Daron is a Far Western Principal and serves as Director of our Desert Branch in Henderson, Nevada. He has worked in the Great Basin and California for more than 20 years and has experience in all aspects of cultural resources management. Recent work includes survey, excavation, and sensitivity modeling on lands managed by the US Air Force, BLM, and US Forest Service. His Section 106 compliance work emphasizes the energy sector, with solar, transmission line, and pipeline projects conducted for providers such as NV Energy, Southern California Edison, and PG&E. Daron has worked extensively with Native American groups, including both archaeological and ethnographic efforts, and he has experience with indirect effects assessment. He is permitted by the BLM as a Principal Investigator in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah.
Daron is an active researcher, and clients benefit from his scientific expertise when faced with evolving regulatory standards in cultural resource evaluation. Specializing in flaked stone analysis, he has directed large-scale studies on lithic economy, X-ray fluorescence sourcing, and obsidian hydration dating. His published work includes appearances in Journal of Archaeological Science, PaleoAmerica, North American Archaeologist, and University of Utah Press. Daron’s efforts also involve public outreach documents such as the Obsidian Hydration Dating Workbook, which was developed as part of Far Western’s work with the Nevada BLM’s Lincoln County Archaeological Initiative.
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Daron’s Featured Projects
- Hill Air Force Base Utah Test and Training Range
- Lincoln County Archaeological Initiative
- Nellis Air Force Base Belted Range Inventory
Daron’s Featured Publications
Duke, Daron
2015
Haskett Spear Weaponry and Protein-Residue Evidence of Proboscidean Hunting in the Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah. PaleoAmerica 1(1):109-112
Duke, Daron, and Jerome H. King
2014
A GIS Model for Predicting Wetland Habitat in the Great Basin at the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition and Implications for Paleoindian Archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Science 49:276-291.
Duke, Daron
2013
The Exploded Fine-Grained Volcanic Sources of the Desert West and the Primacy of Tool Function in Material Selection. In George H. Odell Memorial Issue, North American Archaeologist 34(4):323-354.
Access Daron’s publications at academia.edu.
