Living Legend No. 70 – Dr. Brian Dervin Dillon

Brian Dervin Dillon was born in Oakland in 1953, and grew up in Mill Valley, California. A 5th generation Marin County boy, Brian is descended from an 1850 California Gold Rush prospector. He is the only second-generation Living Legend of the Los Angeles Corral, following after his father, Richard H. Dillon (1924-2016), Living Legend No. 46. Brian is an archaeologist and both the son and the father of historians: his son John, Editor of the Branding Iron for the past 9 years, is the only third-generation member of the Los Angeles Corral.

As an archaeologist for the past 54 years, Brian has done original fieldwork in 46 of California’s 58 Counties, in every part of Guatemala, and also in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. He was the youngest Gringo ever granted a research permit by the Guatemalan government, and was instrumental in creating Central America’s newest Archaeological National Park at one of the Ancient Maya sites he made major discoveries at exactly 50 years ago.

Brian is Phi Beta Kappa, and earned his B.A. (1974) his M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1979) at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the youngest Ph.D. in archaeology (aged 25) since the creation of his Department in 1901. Along the way he was awarded the Departmental Citation as the top-ranked undergraduate of 1974, the same year that U.C. Berkeley was the topranked American university teaching Anthropology and Archaeology. Brian was the 1977-78 Fulbright Fellow to Guatemala, and the 1978-79 National Defense Foreign Language Fellow (in Latin American Spanish). Brian has been awarded another two dozen grants, fellowships, and research honors, from organizations as diverse as the U.C. Berkeley Latin American Center, the Social Science Research Council, the National Rifle Association, and the Asociación Indígena (Kekchi Maya) de Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.

Brian met his wife Millie at U.C. Berkeley: the couple has been together 51 years, and have an adult daughter and an adult son. Brian’s mom and dad also met at U.C. Berkeley. To continue the patriotic Cal strain, his son John was the third generation Dillon to graduate from that university in history and/or archaeology. The day after he was awarded his Ph.D. at Berkeley, Brian became the youngest member of the UCLA faculty teaching archaeology. Brian taught archaeology at UCLA and UCLA Extension for 29 years, and also taught for shorter periods at U.C. Berkeley and California State University, Long Beach. Additionally, Brian taught archaeology for the State of California (CDF-the California Department of Forestry, more recently CalFire) for 17 years.

Brian has published nearly 300 books, monographs, and articles on archaeology, history and ethnology. He has completed another nearly 300 legal compliance reports for federal, state, county, and municipal agencies on archaeology and history, some of these running to multiple volumes in excess of 1,000 pages, all documenting his original field research. All of his publications and limited-circulation reports are illustrated with his own maps, scientific drawings, and photographs. Since joining the Los Angeles Corral, Brian has been extremely active in its publication efforts. He resuscitated its moribund Brand Book series after an hiatus of 15 years and re-formed the Corral Publication Committee after it had expired two decades earlier. Brian has published a Los Angeles Corral Brand Book (No. 24), a Keepsake (No. 54), and is a frequent contributor to its quarterly Branding Iron, at last count with 55 separate fulllength articles, 27 separate book reviews, and 8 obituaries for fellow Westerners. Brian is also a regular contributor to the Westerners International Home Ranch quarterly, the Buckskin Bulletin. Many of his publications have won literary prizes: from Westerners International Brian has been awarded Best Book and Best Article, the latter honor multiple times during the past decade.

Brian is also very active as a public speaker. He has presented two dozen illustrated lectures to the Los Angeles Corral, the San Francisco Corral, the Valley of the Sun (Fresno) Corral, and the Huntington Corral at their monthly Round-Ups. He has also presented illustrated lectures on history, archaeology, and ethnology within the past decade to groups as diverse as the American Irish Historical Society, the Book Club of California, the Chinese Family History Group of the San Francisco Bay Area and of Southern California, the Conference of California Historical Societies, the Crescenta Valley Historical Society, the Eagle Rock Historical Society, the Fresno Archaeological Society, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Pacific Coast Archaeological Society, and the Tsung Tsin Hakka Chinese Association of Honolulu. Brian has been honored with the Westerners International Philip A Danielson Award for Best Presentation multiple times.

Brian joined the Los Angeles Corral in 2012 at the urging of his father, a member since 1953, and served as its Deputy Sheriff in 2016 and Sheriff in 2017. He also became a Westerners International Board Member and has served as the Los Angeles Corral’s Representative to Westerners International for the past decade. Brian has recruited a great many new members into the Los Angeles Corral: included amongst these dozen-plus luminaries are old friends, former students, and family members.