I want to thank Alan Downer of the Navajo Nation for suggesting that I put this blog together. Or at least I guess I want to thank him; we'll see. His suggestion was that because I enjoy writing about cultural resource management (CRM) topics, and (maybe this was only his implication, or my assumption) am unlikely to get published much by such conventional journals as there are on the subject (which I find relentlessly superficial and devoted only to presenting happy stories), I should create my own forum for "publication" and discussion in cyberspace. So, for better or worse, here it is. I figure to post my own stuff from time to time, and encourage others both to comment on it and to post their/your own writings.
A word or two about myself for those who don't know me. I've been working in CRM -- which I define as the management of the cultural environment, writ large, and especially impacts on that environment, under international, national, state/provincial, local, and other laws and regulations -- for about 45 years. My academic training is in anthropology and archaeology (PhD UC Riverside 1976), but I like to think of myself as having pretty decent interdisciplinary credentials. In recent years I've authored four textbooks (one of them now in its second edition) on CRM topics, published by AltaMira Press , and have another in progress. At various times in my checkered career I've run a small consulting firm in California, overseen contract work for the New York Archaeological Council, worked for the National Park Service in Washington DC, helped set up historic preservation programs in several of the Micronesian Island nations of the Pacific, spent ten years with the U.S. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation overseeing project review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, and -- having left government in a huff during Daddy Bush's administration -- spent the last 15 years as a private consultant, attempted resolver of disputes, and trainer. Until recently I did training for the National Preservation Institute . I'm now affiliated with SWCA Environmental Consultants . In my spare time I work as senior archaeologist with The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, where I'm mostly involved in TIGHAR's Amelia Earhart Search Project, focusing on Nikumaroro Island in the Republic of Kiribati; several co-authors and I have a book out on that, too -- just published in an updated paperback edition by AltaMira Press. My vital statistics are:
Address: PO Box 14515, Silver Spring, MD 20911
Phone: 240-475-0595 (Cellphone)
Fax: 240-469-1179
Email: tfking106@aol.com
Tom King’s CRM Plus -- Ruminations on "cultural resource management," environmental impact assessment, and related esoteric topics, by a curmudgeon who seldom has anything good to say about anything.
