D. in June 1979).

With a professional career spanning over 40 years and being well past the age requirement for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, I'm not yet a fossil but was once referred to by a coworker as an ancient artifact (and have discovered more than a few of them along the way).

My digitally savy adult children urged me to set up a web site - so, here it is! Ancient Artifact LLC is my business entity and I'm available for hire, collaboration, consultation, teaching and lectures, and where needed, pro bono services to students and other scholars.

As you can see from the Publications page, my lifelong passion for numismatics (coin collecting) has found expression in a jointly authored book now in press.