"In that job, the 73-year-old Parkman used artifacts found in old ruins or the chemistry of rocks and layers of soil to piece together possible narratives about life in the Bay Area as far back as tens of thousands of years ago or as recently as the late 20th century. More than being a scientist or historian, Parkman has always seen himself as a storyteller with an innate curiosity about other worlds and a desire to imagine the people who lived in them."
"There's layers of life that we don't see, you know, and layers upon layers. So for me, I'm looking at when Vallejo was here, Parkman said in a faint lilt of his native Georgia. General Mariano Vallejo was the Mexican commander who established the eight-acre plaza in 1835. Parkman said he could imagine the plaza as it if was just yesterday, when Vallejo's soldiers used it as a parade ground."
Breck Parkman is a 73-year-old retired senior California State Parks archaeologist who served for 36 years. He used artifacts, rock chemistry and soil layers to reconstruct Bay Area life spanning tens of thousands of years to the late 20th century. Parkman considers himself a storyteller with curiosity about past peoples and environments. While sitting in Sonoma Plaza he paints imagined scenes of earlier eras, picturing the plaza without trees or modern commerce and recalling General Mariano Vallejo's 1835 parade ground. Parkman researches Ice Age Columbian mammoths and visualizes ancient fauna such as mammoths and sabertooths roaming the region.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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