Staff
Gini Prihoda
Gini Prihoda
Assistant Archaeologist
505-982-1385
gini.prihoda@state.nm.us
B.A., Education and Environmental Studies, Western Michigan University
I taught K-9 and served as an interim instructor for courses in environmental ethics at WMU. Graduate courses were not fulfilling my quest to know how Life works; hence, with only a handful of hours left in my master's program, I left to pursue answers.
I began my journey in my own backyard, so to speak. Five years were spent guiding school groups and special programs on hikes through prairies, woodlands, glacial moraines, and wetlands at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. All the science disciplines were covered as well as conservation and preservation, and ecology per Steve Van Matre's Sunship Earth program. I contributed a hydrological program for students K-9 to the center, which continues in its fifteenth year. The program describes the physical history of Earth in the Great Lakes Region.
The nature center is blessed with a 1850s farmstead, DeLano Farm, where you can learn what life was like for a Potowatomi family, a newly arrived pioneer family having to lay stakes before the first snowfall, or a successful homesteader. Diaries, letters, and oral accounts enable staff to give the public and thousands of schoolchildren every year some great hands-on experiences. I was paid to teach outdoor education, but truly, I was the student.
I began arduous journeys across borders and oceans in a push to know more. Nothing like international travel to Third and Fourth World countries to get to the bottom of political struggles and season the Soul. I debunked the mythology of the Mayan Anales de los Kaqchikeles. Working with Texas A&M principal investigator Dr. Margaret Bruchez, I spent three seasons in Guatemala with her graduate students and EarthWatch volunteers discovering temples and a ball court in precisely the locations described in the Anales. I collected, recorded, identified, and preserved higher plant species of the Cameroon rainforest under the auspices of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England. I went "backpacking" in China for three weeks (our university group thought we would be camping out, but the Chinese government had other plans for us). I studied shamanism in Peru's Amazon and the Andes Mountains.
After our two sons had flown the nest, my husband John and I came to New Mexico in 2002. I began volunteering for OAS during the last phase of the Palace of the Governors project, under Stephen Post. Once excavation was completed, I didn't have enough sense to go home. Instead, I continued to show up to wash, and eventually to be trained in historic analysis. Six months later I hired on. Since then I have worked on the Santa Fe Railyard project for Chris Wenker and Steve Post, the Civic Center for Steve Lentz and Steve Post, the Raton Survey for Yvonne Oakes and Dorothy Zamora, and a brief stint during testing for the State Capitol Parking project under Matt Barbour. I continue to do historic analysis under the direction of Lupe Martinez and Steve Post.
Working for OAS is rewarding beyond measure.