Staff profile
Karen (Kay) G. Wood, M.A., RPA
President
What do you do at Southern Research?
I oversee the daily operation of the company, and since it is a relatively small company, I am personally involved in coordinating financial matters, personnel, and project management, as well as the many other facets of running a small business. Although my roots and training are in anthropology, history and archaeology, I have had to learn to be a business woman. I represent the company in the negotiation and signing of contracts with clients. I oversee decisions on the purchase and maintenance of all necessary insurance policies and coordinate with my bookkeeper and CPA to make sure we follow all required Federal, state and local laws governing the functions of the company. I make decisions on the financial operations that keep the company viable and keep abreast of Federal and State laws and activities that may effect the operation of a small business. I work closely with our Officer Manager, Grace Keith, in making decisions about company procedures and general operations.
It's important for me to keep up what is going on within the historic preservation community. I attend meetings with clients particularly when dealing with Section 106 procedures. I sometimes serve as principal investigator on historic projects, or work with the principal archaeologist and other staff members on historic projects the company conducts. I review historic reports written by our staff. I help write proposals for potential work. Occasionally I go out in the field for a day or two and even help write sections of reports ever so often.
I get to do a lot of different things, and although I do less archaeology and history than I used to, I have learned a great deal about running a small business.
How did you become interested in archaeology and history?
I grew up in the North Georgia Mountains near the Tennessee/North Carolina state lines on land my paternal grandparents owned. During the first decade of the twentieth century my grandfather Noah Green built a large stone dam, mill pond and grist mill site on a small tributary of the Toccoa River, and later in the 1940s he deeded the mill site property to my father. Growing up, my father and his siblings picked up Indian artifacts from the plowed fields that they helped farm. My grandmother fed her chickens in a large soapstone bowl . Despite all the prehistory and history that surrounded me, it was not until the 6th grade that a true love of archaeology and history bloomed. That year we studied ancient civilizations of the Old World, and I loved it. I read everything in our small county library I could find about ancient civilizations. From then on through high school my goal was to be an archaeologist, an Old World archaeologist! I studied a lot of Old World Ancient history and archaeology at West Georgia College, where I received a double major in History and in Anthropology (B.A. 1972). It was not until I had satisfied my History major degree requirements and began to study anthropology in 1970, that I realized that both history and archaeology were viewed best through the eyes of an anthropologist. I attended graduate school at the University of Georgia. For my thesis, I was able to combine my love of history and archaeology into a study of archaeological animal bone from the Parks Mill Site, and a historical examination of nineteenth century foodways in Piedmont Georgia, receiving a M.A. in Anthropology in 1983.
...and in your spare time?
I enjoy being outdoors gardening or taking walks in the woods, and I love to read both non-fiction and fiction.
What's the neatest thing you ever found?
The neatest thing I ever found was the burned and well-preserved archaeological remains of an eighteenth century house in Savannah, Georgia that had belonged to an Irish immigrant named John Gardiner. The complete outline of the house was exposed revealing its foundation was constructed of post and beam combined with ballast rock, and tabby! What really made this find neat was the discovery of a newspaper announcement in the Savannah Georgian of the fire that destroyed the old two-story home of John Gardiner on an early Tuesday morning the 2nd of June 1829. Written history coming together with archaeology to produce a better picture of the past!