Topic: Pleito Virtual Reality Project
Speakers: Colin Rambo and Curtis Alcantar
Colin Rambo and Curtis Alcantar are both professional archaeologists who started working for Stantec, San Diego in 2023. Curtis is an enrolled member of the Tejon Indian Tribe and Colin was the Tribe’s founding THPO from 2014 – 2023. During that time, Colin championed the “Pleito Cave Virtual Reality Project” in collaboration with the Wildlands Conservancy and the University of Central Lancashire, UK (UCLAN), with Principal Investigators Drs. David Robison and Brendan Cassidy, with Photogrammetry led by Devlin Gandy. The Pleito VR Project took many years to plan and develop, with the bulk of the work being conducted by UCLAN’s Archaeological Field School that traveled from the UK to Kern County, CA on an annual basis. Colin and Curtis will discuss the Pleito VR Project and then invite the audience to take their own “virtual tours” of Pleito Cave (CA-KER-77) on the two META Quest VR rigs they will provide.
Colin is an applied anthropologist with more than 14 years of professional and academic experience in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) Archaeology across Central and Southern California. He was previously the CRM/Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) for the Tejon Indian Tribe, where he was delegated by the Tribal Chairperson the responsibility of representing the Tribal Government in all tribal consultations concerning Tribal Cultural Resources (TCRs) associated with the Tribe’s ancestral territory, which comprises the entirety of modern Kern County, CA. Colin has vocationally trained dozens of tribal monitors at Tejon and other California Tribes. This including the 20 full-time tribal monitors he supervised at Tejon during the many hundreds of archaeological survey/excavation and construction monitoring projects that supported some of our nation’s largest infrastructure projects (e.g., California High-Speed Rail Project, Edwards Air Force Base Solar Project, Interstate Oil & Gas Pipeline Projects, and Interstate Federal Transit Projects). Currently, Colin is focused on digitizing archaeological methods to include the use of various technologies that enhance/streamline the archaeological workflow and make possible the development of “digital assets/deliverables” – such as GIS Story Maps and Photogrammetric 3D Models facilitating immersive Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences – to promote public education and environmental stewardship by highlighting the cultural resources associated with our projects.
Curtis Alcantar is an archaeologist and enrolled member of the Tejon Indian Tribe. He graduated in 2024 from CSU Bakersfield with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Anthropolgy/Archaeology. Curtis was an AISES intern with Bonneville Power Adminstration. More recently, he has worked for Dudek, ASM, and Stantec as an archaeologist.