Staff
Stephen Post, Deputy Director
Stephen Post
Deputy Director
505-982-1375
stephen.post@state.nm.us
B.A., University of New Mexico, 1992
While growing up on the west side of Chicago, I knew I wanted to work outdoors, study the past, and live in a beautiful place. Not until age 21 did I realize that working in archaeology in New Mexico was the way to fulfill that life wish. Thirty years later, mostly through my work at the Office of Archaeological Studies, I have worked on archaeological sites throughout New Mexico, studying 8,000 years of cultural heritage and human experience.
Investigating 6,000 years of hunter-gatherer camps in the Santa Fe area gave me an appreciation of the resilience, adaptability, and staying power of these first seasonal inhabitants, who lived and traveled in small family groups for hundreds of generations. The complicated and rich archaeological record at the Palace of the Governors opened a door to the households of the ordinary soldiers and servants who made life possible in Spain's northernmost colonial capital. At the Civic Center site, next to City Hall, I encountered storage pits left by Santa Fe's earliest farmers; worked with the crew in an ancestral village plaza from the A.D. 1200-1400s; recovered abundant domestic refuse left behind by one of Santa Fe's elite families; and documented and recovered tens of thousands of artifacts from the US Army's military post, including items related to sanitation, housing, health care, and water supply.
Every epoch in American history has a parallel in New Mexico and the Southwest. In my long career working with colleagues and crews, I have had the good fortune to gain a richer and deeper understanding of them all.