Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants, LLC (ACE Consultants) is a woman owned business that provides services in North America and beyond.
Carol J. Ellick, M.A., RPA
Executive Director
Carol J. Ellick is a leading expert in the field of archaeological and cultural education. She has a B.A. in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology from The Evergreen State College and an M.A. in education with a specialization in curriculum and instruction from Chapman University. She brings more than thirty-five years of archaeological and cultural education and public outreach experience to every client and project.
To bring balance to teaching and learning about cultures, Ms. Ellick developed Parallel Perspectives, a materials development strategy under which educational materials can be created that incorporate both the archaeological (scientific) and traditional (cultural) perspectives. Ms. Ellick has worked with cultural leaders, tribal museum managers, archaeologists, and teachers within the Comanche Nation, Tohono O’odham Nation, the Apache-Yavapai Nation, and the Mescalero Apache Tribe, in the creation of Parallel Perspectives lesson plans for grades four through seven.
Ms. Ellick has created formal and informal educational materials, taught workshops, and designed award-winning museum-quality displays. Her articles have appeared in numerous professional journals such as the National Park Service’s publication, Common Ground, the Society for American Archaeology magazine, The SAA Archaeological Record, and the Archaeology and Public Education newsletter. She has chapters in Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers, and Community Groups and The Archaeology Education Handbook: Sharing the Past with Kids. She is co-author of The Anthropology Graduate’s Guide: From Student to a Career (2nd edition, Routledge, August 2023).
Ms. Ellick has published countless lesson plans, educational units, and activity guides that use archaeology as the thematic approach to teaching requisite state educational standards in language arts, science, social studies, and mathematics. Her current projects include working with O’odham community members in the creation of Preserving Lands and Traditions: Plants and Animals of the Arizona Army National Guard, Florence Military Reservation Area, a coloring and activity guide for third and fourth grades; and co-creating a web-based educational unit for Native American high school students on Indigenous archaeology and careers in archaeology and the National Park Service.
While in Washington, D.C., she developed a science, technology, art, anthropology, and math (STEAAM) workshop for teens on tattoos and tattooing. In Oklahoma, she created The Comanche and the Tasiwóo museum education kit for the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center and developed an archaeological collections management program for the Chickasaw Cultural Center. Other educational units include Subsistence Strategies in Middle to Late Precontact Arizona, Lesson Plan for Grades 4–7; The Grand Adventure! El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, The Royal Road from Mexico City to Santa Fe; the People, Place, and Time curriculum, associated with the Central Arizona Project; the Teacher’s Handbook for Desert Water: An Introduction to the Rio Grande Project of Southern New Mexico and West Texas; and Archaeology and the Environment: Hunters, Gatherers, & Seasonality. (More information on these resources can be found on the Products and Projects page.)
Ms. Ellick has served on state and national professional committees and boards including the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Public Education Committee (PEC) and the Arizona Archaeological Council (AAC) Archaeology for the Schools Committee (ASC). She was Chair of the SAA PEC from 2004–2007, Chair of the AAC ASC from 1992–1994, and President of the AAC from 1997–1999. In 2015, to further the advances of the field of public outreach and education, Ms. Ellick established The Heritage Education Network, a membership organization with the goal of creating an alliance for those who use, manage, teach, or create information about past or present peoples and cultures.
In addition to being considered one of the leading archaeological educators in the U.S., Ms. Ellick also works internationally with Indigenous peoples and archaeologists. For nearly a decade, she has given lectures, conducted workshops, developed programs, and taught field schools in countries including Australia, Japan, Mexico, and New Zealand. She is currently a Designated Campus Colleague in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and a Research Associate with the Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.
Prior to starting ACE Consultants, Ms. Ellick spent fourteen years in a for-profit anthropological and historical consulting firm, five years at a historic preservation foundation as director of outreach and education, and four years in the Native American Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma.
She brings the knowledge gained in these positions to ACE Consultants and her clients.
Joe E. Watkins, Ph.D., RPA
Senior Consultant
Dr. Watkins is a senior consultant with ACE Consultants, a Visiting Professor in the Global Station for Indigenous Studies and Cultural Diversity at Hokkaido University, and a Designated Campus Colleague in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He comes to ACE Consultants following a five-year term as Chief of Tribal Relations and American Cultures Program and Supervisory Cultural Anthropologist for the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service in Washington, DC. Prior to this he was the Director of the Native American Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma (OU). From 2003–2007 Dr. Watkins was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He was the Agency Archaeologist of the Anadarko Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1993 until January of 2003.
He is 1/2 Choctaw Indian, having grown up in the Choctaw woods of southeastern Oklahoma where his family homestead still exists. He has been involved in anthropology for more than forty years, and received his Bachelors of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma (1969) and his Masters of Arts (1977) and Doctor of Philosophy (1994) degrees in Anthropology from Southern Methodist University. His doctorate examined archaeologists’ responses to questionnaire scenarios concerning their perceptions of American Indian issues.
Dr. Watkins is also involved in public education and outreach in relation to Native American issues within archaeology and the archaeological community. He served as one of the original five members of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Time Team America on-air professionals in 2007–2008, and was the Lead Archaeologist for the 2012-2013 season. He has given numerous public lectures to diverse audiences across the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
Dr. Watkins was the President of the Society for American Archaeology from 2019–2021. He has been intensively involved in the major national anthropological organizations, having served on the Board of Directors of the Society for American Archaeology from 2004 until 2006 as well as on the Board of the Plains Anthropological Society from 2010–2013. He has also served in numerous capacities within the committee structure of the SAA, including as chair and member of its Ethics Committee and as past chair of both the Native American Scholarships Committee and the Committee on Native American Relations. He is also past chair of the Committee on Ethics of the American Anthropological Association, and past chairman of the Committee on Native American Issues of the Register of Professional Archaeologists. He also served as a member of the Advisory Council of the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
His current study interests include the ethical practice of anthropology and the study of anthropology’s relationships with descendant communities and Aboriginal populations, and he has published numerous articles on these topics as a means of trying to increase the conversation between Indigenous groups and anthropologists. His book Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice (AltaMira Press, 2000) is in its second printing. His second book, Reclaiming Physical Heritage: Repatriation and Sacred Sites (Chelsea House Publishers 2005), aimed toward creating an awareness of Native American issues among high school students, was revised in 2019. He also published The Story of the Choctaw Indians: From the Past to the Present (Greenwood Press) in 2018. Other works include “The Politics of American Archaeology: Cultural Resources, Cultural Affiliation and Kennewick” (in Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology: The Politics of Practice, edited by Claire Smith and Martin Wobst); “Representing and Repatriating the Past” (in North American Archaeology, edited by Timothy Pauketat and Diana Loren), “Becoming American or Becoming Indian? NAGPRA, Kennewick, and Cultural Affiliation” (Journal of Social Archaeology); “Archaeological Ethics and American Indians” (in A Handbook for Ethics in Archaeology, edited by Larry Zimmerman, Karen D. Vitelli, and Julie Zimmer); “Beyond the Margin: American Indians, First Nations, and Archaeology in North America” (American Antiquity). He is co-author with Carol Ellick on The Archaeology Graduate’s Guide: From Student to a Career (2nd edition, Routledge Press, August 2023).
As an ACE Consultant, Dr. Watkins serves as a mediator between anthropological disciplines and Indigenous groups and provides information on spanning cultural divides between tribal entities and those working with them through writings and presentations. He is the primary instructor of the Principles of Tribal Consultation Workshop and the Cultural Communication Workshop.
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Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants, LLC
PO Box 31121, Tucson, AZ 85751 (520) 272-8721