So, You Want to Work with the Ancient and Recent Dead?: Unearthing Careers from Paleontology to Forensic Science (Be What You Want) - Hardcover

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J. M. Bedell spent her childhood daydreaming in hayfields, talking to cows, and finding her heroes between the pages of books. She is a full-time writer of historical fiction and nonfiction for children. She received her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University in Minnesota. She lives with her husband and two Siberian huskies in Portland, Oregon. Visit her at JMBedell.com.

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So You Want to Work with the Ancient and Recent Dead? 1 Choosing a Career Working with the Dead


Choosing to work with the dead can begin with a fascination with zombies, murder mysteries, or the heavy metal band Lordi. You may be captivated by the macabre, enchanted by ghost stories, or think your Goth lifestyle is a predictor of your future vocation. But choosing a career working with the dead takes some thought and a lot of planning. There are many ways to work with the dead, and a careful review of the careers in this book will help guide you toward the one that’s right for you—or it will help you decide that you’d rather be an accountant or a lawyer!
Reasons You May Want to Work with the Dead

A Passion for Helping Others

Is “organ donor” checked on your driver’s license? Do you get teary eyed when you see someone is hurting? Are you the one who likes to organize food drives, mentor younger kids, or collect signatures on a petition to save the spotted owl? If you have a compassionate heart, then working as a funeral director, as a transplant surgeon, or in one of the many organizations that try to save animals from extinction may be the perfect career for you.

A Passion for Justice

Does the idea of a criminal getting away with murder make your blood boil? Does knowing that animals are going extinct every day make you want to scream, “Protect them for my grandkids too!”? Are you a passionate person? If you see injustice and are willing to fight to the bitter end to make things better, then consider a career as a forensic pathologist, coroner, or phylogeneticist.

A Passion for the “Dead” Arts

Do graveyards, ghosts, and cemeteries fill you with wonder? Does pale skin and a vacant stare make you giddy? Do your fingers itch to paint a ghastly scene or write a story about a poltergeist? Is trying to look dead your daily challenge? Is your favorite color black? If you have an artistic bent, but it leans toward the macabre, then finding a career in the “dead” arts may be right for you.

A Passion for Discovery

Does an unsolved mystery keep you awake at night? Are you irritated when the pieces of a puzzle don’t fit together properly? When you discover something new, does it fill you with glee? Does your mind seem to focus on finding better ways to use everyday items? If any of these questions pique your interest, consider a career as a paleontologist, aviation archaeologist, or thanatologist. There are many careers working with the dead where you can unravel a mystery, solve a crime, or even rewrite history.

A Passion for the Past

Would you rub your hands with delight at the thought of spending weeks digging in the dirt? Do you imagine yourself fighting on ancient battlefields, sailing across uncharted seas, or walking in the footsteps of prehistoric man? Does the idea of living when the pyramids or the Great Wall of China were being built send chills down your spine? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then a career as an archaeologist may be right for you. You may also want to consider working as a historian, as a history teacher, or in myriad other careers where you can study the past.

A Passion for Mess, Blood, and Gore

Do you run to biology class so you can be the first to dissect a frog? Does the smell of formaldehyde make you think, This is gonna be interesting? Are you okay with the sight of blood, the smell of rotting meat, the thought of touching something dead, and the idea of handling bodily fluids? If you see yourself saying yes to any of these questions, then you should look into working as a funeral director, a taxidermist, or an embalmer.

As you start thinking about a career working with the dead, it’s important that you understand that many of these jobs will require a lot from you. It’s not easy talking to a woman who just lost her child, working in the desert under a blazing hot sun, or digging through stacks and stacks of paper to find one interesting fact or clue that will help you find an ancestor or solve a crime.

The dead will demand that you study hard, work hard, think deeply, and care passionately. The toll that some of these jobs can take on your time and your emotions can be overwhelming. But if you find a career you love, you will be rewarded over and over again.

Look around. When you are ready to investigate a career, there will be others who have traveled the path you want to take and who are ready and willing, even excited, to give you a helping hand. All you have to do is ask.



JAMES P. DELGADO

DIRECTOR OF MARITIME HERITAGE FOR NOAA’S OFFICE OF NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARIES

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

When did you first become interested in archaeology and decide to make marine archaeology the focus of your career?

I learned about archaeology in the fifth and sixth grades in school. Then when I discovered that there was a three-thousand-year-old Ohlone Indian site in my hometown that was about to be bulldozed, it led me, at the age of fourteen, to try to rescue it from the bulldozers. I worked with my copy of The Amateur Archaeologist’s Handbook, met with archaeologists, and lobbied my town’s mayor to protect that archaeological site. I remained fascinated by and worked with archaeology on land until 1978 and the discovery of a buried ship in downtown San Francisco. My work for the National Park Service (NPS) on that site led me to ships, shipwrecks, and the fascinating world of underwater archaeology.

What education/work path did you take to get where you are today?

My educational path in terms of standard milestones was a BA, an MA, and finally a PhD. Life, experience in the field, and patient mentoring taught me much more.

At age twenty, I found myself one afternoon standing in the heart of the financial district in San Francisco. There, in the middle of a huge construction hole, I saw the black-stained bones of the whale ship Niantic. I stared, transfixed, at this relic of San Francisco’s Gold Rush, unearthed amidst high-rises after a 129-year slumber beneath the landfill that buried the old waterfront.

The discovery of the whaler Lydia, a few months after Niantic’s accidental resurrection, and the February 1979 excavation of another Gold Rush ship, the William Gray, at the base of Telegraph Hill, firmly set the course of my career.

I joined the cultural resources management team at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) as park historian. The GGNRA was then a 36,000-acre national park, primarily intended to provide natural, cultural, recreational, and aesthetic areas for the people of the city and visitors. My nine years in San Francisco were an intensive lesson in the documentation and preservation of historic and archaeological sites in the park.

I also began to work outside of GGNRA, thanks to the NPS’s growing awareness of a vast array of shipwrecks within the boundaries of our national parks, including the SS Winfield Scott. Diving on the “Winnie” added to my understanding of the first steamers to navigate the Pacific coast, and reminded me of the importance of the Gold Rush to the early history of California’s development.

From Drakes Bay to the warm waters of Pearl Harbor and the battle-ravaged remains of the USS Arizona, to a wreck at the turbulent mouth of the Columbia River, to the atomic-bombed fleet at Bikini Atoll, with interludes in Cape Cod and back home at GGNRA, I was taught how to dive wrecks and how to “do” underwater archaeology.

I took a sabbatical from the NPS and earned my master’s degree at East Carolina University. I enrolled in a relatively new program...