She received her Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from Hamline University. A few years later, she enrolled in the Continuing Studies program at Mankato State University to work on a Master's Degree. Continuing Studies allowed her to design her own degree program; she chose to focus on archaeology with strong components of statistics and geography. While in school at Mankato, Emerson taught extension courses in Anthropology and one Introductory course on campus.
She was involved with several site projects while at Mankato including the Maquoketa Caves State Park Survey in Jackson County, Iowa in 1980, the Harlan County Survey in Nebraska in 1983 and the Saylorville Lake Survey in Polk and Dallas Counties of Iowa in 1983. She wrote a thesis called “A Multivariate Predictive Model for Archaeological Site Location,” a study of sites in the Swan Lake area of Blue Earth and Nicollet Counties of Minnesota, in May of 1981 which may be found in the Mankato State Library.
After receiving her Master's Degree, Pat veered away from academic archaeology and entered the realm of cultural resource management. After working for a private consulting firm for several years and doing cultural resource projects throughout the Upper Midwest, she joined the Archaeology Department of the Minnesota Historical Society in 1985. Through an interagency agreement between MHS and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, she was assigned to do cultural resource reviews of development projects sponsored by DNR's Trails & Waterways Unit. She spent several years doing archaeological surveys and site evaluations all over Minnesota.
In 1994 she moved to a different position in the Archaeology Department, working with DNR's Division of Forestry. In this job, she oversees the Forestry Heritage Resources Program which assists the Division in identifying and managing cultural resources on the 4.5 million acres of land it administers. The department does field reviews of proposed recreation and resource management projects, provides training for Division staff and generally provides whatever technical expertise is needed. One important aspect of the job is the work with Indian communities, helping to resolve concerns about treatment of culturally significant sites on public lands. Most of the field research done by the program is now conducted by her assistant in charge of fieldwork. She misses being in the field because she thinks it's important for archaeologists to stay connected to the physical reality of the data they analyze. She adds that she doesn’t however, really miss the bugs, the wind or the poison ivy.
One very interesting aspect of her present job is being able to do research in parts of Minnesota that haven't received much attention from archaeologists in the past. In a lot of the forested region of Northern Minnesota, the distribution, density and nature of archaeological sites, particularly PreContact sites, are very poorly understood. Through work with the Division of Forestry, they've been able to start filling in some of the gaps in our current understanding of the cultural history of that part of the state. This year, for instance, they've identified about 40 "new" archaeological sites, many of them in areas where no sites had previously been documented.
Another thing that she enjoys about the job is the chance it's given her to learn some new computer skills. The Division of Forestry uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to manage its lands and resources. She's currently working with Forestry staff to add information about archaeological sites and other cultural resources to the system, so they can be taken into account when management decisions are being made. At this point, she modestly claims to be only a novice GIS user, but she says she can certainly see how much potential it has for the analysis of archaeological data.
A large part of her time in the past few years has been spent working as a technical consultant to the Minnesota Forest Resources Council, which recently developed statewide guidelines for forest management. The guidelines are intended to reduce potential damage to natural and cultural resources that might result from timber harvesting and other management activities. As part of her work, she does a lot of training for foresters, other natural resource managers, loggers, and landowners, teaching them what cultural resources are, how to identify them in the field and what to do when they encounter them.
Emerson feels that probably the biggest challenge in doing her kind of training is getting people to give up their preconceived notions about archaeology and getting them to understand that archaeology is not about finding neat "things," but rather about understanding human cultures and human cultural behavior. It's also important for people to understand archaeology isn't just an interesting pastime - it has real contributions to make to discussions about contemporary social and environmental issues.
“My job does keep me busy, especially with out state travel on a regular basis. There's always something new to learn or a new problem to solve, so it rarely gets boring. We certainly haven't accomplished everything I would like to accomplish yet, but I think we're making progress in raising people's awareness of the importance of cultural resources and the need to properly manage them.
Patricia Emerson A Multivariate Predictive Model for Archaeological Site Location (thesis) May 1981
Patricia Emerson phone conversation October 3, 1999
Patricia Emerson email to Patricia October 6, 1999
Patricia Emerson email to Jimmilee Miller with answers and picture October 11, 1999
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/field/index.shtml
Written by: Jimmilee Miller October 19, 1999