About Me

I grew up in Fairfax, VA, just outside of Washington, DC. In my early 20's I lived in DC and frequented the Natural History Museum, my favorite of the Smithsonian's collection of museums along the national mall. As luck would have it, I found myself working there in 1991 as part of a decorative painting team during the installation of an exhibition called The Seeds of Change. This exhibit, which was the largest ever produced by the Smithsonian, commemorated the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to The Americas. The intention of the exhibit was to explore, challenge, and in some cases debunk, the way popular culture viewed Columbus' discovery and impact on "the New World." As we know, what he found wasn't a new world; it was home to highly developed cultures that had existed for  more than 20 thousand years before their discovery by Europeans. The exhibition centered on "five seeds" brought by the Europeans during this contact that irrevocably altered the culture and environment of the Americas as a result: disease, corn, potatoes, horses and sugar cane.  



Seeds of Change exhibition

I spent several weeks making "stone" and "wood" using paint in order to help create the visual environment for the exhibition. I remember my first task was to make paint look like "lapis lazuli" from a two story scaffolding built around the "corn portal" at the entrance to the exhibition. Because the museum was open to the public during the day, a lot of our work was done after 5:30pm, when the museum closed. We had the run of the place and would take coffee breaks while wandering through the darkened rooms looking at the collections. Strangely enough, we were trusted around the priceless artifacts that were being readied for the exhibit. I remember turning around to grab a paint brush or something and almost knocking a 350 year old pock-marked syphilitic scull off of the wall that hadn't been enclosed in its protective plexiglass case yet. I loved doing the work but part of that was feeling so at home amongst the subject matter. This may have been when I found out what anthropology was, and that I loved it.

Around that time, a friend who had a connection there was able to arrange a behind the scenes tour of the upstairs labs of that museum where anthropologists study and catalog materials. Among the fascinating fare was a large mesh hammock cradling the skeleton of an exhumed, charred corpse, an authentic Jivaro Indian shrunken head, and rows and rows of drawers filled with native American remains. If you've seen a cartoon character with bulging eyes coupled with the sound of a horn, that was me during this tour.

Harris foundation at Curles Neck Plantation, VA

I had become aware of the field of forensic anthropology through the fiction books of Patricia Cornwell, which led me to Bones: A Forensic Detective's Casebook by Doug Ubelaker and William Maples', Dead men Do Tell Tales. I attended a 6 week lecture series given by Doug Ubelaker on forensic anthropology in 1992 and was actually convinced at this point that I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist. In 1993 I moved to Richmond, VA to attend college at Virginia Commonwealth University where I got a degree in Anthropology. I didn't follow through on the forensics part, but I still love reading and learning about cases and techniques used to solve crimes and mysteries.

In school, I was lucky enough to participate in the excavation of the Harris House foundation, dating to the 1640's, at Curles Neck Farm in Henrico County, Virginia, not far from Jamestown. One of the best finds that I made there was an intact chicken egg encased in the fill at the bottom of the center chimney. It was a dusty tan color and had been completely impacted with dirt, but it was still absolutely recognizable as an egg.

 

After spending 10 years doing other things including starting a family, my love of anthropology and solving mysteries has resurfaced thanks to our disaster of a house. No one had ever researched its history or worried too much about its structure, as far as I know. Because it has been changed so much over the years with no apparent attempt to preserve it's original character, it has caused me to learn much more than I ever would have if I learned about its history through a previous owner.