My introduction to archaeology was on the Crane Site in the Lower Illinois Valley, part of Northwestern's field school based in Kampsville. After the first week on the site I knew I was going to be an archaeologist. I'm 4th from left in the back row. Several interesting folks were on the crew, including Barbara Duvall (Robert's soon to be ex-wife), back row in the hat.

Excavating a feature at Crane with paintbrush, Marshalltown, and Perino pick. Bulge in cheek is courtesy of Red Man Chewing Tobacco. Note the physique and Monsieur Zigzag tank top -- I still have the tank top.

After a stint hacking a cab in Chicago, I returned to Kampsville as an asst crew chief, then crew chief, then director of the program that brought in school and adult groups for one-week archaeological field schools. In summer 1978 I directed excavations of the Mortland Island site, which I found while boating on the Illinois River. We had to boat out to the site in the "Big Blue Bastard", visible on the right.

The asst crew chiefs were Keith, Carol, and "Mr. Fred" who wasn't around for this photo so Carol drew him in.

This was one of many educational visits to the famous Koster Site. Our program was able to both collect archaeological data and inspire young minds, as you see here.

Tryge Widen and I hosted a regular poker game. Here larry Bartram expresses a musical preference.

I went to graduate school at the Univ. of Arizona to be a Southwestern archaeologist. The great Emil Haury was still in the department, although retired from teaching; this photo was from his last trip to Point of Pines, his famous research site on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. I look like I am royally pissed as Haury, but I wasn't, I was just trying to concentrate on what he was saying.

In 1981 I directed archaeological testing on the Zuni reservation in New Mexico. But I was already taking steps towards cvollaboration with the cultural anthropologist Robert Netting. I drove up to Zuni with a huge box full of household censuses he had collected years before with the Kofyar farmers in Nigeria; I did archaeology during the day and coded census at night, so we could analyze them when I got back.

In 1982 I was a crew chief on the Black Mesa Project. I'm on the far right, behind director Shirley Powell. Lots of great folks on the mesa that summer.

One of the sites I excavated, D:11:2025, was especially cool because it was one of 3 similar farmsteads on the bluff, and the tree-ring dates revealed they had been sequentially occupied. It was one family rebuilding every generation. I wrote about this in "Settlement Ethnoarchaeology" in Expedition.

The Navajo / Anglo BMAP crew on one of our sites. My attampts to learn some Navajo produced little more than a handful of badly garbled phrases. My mispronounciation of what I thought was "Lets' take a break" apparently sounded like something very suggestive, because the Navajos would all break out laughing when I shouted it out.

Grad school at Arizona was an exciting time, largely because of the commumnity of students. This is from a survey of Cerro Prieto, a trincheras site in southern Arizona. Rocking the snake gaiters.

In summer 1983 I worked on the Wupatki National Monument survey. I don't have any good photos of the group, but here's one showing the team doing the "bat wave" as Bruce Anderson was helivac'ed out after having a seizure while walking across a mesa. In the evenings I studied Kofyar language in preparation for dissertation fieldwork.

Ethnographic /ethnoarchaeological fieldwork with the Kofyar, central Nigeria, 1984. With Mike Mortimore (visiting us), Bob Netting, Priscilla Stone.

Mapping the Kofyar hill village of Bong with the help of village kids, 1984.

Back from Nigeria, I was a Weatherhead Fellow at the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe. It was a "pinch me" year at a gorgeous place to write a dissertation. Front row L to R: Winifred Creamer, Doug Schwartz, moi, David Montejano, Barbara King, Peggy Trawick. Top: Dick Fox, Jonathan Haas.

In 1988 I joined the Anthropology Dept. at Columbia University as a Visiting Professor of Archaeology (later Asst Prof and Assoc Prof). This was just half of the dept; they couldn't get us all together at once so they photographed us in 2 groups, then they lost the other negative. They got my name wrong in the caption

My office in Schermerhorn Hall.  I also moonlighted as "The Source" LOL.

Archaeological survey, northern Arizona, 1993 I think. With (standing, L to R:) Jim Bayman, moi, Al Sullivan, Chris Downum, others.

In 1994 I launched a new project with Bob Netting, focusing on the Tiv (who lived around the Kofyar but had a different adaptive strategy). It was a very hard summer, featuring scorching heat, malaria, a car wreck, a no-show by our Tiv collaborator, and missing my kids.

Surveying Tiv settlements, accompanied by approximately beaucoups Tiv.

Tiv fieldwork 1994. No comment.

In 1995 I moved to Washington Univ in St. Louis, as a cultural anthropologist. No group photos of the faculty, but this is Priscilla and me in our new house, heading out for a university gala.

Switching my focus to biotechnology was a fairly radical move, but there was a huge effort to push GMO crops into the Global South, and almost no one with knowledge of agrarian societes there was investigating the process. Bill Danforth was especially encouraging. Bill was a remarkable guy.

First office in McMillan Hall.

With NSF funding, I took leave from the university to work in a biotechnology lab at the Danforth Plant Science Center.

That same year I began what would be a long-term research program in Andhra Pradesh, India.

I also became deeply involved with rural education. This was the opening of a junior college in Kalleda village.

In 2007 I launched the Village India Program, bringing a select group of students to live and teach in the village.

Another group of VIP students, plus Nandi.

With support from the Templeton Foundation, I began research in the Philippines in 2013, focusing on rice politics (including Golden Rice, which was being developed there). This was in Ifugao, highland Luzon.

At Maligkong Village, near Bontoc.

Retired from Wash U in 2022 and accepted a position as Research Professor at the nearby Sweet Briar College.

Back to the Philippines in 2023 -- here at the Philippines Rice Research Inst, where I was presented with a bag of Golden Rice.

I also got back to Telangana in 2023. I'm here with my co-conspirator Rammohan and Pushpalatha, a Dalit girl whose education I helped sponsor, now the manager of this temple.

Currently happy to be a non-resident Scholar in Residence at Washington and Lee.

MORE TO COME...including a visit to Jack Kerouac's gravesite...