San Antonio. Thomas Burr, Senior Vice President and COO of Raba Kistner Environmental, has announced that Dr. Steve Tomka, PH.D, RPA, Cultural Resources Program Director for the firm, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA).
Dr. Tomka has served on the State Board of Review for National Register of Historic Places nominations, and was the Chair of the Antiquities Committee of the Texas Historical Commission, where he served as Commissioner.
“I am humbled to have the trust of fellow archaeologists and members of the Society who elected me to the Board,” remarked Dr. Tomka. “As a life-long archaeologist, I am happy to have come to a point in my career where I can give back to the field and to the professional organization that I have been part of for more than 20 years.”
Dr. Tomka has worked on prehistoric archaeological sites dating to 10,800 years before the present (BP), as well as 18th and 19th century Spanish Colonial missions and 20th century residential complexes. Dr. Tomka has participated in or overseen archaeological excavations at all five of the missions of the upper San Antonio Basin and has been a critical part of the multi-year San Antonio River Improvements Project. His experience includes archival research to document land use and occupation history, construction monitoring to ensure that archaeological deposits are discovered and documented prior to impact, pedestrian surveys to identify surface and buried archaeological deposits, National Register of Historic Places eligibility testing, and data recovery investigations, and nominations to the National Register
His most recent projects have included archaeological investigations on the South Wall of the Alamo, the nomination of the Selma Stagecoach Stop to the National Register of Historic Places, and investigations of the Acequia del Alamo within Civic Park adjacent to the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas.