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Archeology 101: How do I become an archeologist?
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CollegeBoard.com sums it up best when it asks:
• Ready to spend summers doing back-breaking, painstaking work on a dig?
• Ready to sift through dirt for long periods of time to find artifacts and bones?
• Ready to study history to get the background needed for fieldwork?
• Ready to analyze the discoveries in the lab?
If you are, then it’s time to find out the kind of jobs available for newly-minted archeologists. More importantly, are these jobs interesting enough to merit slogging through all the required coursework and training?
David Carlson, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Texas A&M University, lists four potential career pathways in his Archeology Career FAQ:
• Academic: Teaching at the university, college or community college levels;
• Museums: Offering work with current collections and typically requiring an M.A./M.S., or Ph.D.;
• State and Federal government organizations (such as the National Parks Service, Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers): Offering positions to M.A./M.S. degree holders;
• Private sector archeologists: Cultural resource management (CRM) companies surveying potential sites before new construction occurs offer positions to B.A. degree-holders with field work experience.
While different career specializations will have varying degree requirements, remember there is one standard of training for all students at the B.A. level, although core courses will differ between universities. An incoming student can expect to learn:
• The how of archeology;
• The why of archeology, i.e., theory;
• Field methodologies;
• Specialized testing skills;
• Lab methods.
Other courses such as history, languages or anthropology, will round out the electives portion of the degree program. However, students would be wise to complete the core courses requirements as soon as possible in order to have more time to decide a future specialty.
Having said this, think down the road a few years to graduation where a potential problem becomes very apparent. If everyone is learning the same kind of skills and taking the same courses for a B.A. degree, how does one stand above the crowd when it comes to jobs?
Matt Dawson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department at the University of New Mexico, has some commonsense hints for solving this dilemma:
• Go beyond the basic courses by volunteering for lab work to garner practical resume experience;
• Attend as many excavations as possible, regardless of length;
• Keep in mind that while field schools focus on excavating and lab work, surveying techniques are not always taught.
Unfortunately, 90% of the work at a site is surveying (i.e., walking uneven terrain while scanning the ground for what doesn’t “fit”) and it’s the skill to have. Check out the AFOB bulletin to find who is offering this kind of training. Surveying courses currently available for 2009 include Sicily, Maine, and Hawaii, as well as for underwater sites in New Hampshire for those interested in marine archeology.
All of these requirements and career advice certainly raises hesitation on whether to continue studying. However, while archeologists are the first to discourage Lara Croft wanna-be’s, they are also the first to wax eloquent over excavating that first Big Find.
Dawson still vividly remembers one of his earliest digs in northern Spain in 2005 where he helped find and recover an engraved Paleolithic deer scapula. Holding the artifact in his hands and knowing he was the first in 17,000 years to be doing so, was a feeling that made all his past efforts worthwhile.
Want more resources?
• Personal Snapshot: One Archeologist’s View of a Career in Archeology
• Career Information for Archeologists: Knowledge requirements, transferable skills and career options
• Indiana University Career Reference Section (offering additional weblinks)
Want to see things for yourself? Check out a University at Albany field school in action.
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