Dave's Memories
David A. Fredrickson
(1927 – 2012)
E. Breck Parkman of California State Parks shared this memory:
Excerpt from the text version of a presentation made at the Society for California Archaeology Northern Data-Sharing Meeting, Point Reyes National Seashore, October 6, 2012
I was just sitting here in the late night, thinking about how I met Dave Fredrickson, and it caused me to laugh out loud. Here, in an admittedly stream of consciousness retelling, is the account of our first meeting.
It was back in April, 1975, and I was a grad student in archaeology at CSU-Hayward. At the time, I was working on some site preservation issues with the Society for American Indians in the East Bay’s Tri-Valley area, . . . several of whom had become concerned about a burial site in Danville that was being actively destroyed by pothunters (untrained individuals conducting unauthorized excavations in search of artifacts to collect or sell).
. . . The pothunters had been excavating square units . . . and telling passersby that they were archaeologists from U.C. Berkeley. . . .
Anyway, a few of us from Hayward teamed up with the Native Americans and decided to try and put a stop to the pothunting. Whenever any of us were in the area, we’d swing by the site hoping to encounter the diggers. One day, Sally Dean . . . and I drove by the site in order to check on it. To our surprise, we observed several heads bobbing up and down in what looked to be excavation units. It seemed to us that we had finally caught the pothunters in the act Sally took off like an angry bee headed straight toward the nearest of the diggers. She and I had seen plenty of human bones in the pothunters’ backdirt that spring and so we were good and ready to encounter them. Sally lived in the neighborhood, and took great exception to what had been occurring at the site. . . .
Arriving at the pit where the first digger was busy at work, we somehow knew that he was the leader. This guy was middle-aged and bearded, was wearing a colorful kerchief on his head, and – get this – he was sporting an earring! At that point, I don’t believe I had ever seen a man with an earring before. Sally and I were certain that this was the head pothunter, even though it was quite obvious to me that he was digging the best looking unit I had ever seen. This fellow definitely put my own excavation skills to shame. Sally’s, too. I just assumed that he had a lot of digging experience. After all, that’s what pothunters do. They dig! Man was I right. And that’s about the only thing I was right about that day.
It turned out that the man Sally and I had assumed to be the head pothunter was actually the head archaeologist, Dr. David A. Fredrickson of Sonoma State University. Unknown to Sally and me at the time, Dave had been hired by the county to test CCO-352, due to a planned road-widening project that threatened to impact the site. This was the first day of a week-long project for Dave and his three assistants. Assisting in the dig were Dave’s wife, the anthropologist, Vera Mae Fredrickson, the Hopi/Miwok poet and anthropologist, Wendy Rose, and one of Dave’s students, the archaeologist, Tom Origer.
After Sally had lectured Dave about the evils of pothunting, with me standing beside her trying to look as menacing as I could, and after Dave had let us go on and on before politely stopping us so that he could introduce himself, much to our chagrin, and after Sally and I had somehow managed to extract our feet from our big mouths, Dave thanked us for our concerns and asked if we’d be willing to assist him with the dig. That’s the kind of person he was. I answered enthusiastically, "Yes," and spent the next week on the site.
. . .
I enjoyed working with Dave at CCO-352 and, from that time on, I considered him to be one of my teachers, even though I never actually took a class from him. Over the years, Dave was always there for me, whether I needed a professional opinion, an expert contractor, or just some sage advice. Dave was certainly an amazing archaeologist, but he was so much more than that, as his many friends and former students know. With his passing, there is now a void. I can’t imagine anyone ever filling that space quite like Dave did.
Oh, yeah, not that it matters, but a few years after working with Dave at CCO-352, I got my ear pierced.
The complete text of “How I Met Dave Fredrickson” by E. Breck Parkman in its entirety.
Memories: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14