ENHS Nature Trails Nov 99 Article 1

This month's speaker: An interview with Mel Aikens

How did you get interested in natural history? Did you have nature hobbies? ...were parents involved?
Picnics and camping trips were a main form of recreation for my family, so I spent a lot of time in beautiful outdoor places. My mother and father took us (3 brothers) to the outdoors often. They were not naturalists, particularly; they just loved to be out Also, we lived near the Ogden River, which was flanked by brushy woodlands and swamps full of frogs, birds, and all. A great place for boys to roam, and one of our main places to play and go fishing for perch and catch frogs in a backwater we called "Jackson Hole" because it was off the end of Jackson Avenue. When I got to be high school age, as a good Utah boy I hunted deer and rabbits and birds a bit, though I now haven't been hunting in more than 40 years--having discovered that the best part of hunting is just "being there".
Are there teachers or other individuals who inspired you?
None in particular. I had some good teachers, but I was a pretty indifferent student in those times, sorry to admit. Auto mechanics was probably my favorite course.
Any inspirational travels?
Getting into archaeology at the end of my sophomore year in college by going to southeastern Utah to work on the Glen Canyon Archaeological Salvage Project (1958) was the big one for me. The University of Utah (where I spent my junior and senior years) surveyed and excavated throughout the Glen Canyon of the Colorado, in advance of the dam construction at Page, Arizona that created modern Lake Powell. Starting from there, I spent my early archaeological career working in the Southwest, and then moved into Great Basin and related research, where I have worked ever since.
Other travels of a professional kind, related to archaeology: I've had chances to work three summers in Ecuador and Peru, spend two sabbatical years and other shorter periods in Japan, and made several visits to China and Korea, all in connection with archaeological matters. Since the early '70s I've maintained professional archaeological interests in both western North America and northeast Asia, principally Japan.
Why Anthropology?
When I started college I thought I might become a history teacher, but classes in Philosophy and Anthropology with Dr. Jennings G. Olson, a truly inspirational and motivating teacher at Weber College (in Ogden) where I spent my first two years (it was then a JC), turned my thoughts to cross-cultural studies, where they have been ever since. When I got to the University of Utah, I met Prof. Jesse D. Jennings, who was, I came to learn, a giant in American archaeology; in due course he sent me on to Chicago for graduate study. I worked for him for a time at Utah after finishing course work at Chicago, and we remained colleagues and good friends until his death here in Oregon in 1997.
Where did you get your education?
Weber College, Ogden, 1956-58 (AS)
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 1958-60 BA Anthropology
University of Chicago, MA 1962, Ph.D. 1966 Anthropology
How did you come to Eugene, & what do you do here?
I came to Oregon from the University of Nevada, where I taught 1966-68 after receiving my Ph.D. After I'd been at Reno about a year, at a professional meeting I bumped into my old Utah friend Joe Jorgensen, then on the UO faculty. He told me that Oregon was looking for an archaeologist and that I should go talk to Don Dumond, who was there recruiting. I thought I already had a good job, but I went to meet Don and he encouraged me to apply. I got the job, and came to Oregon in Winter term, 1969, having already committed the Fall term to a research project in Utah.
What are you going to talk about?
I'm going to talk about the archaeological evidence for human history in the Northwest, principally in terms of human ecology, over the past 10-11,000 years.

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