Archaeology, Field Work and ACRA with Cinder Miller

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick!

On today’s episode, we talk with Cinder Miller, Vice-President at Gray & Pape, Inc. about Archaeology, Field Work and ACRA.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes:
1:41 Nic & Laura Segment: The Interviewing Process
10:27  Interview with Cinder Miller Starts
19:54  Archaeology
35:32  Fieldwork & Field Notes
48:06  ACRA

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Cinder Miller at linkedin.com/in/cinder-miller-54126214

Guest Bio:
Dr. Cinder Miller brings more than 25 years of experience managing large multi-agency, multistate Heritage Resource Management projects. She thrives when working on projects with fast paced permitting and consultation requirements and she seeks to help her clients identify and achieve the delicate balance between preservation and development. Since joining Gray & Pape in 1998 she has specialized in energy and development projects throughout the United States, working for both the public and private sectors. Dr. Miller has managed complex projects requiring permits from the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Highway Administration, the Department of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and many branches of the Department of Defense. Dr. Miller regularly attends training workshops focused on permitting and is fully current on all USACE rules and guidelines governing linear project compliance. She  presents regarding industry best practices to both public and private audiences, including appearance on panels for Leaders in Energy and the Southern Gas Association. As vice president of operations, Dr. Miller is knowledgeable of all the firm’s projects and the best use of resources. She has served on the board or as a committee chair for the American Cultural Resources Association since 2005 and is the President Elect for the Organization. 

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello, and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Nic and I discussed the interviewing process. We talk to Cinder Miller about archaeology, fieldwork, and ACRA. And finally, Indiana Jones while being unbelievably cool. Nic's words, was a terrible archaeologist because the context where something is found is just as important as the object itself. So even though this is one of Nic's favorite movies, the smash and grab approach doesn't quite cut it.

Nic  
Yeah. Which is really disappointing. I mean, I thought that how all archaeologists did everything is just you run to an area you grab something and you run away as everyone chases you. It's not? Apparently it's not the way we're supposed to do it. Okay.

Laura 
No, and Cinder tells us all about it. So hit that music

[NAEP Event News]

Nic 
Please join NAEP South Carolina to celebrate reaching 100 chapter members with a happy hour at Steel Hands Brewing in the Columbia, South Carolina on August 12 from 5 to 7pm. NAEP, South Carolina will provide free drinks for the first 20 people so show up early, appetizers for all and wil have some giveaways. This event is free and open to all members and non members alike. And No registration is required. Please visit the website@www.naep-sc.org for more information. Pretty cool.

Laura 
That sounds awesome. I want to go.

Nic 
Yeah, I know. Right. And congrats to you guys for getting 100 members. That's so awesome. That's amazing.

Laura
Woohoo.

Nic
As always, we appreciate all of our sponsors and they will keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show, please head on over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com and check out the sponsor form for details. Let's get to our segment

[Nic & Laura talk about the interviewing Process]

Laura 
Well, did you have a question about what to do after a good interview?

Nic  
Well, so we did, we just interviewed somebody who did really well. Really great interview, and it's one of those things where it almost feels like dating where it's like okay, that was great. really had a great time. Really enjoyed this. We should you do it again sometime. How long do I wait before I say anything? You know, it's like, do I have to wait three days and be like, hey, so we like you and we want to hire you. So here's the next step and all that and she did a great thing. She did the you know, that was the email. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed meeting with you guys looking forward the next step, blah, blah, blah. And I said, thanks. You know, we'll let you know. We really enjoyed meeting you too we'll let you know, blah, blah, blah. But then after that, I'm like, Okay, I don't really want to wait because I don't want other people to snap this person up. And yeah, but it's also one of the things where like I already said that we're good and we'll get back to you soon. But it's funny because like I'm like trying not to be excited while also being excited and you've met me right? It's hard for me to contain that some times.

Laura 
I feel like, I don't know if it's a man thing I hear so many men compare this situation to dating and it kind of drives me nuts.

Nic
Oh really?

Laura
Yeah,

Nic
Go on.

Laura
Because it's not dating, It's  interviewing. It's different. I don't think you should be considering how much time should I wait before you get back to this person. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be excited and pull that excitement into starting the person in the job. Like I've hired people on the spot before I've had them go outside the door and then we deliberate and then bring them back in and say that's it. We like you Let's go.

Nic  
See that's why,

Laura 
I don't see any reason to play like a game around it, you know?

Nic 
Yeah, I guess my concern isn't and maybe I should reframing it differently. It's more like I don't want to come across as overly enthusiastic which I tend to do.

Laura
Why not?

Nic
And I get very excited about things because it can be it can be overwhelming sometimes. Like, believe me. So that's my only thing is like I don't want to be, I am excited, but I don't want to be, like I am excited like,

Laura  
So I would say just let someone else tell them then. But there's no reason to wait.

Nic 
Yeah, and that's the thing and like I have to get approval for like our higher ups and like they're on vacation. But it also means I have to wait five days before I can actually hire somebody which makes me

Laura
okay. Yeah, well, that scenario.

Nic
Yeah. That's one of the things that's stressing me out. It's like I have to wait and I don't want to wait. I don't know how to handle that other than to be like, I'm talking with upper management. You know, don't go away.

Laura 
I don't know that just sounds like a pre planning thing. I have an interview. I need either permission to hire before you go or, you know, just schedule different.

Nic  
Yeah, that would be nice. Sometimes it just doesn't work. That way. There's just yeah, we got the interview set up and we had to do it a certain day just happened to be the day and on

Laura 
And on the flip side. It's I think people are not expecting to get an answer right away. So

Nic 
yeah, okay.

Laura
It is what it is.

Nic
See you're gonna call me, you're walking me back because I keep stressing about it. Yeah, but it's like it's funny because honestly, like when we set it up, I was like, Okay, here's another one. Here we go. Because we've been looking for like, you know, like a couple months. And just you had a lot of bad interviews. We had one pretty good interview, but like it just like our timing didn't work out well. But no, it's funny. I actually had when was zero expectations. I was like, Well, we'll see. And she was great.

Laura 
So what was the bad interview? Why is that happening?

Nic 
Well, you get interviews where there's a few things happening, right one is that there's there's not a lot of people that are actually applying for jobs. It is hard across the board to find people that are doing good work. Like it's just it's just hard right now in the environmental policy space. There's just not that many people that, so the pool is small.

Laura  
So people listening hear this, because that's what you come to me crying about with career coaching is I can't find a job and there's nobody hiring. That is not true.

Nic  
Yeah, You are right, and you know, we talked about it before I had somebody literally reach out to me, specifically, being like, Hey, why haven't you hired me yet? And she's one of our best workers like that stuff does work. It does work. But like, it's there's not not a lot of people applying who we are getting to apply. Sometimes they're so far off the mark that we're not going to bother interviewing them. We're looking for an environmental policy expert. I don't want to hire an environmental engineer. Right? There's some stuff that's so far away. Like if you don't even mention the word NEPA, even though the job is littered with it. It is literally like NEPA, NEPA, NEPA. And you you don't even mention policy. You don't mention the environment. You don't mention NEPA. I'm not going to bother, because it's wasting my time, right? You didn't take the 13 seconds it takes to add NEPA to your resume. Why would I hire you?

Laura 
Well, that's true.

Nic
Yeah.

Laura
I tell people all the time if you don't take the effort to make those few changes and update your cover letter, then don't bother applying.

Nic 
Yeah, exactly. And so that happens and then when we do get to people, sometimes you know, something will look good on paper, and they just won't be in the interview. We ran into that a couple of times. Some of it was we had people who were like, I don't like my commute. So you're like, so what, like that's it. Like, what? You know, and so you have your tough ones we have we've had people who didn't have exactly what we were looking for, you know, like they were really enthusiastic and really good people, but maybe not quite what we were after. So you know, we're looking for somebody independent, and who can go after, you know, who has client relationships and wants to really grow in their career. And that's what we want to do is send people out and teach them up and stuff like that, so that they're kind of self sufficient. And we don't have to do a whole lot of teaching just a little and, you know, obviously as it goes on, we do more but like, we were getting people who just didn't have didn't fit that, you know, Bill for whatever reason we had somebody even tell us like, we actually we were kind of considering field folks as well. Right? So it's like, well, if you have you don't have NEPA background specifically, but you're also really good in the field. We have a natural resources wing of our company, so okay, we'll still interview you. And then you know, we interview people, and we're like, Well, I've worked for eight years, so I put my time and I don't have to go in the field anymore. And we're like, what? Well, I don't I don't have to do that anymore. Because I did it already. I'm like, I still go out in the field. Sometimes it's not like all the time thing. But if you're leading a field effort, it's very hard to do that from your office. So that's the other thing that we're seeing. It's just that we were getting people that just don't quite line up. They're not quite what we're looking for. And, you know, I don't want to hire somebody that kind of works. If that makes sense. Yeah.

Laura 
Do you put specifically what you're looking for in your job descriptions?

Nic 
Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. We have our we have to actually we have to like we have a full protocol for the requirements for what we're doing, why we're doing it. We even have like a new system where a puts in like the I guess it's a kind of like a tier system where it's like, you know, Tier one is like entry level and tier five is like, God level like, you know, like, you don't need anyone to tell you how to do anything because you've done it all. You are the lead, you know, the expert kind of thing. So, yeah, yeah, we definitely do that. But yeah, like I say we we still get a lot of just odd resumes. You know, I think we've talked about that before you get random ones that you just like, why did you apply with this, you know, but we do.

Laura 
Yeah, that's okay. People are using the shotgun method, you know? Yeah. And but that just tells you that they either don't know what they want, or they don't care what they get. They just want a job. You know, the ones that are the best fits are the ones who take the time to answer the questions correctly and read the job description and visualize how they would fit in and succeed in the role so and are willing to learn and in hear, you know, oh, you meet me in the field sometime. Cool. I'll do that.

Nic  
Yeah, that's kind of neat. And like I say, I try not to get too excited until everything's done because you never know because how this will go maybe even this person that we just interviewed that I really like my might be going, Man, that was a great interview. Really love that. So anyways, bosses, they're gonna pay me this much. So if you pay me more, then I'll stay here. And that might also happen. And I've seen it. I've seen it happen and I I don't think that's a really healthy tactic. I think long run what you've told your bosses is I'm, you know, willing to hold my position hostage to get what I want. There's a balance, I think with that, but I don't know.

Laura 
I've seen that where that works kind of one time but the second time, it's not appreciated.

Nic 
Right? It's like fine, go. You don't want to be here. We get it. You know?

Laura
Yeah.

Nic
I think we always want I mean, we always want people that want to do the job that they're in. You know, it's always way better. It seems obvious, but a lot of people were just like, well, this is what I want to do. So I'll do it. Even though I don't like it. And that's it. We're talking to death, I think so. Let's get to our interview.

Laura
Sounds good.

[Interview with Cinder Miller Starts]

Laura 
Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Cinder Miller, Vice President of Gray & Pape, Inc. And President Elect of ACRA, the American Cultural Resources Association on the show. Welcome Cinder.

Cinder Miller 
Hi, thanks for having me today.

Laura 
I'm so excited to have you here. Just to kick us off. Tell us a little bit about what Gray & Pape does and what your role is there.

Cinder Miller  
Sure. Gray & Pape is a cultural and heritage management firm and we do archaeology and architectural survey as well as cultural heritage management. We work predominantly here in the United States, but we also have international practice as well. Broad range of professionals working for us across the country, projects in both the public and the private sector and my role there. I'm a vice president of operations, which is pretty vague you know we're a big consulting firm, right it me so I do just about everything as far as I could tell I do. But I like to classify my job as about 30 to 40% project work, about 30% business development and client management, and  then the rest of it is sort of from management and organization.

Laura 
Nice. Yeah. So you have degrees in classical and Near Eastern archaeology. Before I go any further, can you tell me who knows nothing about this, what the difference between those two are?

Cinder Miller 
Sure, sure. So most people who work as archaeologists here in North America have a degree in anthropology and you know, when most people think of anthropology they're thinking of North America, South America, or Europe history of human cultures. So archaeology the difference, archaeology is actually a sub specialization of anthropology. It's one of the four disciplines of anthropology. It's this. It's the science of the research of material culture, very specifically, so classical and Near Eastern archaeology. So Near Eastern is Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria you know that area that good people would now think of sort of as the Middle East, and Iran, Iraq as well. And then classical archaeology is broadly Greek and Roman archaeology. So I am somebody who's trained in classical and Near Eastern archaeology, who's now been working here in North America for about 25, just over 25 years.

Laura 
That's really awesome. Yeah, is that well, first of all, what was your interest to get those degrees? And then is that what when you graduated is this what you're doing now what you thought you were going to be doing?

Cinder Miller  
Great questions. So when I graduated from college, so my college, my undergraduate degrees were in economics and the fine arts and I went to New Yourk University, right.  So fine arts at New York University is actually art history. And I had an amazing series of art history professors. I'd never when I started college, I was going to be a lawyer. And that was my plan all along was to be a lawyer. And so you know, there was undergraduate in New York City, taking these amazing art history classes, and I just fell in love with like, everything related to the arts and art history. And then I had two or three really great professors who were archaeologists, who were classical archaeologists there at NYU, and one of them kind of steer it. When I graduated from college, I needed a job and she got me this amazing internship working with these archaeologists who had spent they were both 90 years old and they had spent their entire adult lives so like 70 years, working at the Agora in Athens, which is the big marketplace that's at the base to the Acropolis if you've ever been, and they just needed help processing material that they had collected over time, and I started doing that and they I don't know after about two or three months, they said to me in the most endearing way, you know, you're minimally competent at this, but we think you should go to graduate school, so maybe learn a little more. And I'm like, okay, so I applied to graduate school in archaeology and got a great offer from Bryn Mawr College, and went to Bryn Mawr, which is a relatively small school, there's only like five or six graduate students that are every year but it was an amazing, just amazing placement, amazing experience. And you know, kind of sort of transitioned into that. So when you are accepted into Bryn Mawr where you're, at that point, you were accepted into the PhD program. So I was there for six or seven years. And then when I graduated, there were no jobs in classical archeology, right, there's no, such a huge problem. Now if you know, the way that people are hired as faculty in academia now has changed significantly over time. But a really good friend of mine who had graduated a few years earlier said hey, I'm working here in North America doing this cultural resources management. Do you want to come on down and try this for a little while and I'm like, Okay, I'll go and live in New Orleans for a little while. I'll see what's so bad about that, right. Try it out. Try out this whole archaeology thing. Why not and after a few years, it was a great mix for me kind of my undergraduate degree in economics really helped me I think, with the business side of what we do as part of Cultural Resources Management here in the United States. You know, there coupled with my my love of archaeology, and it was a great fit, but it was not a not a direct path by any stretch of the imagination and really not something I would have envisioned a long time ago, but now when I love what I do, we get a chance to make a difference on some of our projects, really significant difference, and it's just great to, you know, travel around and find stuff and help clients. And really my job now is I really helped my clients achieve their objectives. I mean, it's much more business focus than I ever would have imagined as an academic, but great, just a great opportunity and a lot of fun.

Nic 
Yeah, and I should be responsible here and ask you a really good follow up but I really want to know where your first name came from. So how did you get named Cinder?

Cinder Miller  
So I I have an older sister whose name is Mary Hope, just called me like 20 minutes but I had to silence her so.

Laura
Sorry,

Cinder Miller
She hates it when I do that. But when I was born, she couldn't say sister, and so she called me her little Cinder. And I have been called that now, you know, for 50 plus years. If you were to, if you'd asked me at the beginning of this for my driver's license, you'd see that the name on that is Geralyn so that's the they're totally unrelated. And it's kind of nice having a just a total counter identity cuz people who call me Geralyn are either they're really close family or like, I don't really want to talk to them.

Nic 
So you actually mentioned a balance between you mentioned how you help your clients and there's there really is a balance between preservation and development. So how do you help your clients kind of work through those challenges?

Cinder Miller  
Yeah, you know, it's a great challenge. We spend a lot of time helping our clients understand that preservation doesn't mean that you can't do something, you can still do your project you can still develop, but what you do need to do is identify the resources that you could be destroying or impacting, and then figure out how to mitigate any of those impacts that you're having. On those resources. And it takes a lot of conversation, for people to understand that something that they might see as a really minor impact could be really meaningful to somebody else. But I'll tell you, Nic, when you have a project where a client where they really engage in a conversation with the community or with the Native American tribes, or with stakeholders who might have initially objected to their project, and they figure out how to achieve a balanced you know, how to get their project done, and how to help those stakeholders with some need they have, it's fantastic. It's how you marry the development and the preservation objectives. I don't like to say development versus preservation. I would much rather see people understand the partnership between those and I'll tell you some of the best projects that we've done here locally in Cincinnati. There's a ton of development here, but they have developed so many historic resources so spectacularly right, it's great. So here's all this economic development happening in this urban areas that really were kind of fallen apart and neglected. They get preserved, they get developed. It's a win win. For everybody takes a lot of work and a lot of cooperation, but it really can't happen.

Nic  
Yeah, and you actually also get this, you build trust that way. Right? Isn't that something?

Cinder Miller 
 It's amazing, right? You can help build trust between different stakeholders who have historically just hated each other right? They have very little they they think they have nothing in common. And sometimes just finding one or two projects where they can either, I'm not even going to say cooperate, maybe even just agree on a couple of things. And it's amazing what kind of bridge that can build. It's pretty cool when it does all work out. I wish I could say it worked every time. So much. True. But like those times when it does work out, it's really neat to see the projects develop.

[Archaeology]

Nic 
Yeah, and so you do this with your projects, but like, what's the day to day life of an archaeologist? What are they doing day in-day out?

Cinder Miller 
I should say, you know, like, I haven't been like an archaeologist out in the field and you know, 20 plus years, consistently. Now, but I will tell you, we employ quite a few archaeologists at Gray & Papa and so I'll have to stratify this just a little bit for you. You know, so when you're, you know, whatever, you're up at my level and you're doing mostly business development. You spend a lot of time in the office like, all these interns want to come and shadow me and I'm like you do not want to shadow me. It's like meeting after meeting. Or it's like a new spreadsheet after spreadsheet. So then you have like what I would call a principal investigator and that's the person who will have technical responsibility for a project. It's a technical title, but it's an important one here in North America. That person probably spends 50% of their time in the field and 50% of their time in the office, and they have to be an expert on all things archaeology, usually, either pre contact or post contact would be the things that they would be the experts on, and they spend a lot of time in the field and what that means here, you know, it's a lot of time in hotel rooms. than a lot of time out in field digging. Mostly those guys are supervising, you know, our field archaeologist and then if you're an actual field archaeologist, you are probably spending 80 to 90% of your time out in the field, either doing a survey which is usually walk a long distance, looking at the grounds, you know, looking for artifacts, or sometimes working at a site to excavate that site. And it's so it's pretty tough, demanding physical labor. They work super hard, away from their families quite a bit. You know, it's a great experience for people who like to travel, who like to see new places. You do have to be somebody who can work as part of the team. We never work alone. Teamwork, and collaboration is a huge part of what we do. You know, the average report at Gray & Pape probably has six or seven different people who have written parts of it. And then easily 20 People who have contributed through fieldwork. So it's mostly what an archaeologist does. Yeah.

Nic
A little bit of everything. Yeah.

Cinder Miller
Definitely a little bit of everything. Jack of all trades is very helpful.

Nic
Yeah.

Laura 
Do you think the movies and stuff have glamorized what an archaeologist actually does? I mean, is it hard to go day after day without actually discovering anything at all? Or

Cinder Miller 
You know, so I do have a whip and like a hat and all that kind of stuff. I can break that stuff at Halloween. That works out really good for me that but Laura it's really funny question because we have projects. We did a project like two or three years ago, we had these people working on it was like a pipeline job in Wisconsin or something like that. And they were working well. I mean, they were working 10 hour days, six days a week, all the way up through Thanksgiving, which is hard. I mean, it was cold. Dark, it was hard. And they they dug something like 4000 Dry shovel tests. So when I said dry it means they didn't find anything. So I just want you to think about like one of your backyard and digging a hole, digging 4000 holes and finding nothing like for an archaeologist is super just day after day, it just walking in a straight line again and again and again. It happens, right. So the good thing about that is that it means that that projects not going to disturb any archaeological sites, right? I mean, go ahead, build what you want from a historic preservation point of view from an archaeologist perspective. Man, It just is boring, right? While it's like Oh, can we just find something? So but it does happen? I mean, it really does happen.

Laura 
Yeah, how well how exciting then are those moments when you find something? So let's say I'm digging, I've been digging for four days straight and I finally find something that I think is the thing, like what do I do?

Cinder Miller  
So when you find something that you think is a thing, you know, out there in the field, and most of our archaeologists are well enough trained to know if they've actually found something I mean, right, most of the things that they find are stone tools, which if you're not trained, it looks an awful lot like a rock. So you actually do have to know what you're looking at is natural, natural, like just a rock or cultural right. So a rock has been modified by human hands. So now you find it like yeah, you know, found so and most of the time you're finding something so you don't get quite that excited, but you know, you find it and then we have a pretty elaborate system for how you catalog what you found. So right now we'll have somebody come over with one of our GPS units and they'll piece plot exactly, they'll put on the little iPad exactly where you found it that'll upload like you know, 20 seconds later and I'd love to see it. I can sit in my office and see what you found. They put it in a bag they write down exactly where it's from, and then ultimately that that artifact will make its way back to our lab, and somebody in the lab will analyze it to say exactly what it was. But if you're in a big excavation, it's a lot different because then you're finding stuff constantly and so your process for how you're tracking all that stuff gets a little bit more complicated, but yeah,

Laura 
Cool. I just picture someone like yelling like bingo.

Cinder Miller 
You know sometimes if you find something really cool, we've worked on a couple projects lately where people do find stuff that's really cool. I mean, any is like that. I mean, the thing I think that's funny about it, though, it's like it's part of your job. Like it's actually your job to find stuff. So it's kind of like, okay, we found something. So you take out your thing, and you just kind of keep going, unless it's really cool. And then when it's really cool you definitely share with everybody around you.

Laura 
So that's cool. So you've been with Gray & Pape for many years, as you said and how have they grown or changed over the years?

Cinder Miller 
Oh, wow. Let's see why I started at Gray & Pape. So I've been there. I can't remember if it's my 24th or 25th year I have to look that up because you know, it'd be awesome to get a plaque or something. Right, exactly right. When I started Gray & Pape had two offices. We had the Cincinnati and then we had an office in Richmond, Virginia. We have grown to five offices. So we have Cincinnati, Richmond, San Richmond, still Providence, Rhode Island, Houston, Texas and Indianapolis. Now we have a couple of them. Actually, not just a couple a bunch of employees that work from like their home locations. Now we've gone from being I don't know, I There might have been 20 to 25 people there when I started. There's more to it. There's about 50 of us now. I would say to me that kind of coolest change that we've had. We now have a pretty active international practice. We do a lot of cultural heritage projects overseas. I just nobody feels sad for me when I tell them that like two weeks ago, I was in Paris working on a project. So we have that, to me is the like the I think the coolest change I would say that I and just also in complexity. You know, we have a lot more degreed professionals you know of the, of our staff have, you know, between 45 and 50, the probably three quarters of them have a master's degree or better. It's a pretty educated, you know, workplace you know, you got a lot of unusual watercooler conversations kind of thing. You know, we're all there, but that's really how it's changed the most over the years. It's just grown in size and complexity.

Nic  
And how do you manage, you know, policy and regulation changes too, so you're doing a lot more as you go, you know, you're doing a lot more complicated work. I don't know how much the policies really changed that much recently, but there's always changes. There's always nuances, you always get a little bit better at dealing with those kinds of things. So how do you scale up and still maintain all of that institutional knowledge that helps you do those projects? Well,

Cinder Miller 
So man, is that a challenge? You know, so, one of the things that I it's frustrating about cultural resources management in the United States for our clients is that as you move from state to state, the regulations change, you know, the requirements for how much archaeology you have to do change a lot. So like a really simple example that I could give would be like, you know, here in Ohio, you may have to dig a shovel test like every 15 meters, and then you cross the river into Kentucky, right? Not very far away, and all of a sudden, you can take a shovel test every 20 meters. What why, like, why has this changed? And, and it's important because it costs a lot more, right. Those things are closer together. You have spend more money, all that kind of stuff. At Gray & Pape the way we do this is we have divided our work into regions and practices. So we have practice leaders who are responsible for really understanding we have a practice here for archaeology, architectural history, maritime services, and cultural history. And they're really responsible for knowing the best practices and the most like their method, technology and regs, you know, for their particular segment of our work. And those guys really have to be experts. And they can't know everything, but they have to know like, if I were to call up and say, hey, when somebody called me and wants to do a project with I don't know, like the FAA as the lead in like Kansas, like what do I got to do you know, how, how can I scope that? How do I What is it that we're going to have to do? They don't have to know how off the top their head, they need to know how to figure it out. And so that's really what we do. The other thing know that we have our I call him a couple of really super hardcore specialists like we have a couple of people like our Indiana office is very heavily focused on transportation. And they're awesome at what they do. They just make that project they undertake, they know exactly what's going to have to be done. They do it. We have some other people who are really heavily specialized in natural gas pipelines. You know, they understand the FERC they understand all those regulations. But the most recent challenge that we've had, Nic, we've done tons of projects for the solar energy industry, solar is just booming. You know, it's great, but it is is super complicated. And again, every state is different, and there's not a lot of hardcore regulation on it. And so some clients are super conservative, and they're like, Nope, you know, we don't want to have any problems, just do the maximum level of effort and other clients are like, do I got I? I'd rather do just a minimum and it's fine. I mean, you just have to know. I would say the most complex set of projects that we have now we're doing a lot of offshore wind projects, particularly up in the Northeast, and ours are Amanda Evans who's our maritime practice that are just amazing, but the projects that they do are so complex, it's extraordinary. And for every other part of Gray & Pape, I can step in and help somebody out like in a pinch with something and for those projects, it's like, I can help manage your contracts and like the rest of it I can read your report and make sure the English is good, but I mean it's, but they are true experts. I think, again, that's something that's probably changed in Cultural Resources Management over the last 20 years is just the super specialization.

Nic 
Well, yeah,

Laura 
 Are they doing, Sorry Nic I'm gonna cut you off. Are they doing underwater archaeology? Or are they starting up to the shoreline?

Cinder Miller  
So it's underwater? So we, I mean, you know, we could this is a very deep rabbit hole, so I'm going to keep it as shallow as I can. But like, for those offshore wind projects, they'll go out and they'll assess you can look at like a literature search to see are there already any known shipwrecks, you know, stuff like that. Then they do several other components as well. They buy one instruments, sub bottom profiler magnetometer, sidescan sonar, to look at the ocean floor and see, you know, try and detect, hey isthere's nothing down there that maybe nobody knew about. And then they also grill a lot of course, so they, you know, core, the core before they can put the wind farms out there anyway to look at the geology, but they use the cores now, to also determine the possibility that wherever that core is being sunk might have actually been above the air right might have been ground surface previously. And that to me is the like so you then look at the super, the paleo paleo landscape that you're identifying in those cores. And again, it it is super fascinating. It's very technical. And it's very aggressive market now because there's so much development out there.

Nic 
Yeah, man. Well, you know, we'd love to ask very unfair questions. So you have all these projects, you've worked on hundreds of projects all over the country, you've you've gone to other countries and haven't taken us which is totally fine. We're not mad about that at all. But do you have a favorite? Is there something that sticks out in your mind is one of your favorites?

Cinder Miller 
So unfair? So I will say all right, so when I was working down in New Orleans, even though it's a super one time ago, I spent more time in the field you know, when you're in the field more you're you feel so connected to the projects and outside a series of clients down there that I really connected to we just got along really well and I did all their projects. And right before I was the last year that I was in New Orleans, I was doing a project for Texaco, and it was a gas plant in Larose, Louisiana, which was way way down in Lafourche Parish in the southern reaches. And it was a giant prehistoric site that had many burials on it and they had to build their gas plant there and working on that project. Was, it was really life changing for me, because it was the first time I had ever really talked with Native Americans in a context. You know, that was something that wasn't academic. It's like wait, you know, these are our ancestors like how help us that and they were they taught me so much and it was just a fantastic experience working with them and with the folks from Texaco and the crew and the team that I had there. It was just amazing. The stuff that we found. I mean, there's still artwork all over my house. We found a whole bunch of new varieties of pottery that I got to like, be the person who would name what kind of pottery we had I worked with so many, just awesome experts, and just the it was just cool. I mean, the stories that we had there. I mean, the funniest story that I have from the project was it was it was really close to it was close to Houston so like the Texaco and it was a big gas plant they were building so they like all the Texaco officials revived helicopter in from Houston you know every now and then like all these guys would show up in their like fancy suits and their like leather shoes and like come through this archaeological site that was clay. It was clay covered in water. Let me just say that is not good mix with leather shoes. Like look at all of us, like super dirty archaeologist. And but the thing that was super meaningful to me about it was by the end of the whole project, the two guys that I worked with from Texaco who at the beginning of the project are like really we're gonna have these archaeologist in the middle of our gas plant where we're trying to build this thing. If I was too busy on site, they could actually give a tour. They had learned the entire pre history of Louisiana. They knew why the site was important. They could express that they could talk about how come it was important for Texaco to do what they were doing. I was like that, like you've got like you've learned this, you can teach somebody else and it's actually meaningful to you. Like you act like you will take this for they still, you know, 25 years later, I still get Christmas cards from those guys, which is like it's amazing. I love them, right. It's pretty cool. So yeah, so I had to pick one I'll have to pick that one.

Nic 
It's a good one. That's a really good one.

[Field Work & Field Notes]

Laura 
Well, that's perfect because it is time for Field Notes. The segment of our show when we talk about our guests most memorable field experiences so you've shared one but I know with 250 plus projects under your belt that you have more can we love hearing them. So recently though, I think you had a meeting with landowner I don't know how recent This was actually but meeting with landowners and maybe this was was kind of scary.

Cinder Miller 
So actually, that was a long time ago as well. That was actually when I was working down south. It is a good story actually. So it actually highlights some of the complexities of what we do. So I was working on a project in Shreveport, Louisiana, and we're working for the Army Corps of Engineers. And we had to do a survey of an area that's called the Batture, which if you've not done the South, you might not know the Batture. So the Batture, there's a big levee. So there's a river and then there's a levee. And then the area between the levee and the river where it is usually very rich agricultural, right. It's the floodplain but it's not protected right? So it floods all the time very rich agriculturally. Okay, so land, the Corps leases that land out to you know, farmers and they can grow you know, whatever. I mean, mostly, it's where I was it was all cotton fields, but nobody can really see there because it's on the other side of the levee. Right. So, you know, here you are, we're serving in this area, and I don't I think that the Corps of Engineers had not really had not informed the landowner that we were going to be out there. And they were, they were out crop dusting. They saw these people in their cotton field. And they came over and they crop dusted us to get us out of there. And it was like the second project that ever worked on here in North America, and I'm like, What the heck is going on here? Like why would anybody ever do something like that? So I know I went back, We left, took everybody out of the field, we went back to hotel or motel everybody took a shower, you know, I whatever I call the office to say okay, what do I do? Like what are what are some of the things that we need to do and they're like, Well, that should not have happened and I'm like, Well, I'm glad to hear that. But like it did sowhatever we figured out the medical side of everything was fine after you know, after a day or two. But one of the things that I think is so hard about our job as archaeologists is that we are often like so we're often the first point of contact with a landowner about a project, right, we're going out to survey their land. Some land agent might have come to their house to ask for permission they might have, you know, they presumably they said yes, before somebody sends us there, but they don't know a whole lot about the project. And they definitely don't know what an Archeological Survey is right? They don't know that a bunch of people are going to show up there and start digging a bunch of holes in their property. And it's tough sometimes being that that the tip of the spear because then they'll ask what are you doing and like well tell me all about the project. And it's like, I don't and you know, often we don't know, very much. You know, we might know if it's a pipeline or power line, but that's pretty much it, you know, and certainly the people in the field. I mean, I might sitting in my office, I might know a lot about it, but the person out there actually doing the work. Maybe not so much. So that was pretty scary, and it's pretty routine for us to have people confronted by people with guns. We've had a lot of people, you know, confronted by mean dogs, you know, our policy is always just leave you know, I'm not we're not going to argue. It's not our job to argue with anybody. We will leave. But those are the bad days. I hate getting  those calls. In the office now.

Nic 
Of course. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, those are tough days. But there's also some really funny days out in the field too. So we wanted to give you a chance to give us one of those stories as well. Maybe Big Jim, talking about that.

Cinder Miller 
So it's kind of funny, it's the same project, but so well, I spent about two and a half years in Shreveport, Louisiana, we met a lot of people but one of the elements of our projects is always you have to write a chapter about the history, the local history of the place. And so we had found we were out surveying and we found the remnants of what was clearly a plantation of some time, you know, and I'm like, wow, you know, gotta learn a little bit more about this. So we go to the library and we like figure out who owns the land and, and it's like, okay, well, you know what, I'm looking at this and it's like, I can't remember the guy's last name. So you know, it was like Beauregard, or something like that there was James Beauregard or something like and you know, and then I kind of go back and I look you know, the the title search and I look at the next land on her back and it's James Beauregard, and I go back like five and it's like, you know, five generations of James Beauregard. Now, in the title search, they were all just called James Beauregard. It was not like, you know, it wasn't the first, second, third, fourth, Junior you know, they all just have the same name. Now looking at this, and I'm like, Oh, well, this James Beauregard right now. Like, this guy lives like three miles from this courthouse where I'm sitting like, How about I just go and talk to him? He could tell me about you know what's here. And you know, I can learn a little bit. So I know I was just again before everybody has a cell phone all this kind of stuff. So one day I just like show up at this guy's house and you know, knock on the door and this woman. This woman answers the door and I said, you know, Hi, I'm whatever I'm Cinder Miller and I you know, I'm working with the Corps of Engineers. And like, I'd like to talk to James Beauregard. And she was like, Well, who do you want to talk to? And I said, Well, James Beauregard, and she was like, Well, do you want to talk to Jim? Itty bitty Jimmy? James? Big Jimmy, or and I can't even remember the last and literally, there were five James Beauregards there. And it was awesome. Because I said, Well, how about just get the oldest one like? Like, let me talk to that guy. And it was great because so I came in and they sit me down and gave me a glass of sweet tea, which again, very typical, what's going to happen to you in Shreveport, Louisiana. And they're like, now what are you asking all these questions about they're like, you're not some Yankee from New York City area, and which is hilarious because I actually am a Yankee from New York City. I am but that's not why I'm here. You know, I just I'm learning about the history of your property. And once they establish that was okay, they told me all about this land, you know, and they're like, look at whatever like, yes, that was our plantation, but like, it's not good  land and you know, and again, it was in the back, it was too close to the river, all this kind of stuff. But the thing that's just neat about it is like, Well, my job is to go out and find historic resources. It's about making connections and relationships with people, you know, that that really makes the job meaningful. And so now, like after the whole project was finished, and they needed some ideas for how to mitigate some of their impacts. I'm like, Hey, why don't you you can't put up like a plaque or not a plaque but like a, like a roadside kiosk right there. Because it's like in the Batture where no one can see it. But like, how about up like in the closest crossroads, you could do a really cool little kiosk and you know, roadside marker about that property, which is still linked to people who live here as a community and it would be neat and actually did it which was like a miracle. So and, you know, it was like, it's cool. So I that was a really fun experience. And I really enjoyed I enjoyed meeting those people and like, and again, making that small impact, like right there locally. It's pretty cool.

Nic  
That's really neat. Man, I love getting to know people too.

Laura 
That's yeah, I mean, I'm sold. I guess I need to go back to school. And speaking of, what advice would you have for someone who is considering this or maybe it has just an inkling that they might be interested in people and making these meaningful impacts and this could be an option for them?

Cinder Miller 
So I spend a lot of time talking to people who are thinking about careers in archaeology or anthropology or like Historic Preservation sort of writ large. So the first thing I can say right now is there's a huge labor shortage we can't find and this is not unique to our field. Right now. But we can't find enough archaeologists, architectural historians or historians, and right now, these are very well paying jobs. You know, I mean, we have people coming right out of the school who have master's degrees, making really great salaries so that if somebody is truly interested in passionate about it, your parents are going to tell you like there's no jobs for you, like send them to me and I'll be like, Yeah, I'd hire you like tomorrow kind of thing. But, but other real advice, though, that I would give people there's probably two or three parts of it, you know, so the first part of it would be writing is important. The written Word is critical. The hardest thing for us to do is to get people to write well, I can train anyone how to identify and find stuff in the field. That part of archaeology is easy. Taking all of that information and then putting it into a report. That's coherent. And that actually tells a good story. Wow, that is the skill. And so like, people constantly asked me to call you to come and talk to my high school class and blah, blah. And the one thing I just say over and over and over again, is focus on your writing because no matter what you do now, if you can write well, you will find a job because the number of people who really are successful writers moving their way through undergraduate at very much less graduate programs. It's just shrinking exponentially. I always encourage people if you want to advance at all in our field, you really need a master's degree. And I have a very strong preference for hiring people who have done a thesis as part of their masters, as opposed to people who have tested out of it. Right now. we'd hire just about anybody, but it makes me feel a whole lot better if they've actually done that elaborate piece of research. The next thing that I would say is spend like three months on the road, just figure out how to do some kind of road trip while you're away and see how that feels to you because if you are gone for like a month and you are just miserable and you hate life, and you know, whatever, if you miss the your favorite ice cream store and you want to sleep late three days a week like this is probably not the job for you. That's just reality. Our people travel all over the place. They're away from their families a lot, even people who have pets, it's a challenge, because there's a lot of hotels that will take them now. You know, and I think the last thing that I would say is like, think about the things that you're actually passionate about some of the biggest topics that were, so I think you asked me a little earlier like some things that had changed over the years, like many of the topics that we focus on now as archaeologists some of the resources that we're most focused on preserving, resources associated with historically underrepresented or underfunded communities. If you're passionate about that, like I got a job for you because so many of our projects, we focused on that. The coolest project that I've done in the last five or six years was in a housing project in Louisville, Kentucky, where they were tearing down this housing project, you know, and this was a place It was a horrible neighborhood. It was like one of the seven most dangerous places in the United States. And yet this historically underrepresented, it had been built as an intentionally segregated community back in the 40s. And it was the only home that so many of these people had ever known. And so it was really an amazing project to touch base with that community and figure out okay, how can we get to a safe and better place to live while acknowledging that like, this is your ancestral home this is the only thing you've ever known, but people who are passionate about working with and understanding both any kind of underrepresented community here mostly communities of color, but you know LGBTQ communities, Native American, Hispanic, African, we're all of it. These are huge, important topics that we can actually identify those people. We can give them a voice, we can help preserve the past that like we have never really cared about here in the United States and like, these are things that we can do. So if you're passionate about like really trying to make a difference in the next 20 to 30 years. Like this is a great way to do it.

[ACRA]

Nic  
Very well said and yeah, maybe I should switch careers to I don't know. It's really cool. But you know, I want to give you some space here to talk about ACRA. They have the partnership with NAEP. So what is ACRA and what are some of the things you guys are working on.

Cinder Miller  
First, so ACRA is the American Cultural Resources Association, we're the trade organization that represents cultural resources management firms here in the United States, we have more than 200 members, the members that we have are all businesses, right, so it's not individual membership. It's a business membership. The things that ACRA is most active in would be that government affairs government relations side. We have a very active presence in Washington. DC, educating with and working with legislators there in DC so that they understand the issues associated with cultural resources management and preservation. Some of those are things that are easy to translate to African American burial ground, legislation, like pass that make sure that they keep funding, the State Historic Preservation offices. Some of the issues that are super important for us are the everyday business topics related to small businesses, you know, almost all small businesses. So just sort of the bread and butter issues that any taxation issues, regulation issues, every now and then there will be some really fundamental type legislative issue that impacts us hard, so any change to the NEPA laws or to the section 106 of the National Historic Preservation laws. Those are really hot, obviously hot button issues for us because they're the things that really empower our industry. But right now, it's interesting that right now, the hottest topic in ACRA is the labor market, right? None of us can find enough archaeologists, you know, what do we do? You know, wages in our industry have gone way up as a business person at first I was like, Oh, we're not gonna make as much money in it. But you know what, it's like, these are all I'm happy. I am happy to be as we progress through the business cycle part of that and whatever figure out how to increase our rates. You know, people are now making living wages and an industry where they weren't before, but that's a giant hot topic in ACRA. The other big hot topic in ACRA now is the Secretary of the Interior standards, should archaeology be regulated? And there should there be like degree requirements? What are those actual requirements to qualify as an archaeologist or architectural historian? Something that's really tough on our industry, and that I think is also tough for environmental professionals is the when there's massive change in Washington DC on the federal level, right when everybody at the National Park Service turns over it's really hard. Now there's all these things changed, you know, and it's just hard to keep up, you know, people that you've had 15 to 20 year relationships with an agency. It's just, you know, go away. And, you know, change is hard, right? That's tough when they lose as much institutional memory as was lost in some of those agencies in the last five or six years. It's gonna take them 10 years, some of those agencies will take 10 years to recapture where they were. But that's what we do is ACRA. Yeah.

Laura 
 Well, awesome. Good to have ACRA working on those things and we love our partnership together. You can always find ACRA's webinars on our page, I believe and vicey-versy.

Cinder Miller
I think that's correct. I think there's a discount as well offered between the two like you get the I think we get the member rate for each thing as opposed to like the outsider, rate.

Laura  
All right, we're getting close to the end of our time, but we like to give our guests space to talk about things that they like to do in their downtime, not that they don't all love their jobs and what they're doing but we do need a break right? So any interesting hobbies or interests that you have that you can share with us,

Cinder Miller 
you know, I think I mean, I love to travel. I was mentioning before I had this business trip in Paris and I went to visit some friends in Luxembourg right after that, that was like, super awesome, especially after not getting the chance to travel for so long. And then I came back and like my family went to Maine and I just, I love going to new places and seeing new things and you know, I think my my amusing hobbies I think I told you what you guys saw you asked me at the very beginning about my name, which is Cinder and it's really unusual. And so I collect the Cinderella stories, so I'm like looking at my bookshelf there. I've got about 20 different versions of the Cinderella story. You know, when you when you go to bookstores now look for variations on the Cinderella story. You'll see there's all kinds of crazy variations that and then, you know, I'm from New York City and I just I'm like one of those people who could sing like the I Love New York, you know, commercials and stuff. I just love going to New York and I still have family there. My kids are there now they're going to camp and in New Jersey. So you know I have a bunch of New York like memorabilia, stuff like that my house but those are really the kind of stuff I love. I am also a sports fanatic. I'll watch anything. I wake up early now to watch the Tour de France every morning. Like I get in a little bit late. It's alright I'll stay a bit later.

Nic 
That's all awesome stuff. I love it. I love hearing about it. And unfortunately we're out of time today. I hate to let you go but before we do, is there anything else you'd like to talk about? Before we let you go?

Cinder Miller 
Man? No, I think we covered a lot of ground here. I really appreciated having a chance to talk with you guys and chat.

Laura
I'm so glad you came on.

Cinder Miller
Yeah, that worked out great. Thanks. Thank you for inviting me. I love it.

Nic 
All right, well, great. Well, where can people get in touch with you?

Cinder Miller 
So I do have a LinkedIn page, I'm Cinder Miller. Easy, easy to find me there but also from my through Gray & Pape. Cmiller@graypape, that's g r a y p a p e.com. Probably the best ways to get in touch with me. And you know off the Gray & Pape  website as well.

Nic 
Perfect. Thank you so much for being here.

Cinder Miller 
Thanks for having me.

[Outro]

Laura 
That's our show. Thank you, Cinder for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

Nic 
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai