Phil Kaijankoski serves as a Principal Investigator and Geoarchaeologist. He graduated from California State University, Chico in 2001 with a major in anthropology and a minor in geology. He continued to pursue his interest in geoarchaeology while at Sonoma State University where he received his Master’s in 2006. His thesis examined spatial changes in the shoreline of North America over the past 15,000 years to identify where evidence of the earliest human occupation may be found today. He has been working as a professional archaeologist since 2000, and first joined Far Western in the summer of 2004 as a temporary field technician. In 2008, Phil returned to Far Western as a Geoarchaeologist working under his mentor Jack Meyer. His role later expanded to archaeological Field Director and eventually Principal Investigator as he authored numerous excavation reports on the archaeology of the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern and Central California coast, and the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.
His current research interests include Holocene landscape evolution, paleoenvironmental change, and how these processes impacted people living in the past. This is applied through geoarchaeological investigations searching for deeply buried and submerged archaeological sites utilizing a variety of exploration and dating techniques. Through his experience in the San Francisco Bay Area where he resides, he has become an expert on successfully conducting subsurface testing in urban settings with complex logistics. Furthermore, his background in geoarchaeology has led to a strong interest in archaeological site formation processes and he is often employed to document and analyze stratigraphically complex archaeological sites to aid in temporal component definition.
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Phil’s Featured Projects
- San Francisco Water Treatment Plant Upgrades
- Highway 1 Relocation Project, Sonoma County
- Santa Clara County BART Extension Project
- Wahtoke Creek
Phil’s Featured Presentations and Posters
Kaijankoski, P. B. Byrd, M. Goman, J. Meyer, and M. Palacios-Fest
2018
Sea Level Rise and Shell Mound Inundation within the Islais Creek Estuary, San Francisco, California Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.
Kaijankoski, P.
2017
Where the Land Meets the Sea: Site Stratigraphy and Landscape Context of CA-SBA-1703. Society for California Archaeology Annual Meeting, Fish Camp, California.
Kaijankoski, P.
2015
Assembling the East Bay: Subsurface Geoarchaeological Explorations for the Silicon Valley-Berryessa BART Extension
Phil’s Featured Publications
Hildebrandt, William, Allika Ruby, and Philip Kaijankoski
2020
Middle Holocene Resource Intensification Along the Southern California Coast: A View from Goleta Slough. In Goleta Slough Prehistory: Insights Gained from A Vanishing Archaeological Record. Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Contributions in Anthropology Number 4. Edited by Michael A Glassow.
Eerkens, Jelmer, Laura Harold, Katherine Perez, Engel Murga, Philip Kaijankoski; Jeffrey S Rosenthal, and Alexandra M. Greenwald
2016
Strontium Isotopes Identify Locals and Non-Locals at CA-SCL-919 and CA-SCL-928 in Milpitas, California. Society for California Archaeology Proceedings, Volume 30.
Peterson, Curt D., Errol Stock, Jack Meyer, Philip Kaijankoski, and David M. Price
2015
Origins of Quaternary Coastal Dune Sheets in San Francisco and Monterey Bay, Central California Coast, U.S.A.: Reflecting Contracts in Shelf Depocenters and Coastal Neotectonics. Journal of Coastal Research Vol. 31(6):1317-1333.