Jim Bard, Consulting Archaeologist
Jim recently served as a Senior Consultant for Cultural Resources at Cardno's Portland, Oregon office. He handed off his duties as Cardno's Pacific Northwest Cultural Resources Lead to pursue private research and free-lance consulting through Ancient Artifact LLC, an Oregon business entity.
Jim has 39 years of cultural resource management experience in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada and Arizona. His professional experience spans the management of cultural resource elements of EAs, EIRs, and EISs for federal, state, and municipal agencies, private industry, and the military and scientific community. He has managed cultural resource investigations in compliance with NEPA, the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and a variety of other federal cultural resource regulations. He has a broad technical and geographical background in all aspects of cultural resource assessment and regulatory compliance. His specialties include program management, coordination of technical analyses, research design formulation, Section 106 compliance, Tribal consultation, and business development.
Prior to joining Cardno in 2013, Dr. Bard served as a Sr. Principal Investigator for SWCA (2009-2013) and as the Senior Technologist - Cultural Resources for CH2M HILL (1993-2009). He held a 50 percent ownership and served as a Principal of Basin Research Associates, Inc. for more than 16 years. BASIN continues to serve a broad array of clients throughout California and Nevada. Bard and a partner founded BASIN in 1977 while graduate students at U.C. Berkeley. He served as Principal or Co-Principal Investigator for cultural resource assessments associated with urban and rural land planning, the development of water, energy, and mineral resources, and urban development.
Jim's research expertise includes prehistoric (precontact) and historical archaeology of California, the Great Basin, Pacific Northwest and the Columbia Plateau. Jim's practice experience includes cultural resources management consulting, surveys and data recovery, archaeological method and theory, scientific applications in archaeology (archaeometry), ethnology and cultural ecology, lithic technology, Chinese diaspora archaeology, numismatic archaeology and prehistoric rock art.
Donald L. Craig, M.A. RPA Staff Archaeologist
Don Craig has 12 years of professional experience in prehistoric and historic archaeology with field experience in a wide range of environmental regions including Northwest (Idaho, Oregon, Washington), Southeast (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas), Mountain States (Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming), Upper Plains (Montana, North Dakota), Great Lakes (Illinois, Indiana), and Pacific Coast (California). While his primary focus is prehistoric archaeology, his experience includes historic archaeology, forensic recovery, and prehistoric ceramic and lithic analysis. Mr. Craig has field experience and maintained leadership roles in archaeological excavation, testing, survey, and monitoring. Mr. Craig has been involved in producing NEPA and NHPA documents, and consulted directly with clients assisting them through Section 106 compliance. Mr. Craig has experience in writing proposals, survey reports, and scopes of work, and has developed survey, testing, and site monitoring plans for cultural resource fieldwork. Mr. Craig also has project management experience, including budgeting, scheduling, and personnel management.
Breanne Kisling, B.S. Cultural Resource Specialist
Breanne Kisling has been working in Cultural Resource Management for over six years since earning her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Idaho in 2009. She worked for four years on the Sandpoint Archaeology Project, cataloging, analyzing, researching, and photographing the historic artifacts from excavations of the old town of Sandpoint, Idaho (circa 1880-1920). She also served as researcher and supporting author for the project’s report. Her field work experience consists of Phase I pedestrian survey and testing, Phase II excavation, and archaeological monitoring throughout the country including Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Illinois. She also has experience in writing site narratives and technical reports, creating and managing artifact databases, and analyzing and cataloging prehistoric and historic artifacts.
Celia Moret-Ferguson, M.A. RPA Staff Archaeologist
Celia Moret-Ferguson is an archaeologist with over ten years of professional experience in cultural resource management. Her work experience has allowed her to acquire extensive knowledge in precontact and historic archaeology. Since 2005, she has participated in and led field crews through several intensive surface and subsurface block, linear, and seismic surveys within Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Georgia, Florida, and Illinois. She is often the primary report author for these projects and is also experienced in archival research, monitoring of construction, site recording, and data recovery.
Ms. Moret-Ferguson has been serving as the field director, assistant project manager, and project manager within the Pacific Northwest, Columbia Plateau, Great Basin, Plains, and Midwest regions since 2007, and often travels to assist various offices with these needs. She is experienced in various State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) regulations, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) inventory and review, and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Environmental Assessment (EA) report production, archival searches, proposal and budget development, working with tribal representatives, archaeological resource recording, and hiring and supervising of field crew. She is familiar with state and federal regulations and processes including State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) guidelines, tribal policies, Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), and Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA). In addition, Ms. Moret-Ferguson has served as the artifact illustrator for several large-scale data recovery projects.
One of Ms. Moret-Ferguson’s specialties is in Landscape Archaeology and its application to Cultural Resource Management in the form of Traditional Cultural Properties. Ms. Moret-Ferguson focused her Master’s thesis on combining spatial data and ethnographic research to provide meaningful landscape context to several precontact archaeological features. This study aimed to understand the meaning and significance of stacked rock features to the native tribes surrounding the study area by cross-referencing themes identified from analysis of their spatial distribution with social collective memory gleaned from ethnographic research. The study established a useful method of verifying tribal collective memory, which can provide support for the significance of precontact features as complexes and their association to culturally perceived landscapes.
Mella Rothwell Harmon, M.S. Architectural Historian
Mella Rothwell Harmon is an independent consultant focusing her efforts on architectural history, historic preservation planning, and research. Ms. Harmon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Science degree in land use planning with an emphasis in historic preservation from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she was an adjunct assistant professor of historic preservation in the departments of Anthropology and Geography.
Ms. Harmon has 30 years of experience in the fields of cultural resource management and public history. She is the former curator of history at the Nevada Historical Society, and she served as the National Register of Historic Places coordinator at the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office, where she worked on numerous heritage tourism initiatives throughout Nevada, focusing on the use of historic buildings and sites to engage the public.
Ms. Harmon is widely published in the fields of Nevada history, architectural history, and historic preservation. From 2005 to 2009, Ms. Harmon served as the managing editor of the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. Over the course of her career, she has contributed to more than 65 professional reports, authored 36 National Register nominations and numerous articles in books, journals, newsletters, and newspapers, as well as several entries in the On-line Nevada Encyclopedia. Ms. Harmon actively participated in public presentations and video productions, including the local PBS series “House with a History.”
