*** This is a continuation of my interview with Brian, without preamble. I *highly* recommend listening to Part 1 first. Brian Paulsen is assistant police chief in Sturgis, South Dakota. He co-wrote a chapter in Forensic Archaeology based on his Master’s thesis about landfill searches in the United States. In this episode we talk about: How Brian led a search of a landfill in Sarpy County, Nebraska to find the remains of a 4-year-old boy murdered by his father and placed in a dumpster. The search, which involved over 600 volunteers from the community over 30 days, with meticulous records from ..read more

Brian Paulsen is assistant police chief in Sturgis, South Dakota. He co-wrote a chapter in Forensic Archaeology based on his Master’s thesis about landfill searches in the United States. In this episode we talk about: How Brian led a search of a landfill in Sarpy County, Nebraska to find the remains of a 4-year-old boy murdered by his father and placed in a dumpster. The search, which involved over 600 volunteers from the community over 30 days, with meticulous records from the landfill helping to determine the search area. Search methods, which included excavators loading trash into trucks t ..read more

Robyn Lacy is a Ph.D. candidate in the archaeology department at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.Her research focuses on 17th-century burial landscape development in Northeast North America. Robyn runs a business with her partner, specializing in gravestone conservation in the Atlantic provinces of Canada. In this episode we talk about: How Robyn’s interest in burial ground archaeology began during her undergraduate field school in Ireland, where she participated in surveying burial grounds and transcribing inscriptions on headstones. The distinctions between a cemetery, grav ..read more

Dr. Sasha Reid is an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, teaching in the Departments of Sociology, Psychology, and in the Faculty of Law. She is also currently a law student at the University of Calgary. Sasha came to media attention when she developed a serial homicide database that suggested patterns in homicides in Toronto that may indicated a possible serial killer. That serial killer was later identified as Bruce McArthur. She has also developed a missing and murdered database (MMD) that has become the largest database of missing and murdered indigenous persons. I wanted to ..read more

Kimberlee Moran is a professor of forensic archaeology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. She holds an undergraduate degree in Classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and a Masters of Science in forensic archaeological science from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. Kimberlee worked as a contract archaeologist for Hunter Research, a CRM firm based in Trenton, NJ, prior to moving to the UK. She moved back to New Jersey in 2010. Her archaeological research includes ancient fingerprints, artificial cranial deformation, the Whispering Woods s ..read more

Brie Smith is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Return Home, a company that specializes in natural organic reduction (NOR), also known as human composting or terramation, as an alternative to burial or cremation. Return Home was founded in 2021 in Washington, USA after the passing of a law allowing NOR, with the goal of providing a more natural and gentle way to care for human remains. In this episode we talk about: Brie’s background, which includes being a licensed funeral director, embalmer, and crematory operator, but she found traditional cremation processes unsatisfying. A little bit ..read more

I talked to Marg because I wanted to find out more about the new group she started, The Fair Field Foundation. My time in consulting archaeology was short-lived and I wanted to find out how Marg was trying to make it a better place. In this episode we talk about: Marg’s academic and employment journey prior to archaeology and how she got into Alberta archaeology how her economics degree and employment and life experience influenced her business perspective in archaeology her experiences as a woman in archaeology unconscious bias, “failing up”, a success – based vs. limiting mindset, and how t ..read more

I talked to Alisa Hardy and Taylor Dube-Mather about their experiences doing a practicum at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) in Alberta. Alisa is currently doing the practicum and Taylor completed the practicum in 2019. I did a very casual version of a practicum at the OCME in Edmonton during my graduate program. I wanted to see how our practicums differed and what they learned from their experience. In this episode we talk about: Alisa’s and Taylor’s personal backgrounds and what brought them to the OCME practicum the 3-month OCME practicum as coordinated through Mount Royal U ..read more

Dr. Sherry Nakhaeizadeh is a Lecturer in Crime and Forensic Science at University College London Centre for the Forensic Sciences. “Sherry’s background and research interest lies within forensic science interpretations specifically looking at cognitive and human factors. She is currently interested in the application of technological advancement and AI approaches in method development in forensic anthropology as well as using such technologies to understand the interpretive process and expertise in complex visual tasks applied within forensic anthropology specifically, and forensic science bro ..read more

Andrew Bernie is the Manager of Unrecovered War Casualties, Directorate of Sensitive and Strategic Issues Management – Army in Canberra, Australia. I talked to his Canadian colleague, Dr. Sarah Lockyer, in Episode 15. Over World Wars I and II, and the Korean Conflict, approximately 25, 000 Australian soldiers have no known grave. In this episode we talk about: how the recovery and identification of war casualties has no time limit. The families and relatives are still, after decades and a hundred years, deeply affected by connecting a missing and recovered war casualty the numbers and locatio ..read more