AR: I first became interested about age 9, when I took a trip with my mother, grandfather, and sisters to Mesa Verde, CO. There I saw Esther (a mummy) in the museum, and the cliff dwellings, and artifacts. I also read a children's book based on Roy Chapman Andrew's Dinosaurs of the Gobi Desert and C.W. Ceram's Gods, Graves, and Scholars. What I liked about Andrew's book was the way the dried-up, red soil with broken chips of dinosaur egg could be interpreted to give a vivid picture of a cool swamp where a mother dino brooding over her eggs was attacked by a predator (supposedly). Ceram's book intrigued me as a child because of the story of the Rosetta stone and its role in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

SCA: Did you ever consider a career other than that of archaeologist?

AR: Never seriously. Earlier, when I was five, I thought of policeman, fireman, and doctor, but they faded when I got interested in archaeology. I should explain that I think I was rather confused about what paleontology and archaeology were. What I was interested in at 9 had both dinosaurs and pyramids in it.

SCA: What do you like to do when you're not working? [i.e., what are your hobbies, do you follow or participate in sports, enjoy gardening, cooking, traveling, etc.]

AR: I seem to like to do nearly everything. Can just living be considered a hobby? I like to swim, dig shellfish, fish (I grew up on Long Island, N.Y., where fishing is everyone's favorite past-time), play badminton, hike, climb mountains, run, lift weights, garden (especially old roses and clematis), have picnics and cookouts, and cultivate vegetables. I like architectural history and decorative arts. I like 19th century literature and culture. I love to cook simple things for friends and family. I like animals and to visit zoos and farms. I like to raise animals and birds. I'm interested in botany and herbal medicine, soils, and geology.

SCA: While archaeologists are generally adventurous by nature, most work in more tame environments than Amazonia and the tropical forests of Africa. Did being a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt help shape your views of the world and give you a desire for adventure?

AR: No. He seemed just a stout, kindly old great-grandfather (and long dead) to me, I'm afraid, and not terribly inspiring to an eager nine-year-old. The families of famous people often have quite a different view of them than the public. (Remember, he really only went on a couple of safaris, complete with crates of champagne. He's lauded for those few trips because he was a famous president, not because they were important expeditions or because he was a great explorer. It's good to keep things in perspective.) My inspiration came from my indefatigable, b-minded mother, and perhaps also from my great aunts and grandmothers. They all traveled the world and feared nothing. My mother, a painter, student of Thomas Hart Benton in Kansas City, was a lover of archaeology. She took us to many archaeological sites as we were growing up and always encouraged my interest in the subject.

SCA: What do you enjoy most about archaeology?

AR: I like the process of research and discovery. I love settling down in an archive or museum collection to see what's there and what it might mean. I love following the trail of an idea, searching for sites. Survey is one of the great experiences. Perhaps most satisfying is the process of digging for days, weeks, and months, searching to understand the layers and objects. And I love the drama and suspense of waiting for the radiocarbon dates to be run to find out what the history of the site was.

SCA: Who were the archaeologists and others whom most influenced your career?

AR: Junius Bird was my first mentor. I worked with him as a college-age, summer volunteer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. My great aunt Ethel introduced me to him. He was gentle and kind, humorous, and very knowledgeable. He would sit in the lab and hold forth for hours about this site or that, or this object or that, of this scandalous archaeologist of that. I and the other interns were always riveted. I also was helped very much by Gary Vescelius, also of the Museum, and Ben Rouse at Yale.

SCA: What are some of the projects that you are currently working on?

AR: I am working on the peopling of the Americas, still, and on the history of human occupation in Amazonia. I also am working on a new problem: the role of tropical rainforests in human evolution in Africa. I am doing fieldwork both in Amazonia and in the Congo Basin, Africa. I hope sooner or later to do some digging in southern Baja California, where I've surveyed some interesting sites. I'll be very interested in what Matthew des Lauriers finds in northwest Baja for his dissertation.

SCA: What do you consider to be some of the most important discoveries made in New World archaeology in recent years?

AR: I think that the discovery in Peru of preceramic complex societies with essentially nonagricultural subsistence was very important. Researchers who contributed to this insight include Junius Bird, Mike Moseley, Jeff Quilter, John Rick, Frederick Engel, and Richie Burger. I also think that the discovery of maritime foragers in Peru and in California between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago is very important, John Erlandson, Susan de France, Mike Moseley, Daniel Sandweiss did some of this work.

SCA: If you could figure out one thing about the past, what would it be?

AR: I want to better understand the way foragers live, organize themselves, and interact with each other. I want to know more about their crafts and subsistence methods.

SCA: What is the primary importance of your work at Pedra Pintada?

AR: Pedra Pintada, parallel with the discoveries on the west coast of South America, showed a different and somewhat unexpected type of terminal Pleistocene culture. The people who lived in the cave gathered nuts and fruits, fished and collected shellfish, turtles, tortoises, and frogs, and caught small animals, not big game. They also painted in caves and on rock surfaces out in the open. With this site and all the others in Brazil, we have a picture showing much more heterogeneous Paleoindian cultures than envisioned in the Clovis model. In fact, nowadays, Clovis looks more like a regional specialization than the ancestor, since few or no South American cultures were specialized big game hunters, and there are now many sites throughout the hemisphere that, like Pedra Pintada, are the same age as Clovis: about 11,200 to 10,800 years old, and very different in culture.

SCA: What do you feel are the common goals of archaeologists and indigenous peoples?

AR: Archaeologists relate to the interests of indigenous peoples in several ways. Archaeologists need indigenous peoples for their skill and knowledge in their cultures. On the other hand, indigenous people need archaeologists to show how their earlier ancestors lived. In Amazonia, for example, the Kayapo chiefs were fascinated in our results from digging in the mounds of Marajo Island because it showed them a rich culture that had not previously been bly linked to them. They said to me about the Marajoara culture, "This is fantastic. This is our ancestral culture." Archaeologists and native people together, also, can document how people interacted with environments over the long term. Conservation biologists have promoted the idea of the virgin environment, vulnerable to damage by native people, and some argued that the people should be removed from land for conservation purposes. However, archaeologists and indigenous people have access to the knowledge that their interaction with environments is a kind of co-evolution, in which both sides influence each other. People adapt to environments but they also change them. There are no virgin environments on earth in areas where people lived.

SCA: What advice would you offer women considering a career in archaeology?

AR: I would advise women to ignore anyone who attempts to discourage them, not to listen to anyone who tells them they might be unsuited to a career in archaeology. Archaeology is a great field for women. Women, often very persistent and hard-working, tend to do well in long-term research. Women, often not integrated into traditional power structures, may be more independent than men in academe. Women also tend to do well in interactions with local, rural people, who may be more suspicious of foreign men. I've not even had much problem with government bureaucracies. People are pretty nice, in general. Those who have a problem with women for some reason are few and far between.

SCA: What do you see as the major challenges facing archaeology at the millennium?

AR: Archaeology needs to get its information out to the public and to other scientists. The danger I see is that the value of their information is not being recognized. Thus, systematic studies of human remains are being ignored in the debates about the peopling of the Americas even though they have important relevant information. For example, Joe Powell's research comparing Paleoindian, Archaic, and Amerindian skeletal remains shows continuity between the three, indicating that they are linked in an evolutionary process. This insight has not been dealt with in the public discussion about Paleoindian origins. In addition, much of evolutionary biology ignores the evidence from archaeology, which is needed to correct its concepts of the past. As another example, conservation biologists and development experts rarely look to archaeology to test their ideas about past land use and environment and the potential impact of particular land uses on long-term environmental conservation. Better integration of prehistory in such work would make the work more effective in planning for the future.

AR: The big-game hunting culture would no longer be considered the archetypal culture of the first people. Also, discoveries at new sites would have revealed some achievements only suspected nowadays, such as boats, carvings, textiles, pottery, and cultigens. The links to northeast Asian coastal Old World ancestors would have been firmly established through DNA analysis of skeletons.

SCA: What can archaeology offer the future?

AR: Archaeology's great usefulness is that it offers a view into the process of history, of change through time. So many fields operate with theories based on undocumented assumptions about what happened in the past in relation to today. Biogeography, for example, or evolutionary sociobiology. What archaeology can do is test those assumptions. It can show what certain regions were like at certain times and what earlier peoples were like, in this way checking the principles of important theories that are being used to guide the future. Through archaeology, the past can contribute to useful knowledge for the future of the world.

SCA: Is it possible to democratize archaeology by more greatly involving the public?

IH: I think one has to be careful in talking about ‘the public’ in relation to archaeology. I think it is wrong to conceive of ‘the public’ as unified or generic in some sense. And it is unhelpful too to confront ‘the public’ with ‘the archaeologist’. Rather, I would see a diversity of stakeholders. Any archaeological site will provide a focus for interactions between many groups, from developers and contractors to local government agencies, local residents, descendents, tourists, and archaeologists. The role of the archaeologist is to attempt to work between and in relation to all the stakeholder groups. I would define archaeology not as the excavation of traces of the past, but as the insertion of a particular methodology and perspective into people’s relations with their pasts. From such a point of view, it is clear that the archaeologist has to play a role as a member of society. The archaeologist has to engage in dialogue and communication, and to accept that there are different ways of pursuing the past. There are today many wonderful examples of collaborative and integrated archaeology.

If I may be allowed to go off slightly at a tangent, the idea of public archaeology could be extended to a consideration of the role of the state in contract archaeology. I have just returned from a visit to Europe in which there was much discussion about the form that rescue archaeology should take in the different countries within the European Union. It was very striking that, despite knowledge of the deployment of private contracting firms in England and the United States, many countries are rejecting that model and are seeing the collapse of contracting firms. Instead, rescue archaeology remains the responsibility of the state, even if the funding is from the developer. Having seen something of the world of contract archaeology in the United States and England, I cannot help but feel the Europeans are right. If financial concerns predominate, archaeology, and being an archaeologist suffer. If contracts are offered to the lowest bidder, wider concerns, whether social, academic or professional in nature, cannot be adequately met. Pie in the sky as it may seem in the United States, it seems that a properly ‘public archaeology’ – that is one responsive to its various publics – needs to be de-privatised, or at least to be more carefully monitored by the state. The state should ideally play a greater role in funneling or regulating the relationship between developers and archaeologists.

SCA: What can archaeology offer Native Americans and other native peoples?

IH: Many of the collaborative schemes that I referred to above have involved Native Americans. I think a lot of very exciting work is being done in this area and I am extremely impressed by the innovative work of groups such as Kathy Dowdall and Otis Parrish in California. Archaeology has been a focus of identity formation and social tension for many Native American groups. It has helped form new identities, and raise income in some instances. Archaeology can provide opportunity to enter into or reject claims of indigenous rights. It provides a route of entry into different worlds. But it is always a struggle, as opposing forces claim ownership. It worries me that so often, Native American archaeology is conceived as just archaeology as usual – but in the context of Native American identities. It seems we are missing the opportunity to redefine what archaeology is, what the past is, whether it can be owned, whether it can be objectively studied and classified, and so on. It seems we should take the opportunity to construct an ‘unusual’ archaeology – one that involves hybrid methods and that involves ‘pushing the envelope’ of archaeology as we have come to know it.

SCA: Is there a continued anthropological relevancy to archaeology?

IH: I know that many archaeologists in the United States would say that they are first anthropologists and second archaeologists. I don’t feel that at all. I feel that archaeology is a mature and independent discipline that can contribute to other disciplines and is not contained by any of those other disciplines. I feel just as close to history and the natural sciences as I do to anthropology. I believe bly that anthropology can be a straightjacket for archaeology in the United States. But I do feel that archaeology can contribute to anthropology. I enjoy working with anthropologists and am glad that I have moved to work in an anthropological department at Stanford. But I like to think that, whatever labels we work under, we contribute to similar issues from separate and independent perspectives. It seems to me that there is much movement and realignment in the sciences and humanities at the moment, across the board. People are continually making new alliances across old disciplinary boundaries. Some archaeologists may wish to make allies in the natural sciences; others in the social sciences; others in the humanities. Archaeology can contribute to debates with anthropology – but this should not hinder its pursuit of alliances with history, cultural studies, biology, evolutionary ecology, geophysics and so on.

SCA: In your opinion, what might the future hold for archaeology?

IH: If anything, I believe that archaeology will increase its roles in the future. This is partly for academic reasons – the retreat from the linguistic metaphor and the embrace of the ‘real’ and the material in the social sciences and humanities. And it is partly because of the continued importance of CRM. But I also think the role of archaeology will increase socially. All societies need ‘others’ which fascinate, repel, and contrast with their own ways of doing things. As the ethnographic ‘other’ becomes rare and problematic, so archaeology offers the most significant source of cultural diversity. By turning over the soil new things are discovered which have to be confronted and made sense of. This will continue to be a social process in which archaeologists play a role.

SCA: Do you believe that the past will continue to have relevancy in the future?

IH: I do not believe in the ‘end of history’ hypothesis. I have already referred to the search for cultural diversity which seems so much at the heart of contemporary life. The past is increasingly, not decreasingly, being used to help form new and diverse identities – not only for disadvantaged groups but also for those from high-income areas and classes. One important way in which this new search is expressed for the latter groups is through travel and tourism. Cultural tourism is of increasing importance, and it provides a new framework for much global archaeology. The past can in the process be further commodified and commercialised. However the tensions between the past as theme park, as focus of identity, and as science play out, the past is assured a key and central role.

As writers such as Trigger have shown, the initial relevancy for archaeology was in the context of nationalism, colonialism and imperialism. Whatever one thinks of the idea that we are moving into a post-colonial era in which the nation state is being undermined by global processes, my own judgment is that archaeology is finding a new relevance within a globalized world. In particular it is becoming very closely tied to multi-culturalism and diaspora. Within this new context, the archaeological past has a quite different role linked to personal identity and even spirituality, tourism, the authentic, the nostalgic and so on. I am not sure where this will all lead, but I do think that the relevance of the archaeological past will increase in this new role.