Disaster Archaeology-this article is incredible! (originally posted by willgirl, 26/03/2008)

A2BOREANAZ, Posted 26/03/2008 17:23:16:
wow willi.......that is so cool that he does stuff like that.....also incredibly sad...........cool article...thanks

gimmeagun, Posted 27/03/2008 09:53:33:
That's so fascinating! I wish I could do something like this but I could never handle it. It's great to see that these guys can and want to help put families back together.

Thanks for the article will!

space, Posted 27/03/2008 10:00:45:
Amazing article Willi... people that commit their lives to that type of work just astound me, part of the reason I love the show so much.
DB's ass being another!

magicstar, Posted 11/04/2008 11:56:17:
what an amazing job! i guess dealing with the stress of death and disaster is similar to that of paramedics, fireman, soldiers etc...

willgirl, Posted 09/05/2008 06:39:33:
I got an email from someone who is a student in Richard Gould's class.

She had this to say:

But I saw the article you posted on Richard Gould, the disaster archaeologist, and thought it was pretty amazing. See, he’s my anthropology professor – I’ve had him in 4 classes so far. In fact, it’s partly because of his courses that I’m majoring in anthropology. When I saw “disaster archaeology”, one of his favorite phrases, I wondered, and then when I read the article I laughed. It’s always bizarre to actually realize how well-known he is, when I’ve just seen him lecturing and making bad jokes! I figured I’d give you some more information, in case you wanted to post it. He’s an amazing person, really: in addition to being one of leaders of forensic archaeology, he’s one of the world’s foremost experts on underwater archaeology, he owns and flies his own plane, and he has property in both Hawaii and Australia. He once had a pet kangaroo! He’s an incredible storyteller, if frequently scatterbrained, and has had an unbelievable life.

As one of his students, I got to go to a FAR training session held recently in Rhode Island. It was very interesting: in addition to traditional archaeological methods such as survey and, of course, digging, we used geophysics to look for magnetic anomalies which would indicate past digging, and we simulated a crime scene, complete with police tape and suits/gloves to protect evidence (and ourselves, in case of toxins). The people in this group are very smart and very thorough; the FBI guys (on the Evidence Response Team) who came down from Boston kept telling us how impressed they were with our methods and results. They’re an excellent team, and I can’t wait until I can join.

space, Posted 09/05/2008 07:10:51:
That sounds so cool... makes me wish I was young again! Might have sparked a whole different career path!