Alum gets paid to 'dig in the dirt'

Larsen vividly remembers his first dig, during field school with the Santee Delta Project under the direction of Dr. Kendy Altizer, a UNG assistant professor of anthropology, who shared with the students that they were digging in the worst conditions.

"It was an experience. We're out in the swamp, digging holes. It's hard to top being in the swamp, flies and mosquitoes around you and working in ankle-deep water sometimes. I've worked in the heat, and I've worked in the bugs, but never in a swamp," he said. "It was a difficult experience, but I learned that it was for me. It was baptism by fire, so to speak."

The Cumming, Georgia, native is currently working in cultural resource management (CRM) as an archaeological field technician, a typical first job with Larsen's credentials, with TRC Environmental Corporation.

Under federal and many state laws, whenever a company wants to build something on federal or state land and is using federal funds, they must consider the effect of their project on cultural resources within their project area. Companies such as TRC Environmental Corporation are often contracted by other companies to assist in the process of complying with the law and they send employees like Larsen out to survey for archaeological sites and assess their significance. If sites are identified as significant within the project area, CRM companies assist their clients in finding a solution to either avoid the cultural resource by relocating the project or, if the project cannot be relocated, excavating the site and collecting as much information as possible to assist in interpreting the history of the region in which the site is located, Larsen said.

The 2025 graduate had his first taste of anthropology in a class with Altizer.

"It was interesting hearing about the actual process of going out into the field and looking at artifacts, rather than sitting in a room and writing it all up," he said. "I sort of kept that in the back of my mind as I was going through my degree, and when it came time to decide what my minor was going to be, I looked at teaching, but I ended up landing on anthropology, and I'm very glad I did."

Archaeology is traditionally a subfield of anthropology in the United States and can include digging as a way of looking at past human cultures.

"For example, the context of enslaved people, there are living descendant communities who are still around today, and we might want to talk with them and look at their culture to give us an idea of the possibilities of what we've dug up that might inform us better about what we're excavating," Larsen said.