00:01.00 archpodnet Hello and welcome back to the crmarcheology podcast episode 266 and I am your host and solo adventurer Andrew Kingkella and we've been talking about my past in cr m and. We are now at stage 2 in my three stage crm life which was my full time real job that I got from one of the smaller firms in the l a area now this was ah another learning process right. And this was sort of the you're a full time employee. This is how to deal on a project that lasts months and months if not years so I was the monitor on a big project in downtown Los Angeles which took up 6 separate city blocks. And these blocks weren't contiguous, right? They weren't stuck together. Each block was like a mile away from the previous block so it was 6 city blocks along a straight line that crossed downtown Los Angeles and so I was the lone monitor. For 6 city blocks and that is a shocker right? And what was I what were they doing? What was this project. It was a huge storm drain. Um. 01:31.63 archpodnet Renewal project massive multi multimillion dollars I do think it was the largest public works project at the time that the city of Los Angeles had ever undertaken. So this is massive right? and you guys I learned so much from. Working on this right? At this point one of the many new aspects I learned besides how to monitor well and how to pick where to monitor and where to not monitor was dealing with like city bureaucrats. City system. Um the bureaucrats from a big business system. So that's an entire new portion right? You're not just out in the desert digging 1 by 1 now you have to be a representative. You know there would be a meeting. 02:27.58 archpodnet I forget how often let's say once every two weeks it might even have been once every month but I remember going into the meeting room and having to sit there with like like major city bureaucrats and major company members from this. Big multinational company that was doing this project and sitting there and have to having to listen to. Okay, what's the project going to do where were you going forward how far behind are they they're always behind like forty days or fifty days or whatever. That's just par for the course but that was a learning experience too and that was like again. Be professional now you can come into those wearing you're you're gonna need your like orange vest and hard hat and all that stuff you're gonna need it during the day but I would make sure to wear better clothes underneath my hard hat. And orange vest. You know what? I mean again, not my tuxedo but hey I'm wearing like a button down shirt that I can also deal with in the field or I'm bringing something in my car to kind of have a quick change in my car to just at least wear a better shirt hey I'm wearing my good jeans. You know hey I make sure I'm shaved in that kind of stuff just to look presentable because you'll find in meetings like that that so often people listen with their eyes you know and just if you look professional. It really gives you a leg up. So. 04:00.86 archpodnet There were aspects of that job again. It went on for the better part of 2 years that were tedious. Um, brutal you guys know how it is just it's like just another day and I'm watching huge equipment dig this hole where there's just not going to be anything you know. And you have to figure out at that point just how to keep yourself going and how to stay positive and I don't mean over the top positive I just tell jokes to myself. You know like I find and I think I'll touch back on this. That you have to have a focus you got to kind of know where you're going in the grand scheme of things. So if you have something that feels kind of dead end which monitoring can let's be honest, you're out there and you're just watching you're like why am I here? Well am I doing um. 04:56.20 archpodnet It's not as bad if you're like you know well I'm going to like go into this meeting at the end of the week with these bigwgs I'm going to like learn more about how the city works and I'm um, I'm going to use all this knowledge later to get higher a higher up position in Crm or whatever it is for you. Like your grand scheme plan do think big I'm going to use all this knowledge and um to move myself forward and where is that forward momentum where are you going more on that later anyway. 05:32.55 archpodnet So I'm dealing with these 6 city blocks and thankfully on any given week. They'd only be working at like 2 or 3 of the squares. Not all 6 blocks but I had to make choices like where do I stand where is the most possible chance of artifacts coming up. So oh and I will say that the record search didn't bring up much this is downtown l a the stuff spend all messed up for generations but I did notice that one square was a bit closer to water right? I think it was closer to the l a river or something I can't remember. But I'm like okay that one it's closer to water most likely sites will be there I'm going to focus most of my time there. Let's say that was block 6 you know I'm going to stay most of my time on block six I remember in the morning. What I would do when I would get there I'd drive to each block I'd drive to like block one I'd get out I'd walk around. Drive the extra mile over to block 2 get out walk around and do that and then I would land at whatever block they were working on or the one that I thought had the most possibility now as the year went by I didn't um. 06:47.12 archpodnet Basically found nothing for months and months and months until I did and when I would go to those meetings with the city planners and stuff. They would all joke at me and chide and be like oh can Kea what if you find anything you're going to keep it on antiques roadhow you gonna put it on Antiques Roadhow and I'd be like a yeah, whatever did um, but about let's say four months in I was watching them dig at like block 6 and they're taking up this dirt and there's nothing nothing nothing nothing as there is every day until a mono comes out and rolls down the backdoor pile and of course as those of us in this world know my reaction wasn't like oh great. My reaction was oh no. So I put my hand up. Put my fist you know to stop construction. You got to stop the the construction guy I got out of his machine and got really pissed at me. Um, but I don't fault him because as we know who work in here construction is all about time and going fast and I'm messing up his time. But I was able to get the foreman over I told him what was up he understood I blocked out my little fifty foot circle and then um to my pride the firm that I worked for. We came up with a really good, really fast. 08:13.33 archpodnet Plan for mitigation. We just um, had them dig with much smaller equipment as we kept looking and ultimately it was just an isolate It was just a mono just by itself and so that was fine and that was great and it was an excellent thoughtful balanced plan. It wasn't like okay now we're gonna. Excavate with toothbrushes. It's like no, we did something that was very reasonable and there was nothing else there. Um, we also had one of the local native american monitors come on at that point which was great and I I really loved hanging out with him. He was just cool and we would just. Hang out and talk and laugh and it's nice in those times when you have another person to talk with now one of the downers was when I went back to the city planning mating. They were not joking about antiques road show anymore. They proceeded to try and blame me. For like the fifty days that they were behind and that's that moment if you're a monitor where monitors are often seen as like the lowest end job but in that moment it's the highest end job where you have to argue cogently and be like no, you're incorrect. I haven't ah burned any kind of time like that. We both know that these fifty days behind have to do with completely different things that has nothing to do with archeology right? and you'll be firm because it's a test they want to see if they can blame you for everything because as we all know. 09:44.25 archpodnet Developers when they die all go to hell so I continued my job in la and some of the digging was actually really cool. They had dug these massive 120 foot deep huge circles in the earth I don't know they were like fifty feet across and like one hundred and twenty feet deep and I was able to go to the bottom of those which is really really freaky and wild. They had a digging and the reason why they did those at each of the 6 blocks was they had a digging machine that would grind across because think of it as they're putting a huge like. Twelve foot wide pipe down. Ah that goes across at one hundred and twenty feet so you have these six spots where you have to dig down and make sure the machine is in the right spot but going through that and just seeing the layers of stuff and seeing like the um, the geology and in l a as you go down too I was able to find some um. Pine cones right? from as you can tell the pleistocene right? Maybe it's one hundred Thousand years old or this kind of thing and so in that moment you have to know a bit of paleontology as the archeologist and the pine cones were obviously old. They were like carbonized. They were black that was really really neat. So again, one of those things where you can stay positive is kind of learning new stuff or taking the time to add to your knowledge. You know as you work on these jobs that can be draining and boring. Um I also recommend having something else. You can kind of write to yourself I would write little. 11:17.88 archpodnet Screenplays because I also have like an interest in in sort of film and this kind of stuff so whatever it may be I do also recommend on those long monitory days to have something else that you can do while you're standing there. You know I knew a guy 1 of 1 of the other guys I worked with you wrote poetry and again this just keeps your mind fresh. You know you're not missing anything. We know that the sometimes the machines stop or sometimes they're digging somewhere where there's nothing so we can. Balance as we go. Um I remember I remember Nine Eleven happened while I was on that job and I remember the day I didn't go in to downtown l a of course because there were tall skyscrapers in downtown elane I was working kind of right? there. It's just a ah moment that i. 12:13.36 archpodnet Remember from that job. Oh the nine Eleven day of of staying home so that took took me to about oh obviously 2001 by that point I was just starting. Grad school for my ph d and so right about then I had to talk to my employers and be like hey I'm starting this ph d I cannot work 40 hours a week anymore and I've been doing it again for the better part of 2 years and because I was a good employee. They were like whatever Andrew will work with you. So at that point I would go to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'd work crm like Mondays Wednesdays Fridays it was a schedule like that I can't remember exactly but that's what I would do. And I would have these little projects that I'd go on and work on and sort of help out with similar to the downtown l a one so monitoring. Um, sometimes they'd bring me into the lab and I'd work in there on Mondays Wednesdays. I learned a lot about historic bottles because they'd had a project I was not on this project for the excavation part but they had a bunch of bottles from like the 1920 s that time in their lab and so I spent a lot of time organizing those and I I really enjoyed. 13:45.19 archpodnet Learning about that stuff. Um, and I used so funny I used the knowledge that I learned in California on historic bottles several years later in Belize because we actually found a historic site on top of 1 of the smaller Maya Mounds it was a historic logging site. And I was able to analyze that site because of the knowledge I'd gained through Crm um, and actually the paper I wrote for that which is twenty years old or whatever. At this point is one of my most cited papers just because it's this funny little side thing that not a lot of people. Do you know. If you're going to police. You're probably working on the ancient maya. But there's this little paper I did on ah logging from the 1920 s based on the artifacts little logging camp. So again, see what you can learn you know in these jobs by the end by the end I mean. 14:41.29 archpodnet 2004 the summer to fall of 2004. That's when I got my full time job as a college professor at Moore Park College so in those last years the stage 3 for me was working like two days a week on little local projects. The glass bottles. I was able to work at campo de coenga which is in downtown l a which is where the treaty was signed where the mexicans gave up California to the americans a super super important place in history. And I remember working there for a few weeks and I was by myself where we had to do these little excavations and I was just doing this little excavation thing I was basically running a 1 man little archeology project there. My friends were doing it too. But I did it on. Let's say Mondays and Wednesdays and. That was a really cool experience just learning about local history. Um I had a little one up at Columbia State Park which is in the gold country of the sierras going up there getting little jobs couple days the columbia one I think was over the summer so I could go for a week or something. Um, while I was getting my ph d just starting I took a bunch of historic preservation classes at you see riverside and those helped me so much again. I would have never taken those classes except that I knew they were good because of my crm experience and. 16:12.23 archpodnet Some of the other students and some of the other professors at riverside thought I was a bit weird for taking these historic preservation classes. But I knew they would push my career forward then they totally did and then that summer of 2004 I had again a couple other gigs I'd happen to have a local. Crm job in Moreo Park California where they were building a bunch of new homes where thankfully I found nothing and I do remember a Friday in the late summer where I left the job. Put my steel-toed boots in my hat. My hard hat in a box and then the weekend came and that Monday I was a college professor so a total shift from crm archeologist to college professor over the weekend. And when we come back some tips and tricks that I learned in crm archeology.