I’m Brian Valimont – let me introduce myself!  I have lived most of my life in New England (New Hampshire and Massachusetts), where I was also born and raised (Maine).  I have lived all over the United States, in the Northeast, Southeast (Georgia, Alabama, Florida and presently Mississippi) and Midwest (Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Dakota, North Dakota and Ohio) and even recently I lived in California. 

I have over twenty-five years of experience as a professionally qualified archaeologist (based upon U.S. Secretary of the Interior Standards).  I have worked for state & federal agencies, but I have most extensively worked in private-sector Cultural Resource Management (CRM) projects.  I have surveyed, excavated and documented hundreds of Native American and Euro-American archaeological sites in North America.  These archaeological investigations are recorded in over one hundred reports which are archived at numerous State Historic Preservation Offices.  For three years during my undergraduate education, I worked in the Antonio J. Waring Jr. Archaeological Laboratory on the campus of West Georgia University in Carrollton.  I was involved in the re-curation of their collections, and gained invaluable experience in artifact identification, conservation and curation.  During that time, I also did archaeological survey and reporting for the Office of the State Archaeologist on a variety of Georgia state properties. 

I then completed a Master of Arts degree in Anthropology at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.  My specialization was in the prehistoric archaeology of the southeastern United States, especially of coastal Georgia and Alabama.  I subsequently worked for the CRM company of Prentice Thomas and Associates (PTA) in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  Here, I was an archaeological crew chief where daily I supervised archaeological field technician crews of two to eight persons, conducting archaeological survey and site investigations across Florida’s panhandle, as well as projects in Louisiana and Missouri.  The majority of my work for PTA was on Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.   I then worked for a short time as an archaeological field supervisor in the Ouachita National Forest on property in Oklahoma and Arkansas.  In advance of timber land sales, I led crews in surveying and documenting prehistoric Native American archaeological and historic sites in the Ouachita Mountains.  I then relocated to New England, where I continued as an archaeological project supervisor and principal investigator for over ten years on a variety of archaeological projects across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.  I worked for the CRM company Victoria Bunker, Inc. as well as a self-employed CRM archaeological consultant, New England Archaeology Company. I have written over one hundred archaeological reports of varying short and long lengths.  These reports have been accepted by and are archived at numerous state and federal agencies.  During my twenty-five years of archaeological work, I have handled several thousand artifacts, and have seen to their proper care from the ground, through stabilization, cleaning, conservation, analysis and curation. 

I taught introductory level Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology for four and a half years at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.   In recent years, I converted to the field of history.  I earned a Master of Arts in History at Salem State University in Massachusetts.  I have also worked as a seasonal Park Ranger at three parks in Massachusetts: Minute Man National Historic Park (Concord), Salem Maritime National Historic Site (Salem) and Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site (Saugus).  I am presently a PhD student in History at the University of Southern Mississippi.   I am undertaking a dissertation researching a series of riots that occurred as a result of the military draft in the Union.  I am a graduate assistant whose duties include grading coursework for students enrolled in HIS 102, Late World History, as well as maintaining office hours for students seeking assistance with this course.  I am interested in Digital Humanities as a research skill that complements of intended areas of expertise (U.S. History, War and Society, Race and Ethnicity).  I would like to design and build an online component to my research that makes it accessible to a wider audience beyond academia.  I have some trepidation about digital technology, as that have never been a strength of mine or something that I have actively pursued improvement.  But I understand the importance of the online information in the modern world, so I am willing to take the plunge into it!