Prior to joining the Department of Anthropology as a tenure-track faculty member in 2001, I spent 25 years conducting university-based archaeological research, primarily hunter-gatherer land-use studies, in western North America . I served as principal investigator and primary administrator of cultural resources management (CRM) programs at Texas Tech University, Washington State University, and most recently (1990-2001) at Texas A&M as associate director and director of the Center for Ecological Archaeology (CEA), a 30-year-old research center under the auspices of the College of Liberal Arts (CLA). From 1995 through 2000 I also held a senior lecturer position in the Department of Anthropology, teaching one graduate or undergraduate course each semester. Pursuant to Texas A&M's Vision 20/20 program ( http://www.tamu.edu/vision2020/about.php ), CLA disbanded CEA in 2001 and replaced it with the Center for the Study of First Americans.

I remained as principal investigator, editor and/or primary researcher/author on seven projects, totaling approximately $3,000,000, and with the primary responsibility for completing them within budget and deadlines. Fieldwork and related research for the resulting well-received, agency/peer-reviewed monographs, most of which are 200-350 pages in length was funded by federal, state, and local government agencies. These monographs contain some 100 chapters written or co-authored by 41 individuals: 13 academic-based scholars (five in our department); 11 professional scientists (three in our department); and 17 of our graduate students. A final report for the remaining CEA project- Archaeological Investigations in the Middle Kootenai River Valley , Northwest Montana -is scheduled for submission to the Seattle District Corps of Engineers in January 2006. Research results presented in my own chapters in these monographs are derived from 15 years of field archeology projects, dozens of sites, more than 1000 m 2 of excavations, and thousands of acres surveyed. Collectively, they provide a solid foundation for a lifetime of my own research as well as for interested graduate students.

Harvard University 's Tozzer Library has a standing order for CEA's Reports of Investigation series. A recent undergraduate textbook entitled Archaeology by Design (2003; S. Black and K. Jolly; AltaMira Press) included a side-bar that noted the Center for Ecological Archaeology selectively undertook CRM research projects to address "scientific-based questions linked to ecology" and commented that investigations at the Richard Beene site in south-central Texas revealed "interwoven climatic, environmental, and cultural relationships of a ten-thousand year record of human ecology." Excavation strategies for another CEA project-archaeological studies at the Valley Branch site in north-central Texas -are featured in the recent edition (1997) of Field Methods in Archaeology by T. Hester, H. Shafer, and K. Feder (Mayfield Press), which is the standard textbook for archaeological fieldwork.

My sponsored-research projects at TAMU are well integrated, in a synergy-building fashion, into my overall research, teaching, and service efforts. These projects have led to: (1) eight articles on the archaeology of western North America and working relationships with Native Americans that are published or accepted for publication in seven peer-reviewed journals/series: Historical Archaeology, British Archaeological Reports : International Series , Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, Current Research in the Pleistocene, Lithic Technology, Texas Forum on Civil Rights, and Bulletin of the Texas Archaeological Society ; (2) six field schools, four for students and two for avocational archaeologists; (3) four graduate seminars; (4) topics for 10 thesis/dissertation projects; and (5) open doors for collaborative research with Native American tribes in Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, and Washington.

The largest of these projects-a 15-year-long archaeological/paleoecological investigation at the Richard Beene site-along with a related graduate seminar laid the foundation for development of the Land Heritage Institute of the Americas, a 1200-acre ecological park dedicated to educational, archaeological/ecological research, heritage-tourism, and recreational purposes ( www.landheritageinstitute.org ). I intend to develop a significant portion of my future research program from this project, which already has involved faculty and researchers at the universities of Kansas , Wisconsin-Milwaukee , Texas A&M, Texas , Texas Tech, and Baylor. At Texas A&M, it has included faculty in the departments of Anthropology, Architecture, Wildlife and Fishery Sciences, Recreation, Park, and Tourism Science, Rangeland Ecology and Management, Soil and Crop Sciences, and the Bush School as well as members of San Antonio 's Native American community. I will continue to foster on-site, inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional research in archaeological and paleoecological studies of human adaptation in south-central North America . Two years ago, I secured external funding to prepare and curate, for future studies, the entire collection of artifacts, samples, and records from the Richard Beene site and 20 other sites in the vicinity of the Land Heritage Institute. During the summer of 2006, I led a team of graduate students in documenting recently exposed artifacts and features at the Richard Beene site and digitally mapping the area before it was mechanically landscaped for stabilization purposes.