The storyteller: Bay Area archaeologist finds the hidden narratives in state parks

On a sunny morning in late September Breck Parkman sat at a picnic table in the historic Sonoma Plaza across the street from the city s mission the barracks that once housed Mexican troops and the office where he was based during specific of his years as a senior California State Parks archaeologist In that job the -year-old Parkman used artifacts determined in old ruins or the chemistry of rocks and layers of soil to piece together workable narratives about life in the Bay Area as far back as tens of thousands of years ago or as just now as the late th century More than being a scientist or historian Parkman has inevitably seen himself as a storyteller with an innate curiosity about other worlds and a desire to imagine the people who lived in them True to that vision of himself Parkman began to paint scenes and characters as he sat at the table including how the plaza once didn t have trees or grass and certainly wasn t surrounded by upscale wine country boutiques and restaurants The sounds would have been different too he revealed no cars rumbling past or children snickering in a playground Breck Parkman a retired archaeologist for the California State Parks stands inside the chapel area of Mission San Francisco de Solano on Tuesday Sept in Sonoma Calif Aric Crabb Bay Area News Group There s layers of life that we don t see you know and layers upon layers So for me I m looking at when Vallejo was here Parkman stated in a faint lilt of his native Georgia General Mariano Vallejo was the Mexican commander who established the eight-acre plaza in Parkman mentioned he could imagine the plaza as it if was just the day before today when Vallejo s soldiers used it as a parade ground You can see San Francisco Bay from here he reported And as I go back earlier years ago you would see mammoths and sabertooths One of Parkman s favorite research interests has been the Ice Age Columbian mammoths that roamed the Bay Area for thousands of years across coastal plains that he calls the California Serengeti Although Parkman retired in he continues to write lecture and post YouTube videos about a variety of topics inspired by his extensive fieldwork and personal experiences as a husband and father The skeleton of a horse -- complete with saddle and bridle was determined in Samuel P Taylor State Park in Marin County Calif On Thursday January Archaeologist E Breck Parkman cq left and supervisor of Marin State Parks Danita Rodriguez cq examine the artifacts IJ photo Frankie Frost Parkman knows that when people hear about his job they might think of an Indiana Jones type swooping in to recover an idol from an ancient tomb Or a dust-covered scientist digging through ruins to find artifacts to catalog for a museum To Parkman the job has unfailingly been so much more You re looking at the bigger picture he mentioned He s been able to look at that bigger picture in places all over the world the Canadian Plains the Australian Outback Central Siberia and the south coast of Peru where he helped an archaeologist friend recover year-old mummified human remains that had been unearthed by generations of looters Related Articles Boat launches at EBMUD reservoirs to reopen in following closure due to invasive mussel Neighbors up in arms about plans for Fremont cricket field Why Bay Area parks are among the best in the world Popular Lake Tahoe state park to reopen after being closed for three years Wish You Were Here Stunned by Egyptian temples in awe of the Rocky Mountains But he s been just as fascinated by what he s discovered closer to home Two years after he was hired to work for the state parks in he was assigned to Northern California eventually becoming a senior archaeologist managing cultural tools at more than parks from Del Norte County to Angel Island to Alturus in the far northeast For a scientist storyteller the Bay Area parks have given him a lot to work with He s investigated early Paleo-Indian migration along the West Coast Elizabethan California and the archaeological history of Fort Ross State Historic Park when it was an outpost for Russian fur traders in the early s Parkman has garnered media attention for his studies in contemporary archaeology including the secret lives of soldiers who passed through Angel Island Beat-era artists and his th raincoat theory about the escape from Alcatraz He may be best known for sifting through the charred ruins of the Burdell mansion at Olompali State Historic Park in Novato in to understand the lives of the people who participated in one of the Bay Area s famous s counterculture experiments the Chosen Family commune He explained how several families loosely affiliated with the Grateful Dead came together in to create a new way of living and of getting along in the world Unfortunately their idealism collapsed as outsiders who didn t share their values moved in The commune disbanded in after a fire destroyed the mansion Among other things Parkman studied the remnants of more than vinyl records uncovered in the ruins concluding that the range of artists represented in the collection from the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Ella Fitzgerald Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra defied stereotypes about commune hippies showing instead a surprising diversity in the ages and personal tastes of residents Parkman s path to a s commune began with his own experiences as a child in mid- th-century America Growing up in southern Georgia he had inevitably been interested in archaeology as he sometimes discovered Native American arrowheads and pottery shards in plowed fields near his home The first book he ever remembers reading was about Native Americans But contemporary events also intrigued him he grew up painfully aware of racial segregation while receiving an early introduction to the civil rights movement When he was five his family s Black babysitter took him and his little sister to a large gathering He remembers sitting on his babysitter s shoulders amid a crowd of Black onlookers who all were mesmerized by a speaker Martin Luther King Jr I picked up on the force and it was like put your finger in the electrical socket he announced An early encounter with another American icon planted the seed of his desire to become a civil servant In third grade he and his classmates lined the streets to see presidential candidate John F Kennedy drive by I was the first person at the end of the line I waved and he looked up and he waved at me I didn t have a clue who he was but when I revealed out who he was he became my hero and I read everything he wrote Parkman initially considered going to biological school but instead came to the Bay Area in to pursue his first love of archaeology He got his bachelor s and master s degree at what was then Cal State Hayward and remembers how the environmental movement awakened people to the need to protect and promotion parks Breck Parkman senior state archaeologist explores the burned-out Burdell mansion on Tuesday January at Olompali State Park in Novato Calif Archaeologists recovered hundreds of artifacts after opening -gallon drums salvaged from the fire that destroyed the mansion IJ photo Robert Tong His early assignments were in San Diego County before he came north as the first state archeologist assigned to the field and honed his belief that studying cultures of the past explains where we have been and how to prepare for the future He also developed his love of doing the scientific detective work to uncover little-known narratives though he came to appreciate that sometimes those discoveries come about by accident For example one of his proudest accomplishments was finding rocks along the Sonoma Coast that he believes were a popular attraction for Columbian mammoths of the late Pleistocene up to about years ago On otherwise craggy seastacks near Goat Rock in Sonoma Coast State Park Parkman discovered atypically shiny patches about to feet above the ground That s where he believes these long-extinct megafauna rhythmically rubbed against the rocks in a form of self-grooming similar to how African elephants rid their hides of itchy ectoparasites Parkman reported this discovery might not have been attainable had he and a paleontologist colleague not decided to proceed with doing specific fieldwork near those rocks on Sept the day after the terrorist attacks As they hiked along the coast they noticed no planes in the skies or ships on the ocean save for a Coast Guard aircraft flying circles and possibly several submarine periscopes popping up Instead of a usual -minute lunch they sat beneath those rocks for more than an hour to ponder whether the United States was at war giving Parkman the time to notice those shiny patches You know finding that in a lot of options changed my life because I never thought much about the Ice Age he announced That fascination has led to more latest post-retirement explorations into the role that the lowly dung and the lofty condor play in maintaining environmental soundness and balance Personal projects have kept Parkman busy such as chronicling the life he shared with his photographer wife Diane Askew and -year-old son while living at Sugar Loaf Ridge State Park He s posted a moving YouTube tribute to Diane who died in December as a contemplation on death and grief He speaks of all the falling stars in the sky the night she died too countless to catch Only of late he revealed has he been able to go outside at night and look up Stories about death as part of that arc of life came up in other avenues as Parkman talked at the picnic table He recalled organizing the installation of a set of plaques outside the mission listing the names of Wappo Patwin Pomo and Coast Miwok people who labored and were buried there He also related his vision of the plaza years ago or in the s to the collapse of time and memories he imagines could occur during our transition from life to death Maybe that second of time in that white room is indeed eternity