Since 1962, Richard Lang has been involved with numerous excavations throughout the United States and the Southwest in particular. From 1982-1985, he was the director of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, and he was the senior staff archaeologist at the School of American Research in Santa Fe from 1971-1982. He has also consulted for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and worked at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque.