Adie Whitaker is a Principal Investigator, Project Manager, and Faunal Analyst and currently serves as the Vice President for California Operations. He has worked at Far Western since 2008 and has over 20 years archaeological experience throughout California in both academic and CRM contexts. While he has worked in just about every corner of the state, he prefers to be on the Coast and has conducted fieldwork in every California County that touches the Pacific Ocean.
At Far Western he has worked extensively on transportation-related projects. He is an expert on the 2014 First Amended Caltrans Section 106 Programmatic Agreement as it relates to Local Assistance, with experience in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Central Coast, Central Valley, and San Francisco Bay Area.
Dr. Whitaker currently manages cultural resources on-call contracts with Caltrans District 5 (Central Coast), Caltrans District 6 (San Joaquin Valley), Naval Facilities Command Southwest (California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah), University of California at Davis, and the San Mateo Joint Powers Board.
Dr. Whitaker has authored numerous excavation reports on the archaeology of the central Sierra Nevada, Central Valley, and San Francisco Bay Area in northern California and on the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and coast of southern California. Data from these reports have led to the publication of numerous scholarly articles in regional, national, and international journals, including American Antiquity, the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, the Journal of Archaeological Science, the Journal of Coastal and Island Archaeology, Quaternary International, California Archaeology, and the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology.
He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology from 2017-2020, Book Review Editor for JCGBA from 2015-2017, and is on the Editorial Board of California Archaeology. He has served on the Executive Board of the Society for California Archaeology as Northern Vice President (2010-2012) and Secretary (2009-2010) and has been the chair of the California Advanced Annual Meeting Planning Committee since 2013.
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Adie’s Featured Projects
- San Clemente Island
- Jackson Valley Rehab
- Wahtoke Creek
Adie’s Featured Publications
Whitaker, Adrian R., Brian Byrd, Jelmer Eerkens, and Howard Spero
2021
Resource Depression, Intensification, and Shifting Patterns of Seasonal Abalone Harvest on San Nicolas Island, California during the Middle and Late Holocene. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 41:2 165-185.
Whitaker, Adrian R., and Christopher Parker
2021
Bedrock Milling Features in California: Archaeological Context and Research Design. Caltrans Publications as part of statewide research context series.
Whitaker, Adrian R. and Jeffrey S. Rosenthal
2020
Divergent Human Adaptive Strategies in Late Holocene Central California. In Cowboy Ecologist: Essays in Honor of Robert L. Bettinger (edited by Roshanne S. Bakhtiary, Terry L. Jones, and Michael G. Delacorte. Center for Archaeological Research at Davis Publication 19.
Ruby, Allika, and Adrian R. Whitaker
2019
Remote Places as Post-Contact Refugia. California Archaeology, 11(2), 205-233.
Whitaker, Adrian R., Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, and Paul Brandy
2019
Social Boundaries, territoriality, and the cultural ecology of artiodactyl hunting in prehistoric California. Quaternary International 518: 83-98.
Stevens, Nathan E., Whitaker, Adrian R., and Rosenthal, Jeffrey S.
2019
Bedrock mortars as indicators of territorial behavior in the Sierra Nevada. Quaternary International. Quaternary International 518: 57-68.
Byrd, Brian F., Adrian Whitaker, Patricia Mikkelsen, and Jeffrey Rosenthal
2017
Colligan, Kaely, Adrian R. Whitaker, and William Hildebrandt
2015
Where The Pavement Ends: An Assessment of the Paucity of Haliotis rufescens in the Archaeological Record on California’s North Coast. California Archaeology 7(1): 33-58.
Whitaker, Adrian R., and Brian F. Byrd
2014
Social Circumscription, Territoriality, and the Late Holocene Intensification of Small-Bodied Shellfish along the California Coast. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 9(2):150-168.
Whelan, Carly, Adrian R. Whitaker, and Jeffrey S. Rosenthal
2013
Hunter-Gatherer Storage, Settlement, and the Opportunity Costs of Women’s Foraging. American Antiquity 78(4):662-678.
Whitaker, Adrian R., and Brian Byrd
2012
Boat-Based Foraging and Discontinuous Prehistoric Red Abalone Exploitation along the California Coast. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31(2): 196-214.