Alumni

The main focus of our lab is to provide community college students with an introduction to archaeological lab techniques and methods. Many of our alumni have continued on in archaeology while others have found their educational and career paths in different fields. We are proud to share some of their stories and successes here!

Paul Allgaier, Jr.

I attended ARC to pursue a career in archaeology after separating from the US. Air Force. My professor found out about my interest in archaeology and told me about CRAWL as well as the opportunities it provides to gain experience that would otherwise come later in school. I was a part of CRAWL in 2013 and 2014. My class was tasked with the faunal remains from the collection. We identified, labeled and cataloged as well as learned about different butchering methods and osteological criteria to make proper identifications. We also got to work with the California State Parks Archives utilizing the comparative collections to help make identifications. The students also were able to utilize the research to present their findings at the annual CSUS conference. I really enjoyed the class and lab work, but it really does pay off in the long run.

Once I transferred to CSUS, I worked in the Archaeological Research Center doing lab work with the graduate students because of the experience I gained with CRAWL at the community college level. This unique opportunity allows students the chance to gain a great deal of archaeological experience at an early stage in their educational career. CRAWL put me ahead of my peers and allowed me to stay ahead while I was pursuing my degree. After completing my BA at CSUS, I was able to get a job at a local CRM firm and worked all over northern California on projects before getting accepted to graduate school.

I moved to Salt Lake City to continue my education and I have just finished my first year of grad school at the University of Utah. I am still seeing the experiences I gained in CRAWL at work. I am using faunal (amphibian) remains from the Pleistocene/ Holocene Transition to track changes in climate as the Ice Age came to an end and the Holocene ensued. My archaeological research interest is Prearchaic (>9000 kya) Hunter/Gatherer lifeways and settlement patterns in the central Great Basin. I hope to be able to help connect the paleoenvironmental record to human behavior patterns in the Great Basin.

CRAWL offers students a unique peek into the field of archaeology. Many students I was in class with have gone on to professional archaeological careers and higher education. We run into each other at professional conferences and follow each other as we progress in the field. This network is not only highly motivational, but critical in archaeology. Staying in contact and keeping up with current work and research in our field allows us the opportunity to stay one step ahead and CRAWL offers this.

Angela Evoy

Since my time at CRC, I have earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from UC Davis and am currently working on a Master’s in archaeology from Trent University in Ontario, Canada. My current research investigates the function of Neolithic chipped and ground stone axes from the Southern Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia. My main area of interest is cultural transmission and technological investment as an adaptive response to glacial and post-glacial ecologies in Northeast Asia. For the last two years, I have been conducting field work in the Ordos desert in Northern China and Eastern Gobi Desert of Mongolia. In addition, this year I will be spending part of my summer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. All of this is possible because I discovered my love for archaeology at CRC and found wonderful support from the professors who encouraged me to pursue my dreams. While at CRC, I spent a year working at CRAWL and really developed a strong research ethic. Not only, did I get to learn about the artifacts and people who may have once used them, but I saw how exciting completing and presenting a research could be. To this day, I use what I learned at CRC and CRAWL in my own work and when teaching others about archaeology.

Bryna Hull

One of the most interesting things about working in the CRAWL lab was tracing the behaviors of the inhabitants of the Old Sacramento site through the artifacts they left behind. I learned a great deal about artifact deposition and post depositional processes that affected the site, from discard in the privy and how that might affect stratigraphy to the fire history of the site based on ash and charcoal layers. Since my time in CRAWL, I have both transferred to and graduated from the University of California, Davis with a degree in Evolutionary Anthropology. I am currently a graduate student in the same department, working towards a Ph.D. in Archaeology. I pursued an honor’s thesis internship in the Archaeometry Lab where I worked with human remains and studied stable isotope values. Since my time in CRAWL, I have had the opportunity to do fieldwork in the Great Basin, the Susanville area, and my region of focus, the central Sierra Nevada. I love California archaeology and studying the variability of hunter-gatherer behavior and am pursuing these as objectives for study within a research-oriented teaching career.

Daniel Jackson

CRAWL is an outstanding program that offers CRC students a strong foundation for further study in archaeology. Also, as the project continues to evolve, those who've participated have the opportunity to view it from different perspectives. On a personal note, I've noticed a lot of archaeology academia is focused on prehistoric archaeology, and CRAWL gave me a much-needed introduction into the identification and handling of historic artifacts. Since leaving CRC, I attended CSU Chico including a summer at the field school in Antigua before eventually finding my way to State Parks. Today, my time is split almost evenly between reviewing projects, consulting with Native American Tribes and field work all over California.

Rohit Kumar

After my internship in CRAWL, I graduated from CRC and transferred to California State University, Chico (CSUC). At Chico, I was able to study forensic anthropology in greater depth and used my previous experience interning at CRAWL to springboard myself into an internship at the CSUC Human Identification Lab (CSUC-HIL). The HIL opened more doors for me and I was able to do research in the Chico State Microbiology lab alongside another internship in the Chico Isotope lab, all while assisting in forensic cases and recoveries. I then graduated from CSUC with my Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and certificate in forensic identification. I now work as a grossing assistant in a pathology lab where I get to support pathologists and assist in autopsies. Working at CRAWL was a great experience that helped me develop my skills as not only a student and academic, but also as an applicant for all of the other experiences I was fortunate to have.

Trisha McNeill

I transferred from Cosumnes River College to UC Davis in the fall of 2015, graduated with Highest Honors in the summer of 2017 and am now a first year graduate student at Davis. I am working with Dr. Teresa Steele in the Western Cape province of South Africa looking at middle and later stone age hunter-gatherer mobility using strontium isotopes in ostrich egg shell recovered from archaeological sites located on the Varsche River. Beginning in the summer of 2018, I was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship which will allow me to focus on my research full time. While working with CRAWL, I most enjoyed the detective work in going through historical documents and photographs to try to discern some of the details about the individuals who lived in the homes where the Enterprise Hotel building now stands. This first step into the realm of archaeology opened up a whole new and exciting world for me and I am forever grateful to my mentors at CRC who encouraged me to follow my dreams.

Arzoo Rahimi

CRAWL has been the reason I have changed my career path. I first joined CRAWL after being introduced to it in a class with Dr. Panagakos, at the time I was pursuing biology but was very hesitant. After getting into CRAWL and attending the first day, I could not stop talking about it to my friends and families. I loved how everyday brought something new to learn. After the end of CRAWL semester, I realized I had been in the wrong major all along, I remember the exact day I walked into the counselors and changed my student education plan, I walked out happier than I had ever been that day! Since then, I’m almost done with my AA-T degree in Anthropology. Pursuing Anthropology once I transferred over and excited to say I have finally found where I need to be all thanks to CRAWL and the fun and intelligent Anthropology department.

Kathleen Sanderson

I graduated with an AS in Anthropology from CRC in 2011. I went on to graduate with my BA in Anthropology in 2013 from California State University – Sacramento. While I was at Sac State, I was also volunteering at CRAWL. I was in charge of organizing old files from the original dig. I really enjoyed being able read the old journal entries and get a feel for the dig itself, but also to see firsthand what happens after the dig. Since graduating I have been working in Customer Service, most recently as a Customer Service Representative (Receptionist) as a Veterinary Office. Not only has the organization that I learned come in handy with this job, but the Anthropology discipline itself has helped make me a great CSR. Remembering to be unbiased and take a step into other people’s shoes, both things I learned in my studies, have helped me give clients the best service that I can.

Report abuse