Sam Hardy has an excellent piece on free archaeology: job insecurity and the need for an archaeological minimum wage. I have been meaning to build off of it for some time now but have been very busy so this is a bit delayed. First, go read Sam’s post- it covers so much and is very good. His discussion grew out of the #freearchaeology discussion on twitter in which many new graduates complained about the culture of free archaeology i.e. one has to volunteer ‘for free’ to hope to get a job in archaeology. Obviously if you don’t have money to support you while you volunteer than #freearchaeology is very hard to do. To quote Hannah Simpson-
‘’I’m fortunate enough to have gained interesting and well paid employment, but it is clear that many new archaeologists leave university full of expectation, only to find a very challenging route to employment. Unfortunately, there appears to be an initial ‘brain drain’ effect in operation, whereby talented potential archaeologists can find it difficult to obtain meaningful paid post-university employment and quickly slip out of the sector”.
Unfortunately, I actually see this occurring before people even leave university. I did a community dig this Saturday and 3 of the archaeologists who helped out are already planning not to go into archaeology. One, is starting to sell ales, another talks of pressing olive oil, and the third is not sure but knows it won’t be archaeology. These are three excellent archaeologists who will not be going into the profession and they have yet to even leave university.
Sam covers a huge range of problems facing archaeology and some of the proposed solutions (again, read it). In my personal opinion, many of the proposed solutions will not work because they don’t take into account the reality of archaeology employment over ‘expectations’. Archaeology as a profession is basically a McDonalds like profession. It is a hierarchy in which most of the work is done by entry level staff who conduct a very limited range of work. There are a few managers who get paid a little bit more to over see these workers and than there is corporate folks who make decent wages (sound familiar?). Lots of people have and will work for McDonalds but very few actually make a career out of it. More importantly, almost no one who works at McDonalds expects to. How many people do you know who have worked at McDonalds (or McDonalds like store) have plans to become lifers? (not a knock on McDonalds or similar just plans and expectations of workforce)
Archaeology is the same and always has been a hierarchy. From the Victorians till present day there have been archaeologists and the diggers (with various levels of hierarchy in-between). Go to some digs in other countries, students are there but also there are local workers (who probably do more and better work than the students). The difference between now and the Victorians are expectations. We (professional archaeologists) require degrees from our workers. Does McDonalds? Not yet (with degree inflation maybe in 50 years). A degree is 3-6 years (depends on the country) and lots of money (depends on the school) of someone’s life- DAMN RIGHT YOU HAVE EXPECTATIONS. Emily says it best, “many new archaeologists leave university full of expectation”. Unfortunately, the expectations do not meet the reality and what is essentially a killing field. Ill trained workers thrown into a insecure employment with little training and almost no direction.
It gets worse too. Those who survive and gain permanent employment one would think would have both sympathy and empathy for there follow archaeologists in the trenches (figuratively and literally). Nope, for some reason people don’t work that way. In fact, it is quite the opposite and much more like the movie Django Unchained. In the movie Samuel Jackson’s character, a “house negro”, is a real pr^#$*% to Django, a “field negro”. This is because he made it out the fields and is thus better than those still in the fields. People who survive the trenches actually look down on those who don’t for the very simple reason, “I did it, why can’t you”. Surviving killing fields actually leaves a person with very little empathy for those still in them. Now, that statement is insulting to some archaeologists and I don’t want to stereotype. So please don’t take it as me saying you have no empathy, just that some who make it out don’t (trust me I have had many conversations with archaeologists with no empathy).
It gets even worse. We talk of the archaeology profession as those it was one field, its NOT. Look at the wages from the most recent Profiling the Profession (unpublished- be out in May)
UK Archaeology- wages in pounds
| Salary distribution by individual role | Field investigation and research services | Historic environment advice and information services | Museum and visitor / user services | ||
| Lowest 10% earn less than | 16392 | 22283 | 18993 | ||
| Lower 25% earn less than | 18016 | 25000 | 20322.5 | ||
| Median | 22964.5 | 29500 | 26000 | ||
| Upper 25% earn more than | 27000 | 34500 | 31825.5 | ||
| Highest 10% earn more than | 32987 | 39000 | 38955.5 | ||
| Average (mean) | 23236.14 | 30622.44 | 28457.68 |
| Educational and academic research services | Administrative support |
| 19500 | 13000 |
| 48000 | 14000 |
| 40000 | 28000 |
| 33500 | 22375 |
| 54000 | 42513 |
| 39744.03 | 23185.08 |
There is a huge difference in pay between academics and commercial archaeologists. EVEN full time permanent employed archaeologists in the commercial sector make very little compared to archaeologists in different areas. The open secret is that many archaeologists do not experience the same poor pay as everyone else. This also means that they are not going to go out on a limb to help either. When was the last time you heard of a academic putting their 40 or 60k pound salary (or $70-100k for the US) salary on the line for a field tech? When have you ever heard of it? We may share the word archaeologists but we have very different needs and goals.
That is the world of archaeology, a hierarchy built upon inequality. In such a world I don’t think some of the solutions proposed will improve the situation. Until the skills of a field tech are valued, higher wages will not stop the insecure nature of entry level work. Higher wages won’t turn working at McDonalds into a career so I doubt it will do the same for archaeology. However, changing the system might. I think we need a radical re-imagination of how archaeology is conducted and supported. It needs to be beyond the current ideas of limiting entrants (we already do that) or higher requirements (requiring a degree does not improve the quality of work, it just raises expectation). What exactly would the that entail? I don’t know but I am looking at all the options.
Doug's Archaeology 
Bill White
May 1, 2013
It’s late here in Tucson, but, in a fit of insomnia, I felt like I had to intervene. I’m not from the UK and I never worked in Europe, but I think there are several major problems with the situation in the UK that are magnified when compared to the situation in the states.
1) volunteer archaeology has to stop- if you guys are just digging on private property for no reason, keep on keeping on. If not, the amateurs a have got to go. It’s fun to get some townies to pay you to show them how to dig. But when real compliance stuff has to happen, those without a degree need to hit the streets (BTW getting volunteers to pre-emptively dig.a site shouldn’t count as compliance unless a quality, research-driven report is produced).
2) professionalism needs to be encouraged- a professional is someone that takes it upon her/hisself to actively work towards the betterment of their respective career field. Weekend warriors and folks that would rather make beer than do archaeology as a career can read what I said in suggestion 1.
3) environmental compliance should not allow for anything less than work done by professionals- this needs to be done locally on a case-by-case basis. Every time a government job gets fu#*ed up, a professional CRMer needs to stop by and remind the govt agency why they shouldn’t use volunteers. And demonstrate that they an do better.
4) if projects are getting done without compliance, academia and CRM should unite- force the issue with the government and explain how local heritage is getting destroyed. Back it up with a social media campaign.
5) take aim at the lowballers- make it known that lowballing a project means widespread vitriol throughout the professional community. Question their methods and research designs if a project comes in totally low.
6) archaeology is for the dedicated- not every schoolboy that watched Indiana jones can be an archaeologist. It takes more than skill to do archaeology. Archaeologists also have to have heart, dedication, and passion. That’s why there’s so few of us. If I won a bar fight, would you suggest I become an MMA fighter? Probably not.
Hope I didn’t hijack your thread. Cheers.
Doug Rocks-Macqueen
May 1, 2013
No worries Bill. #freearchaeology is not so much about amateurs as the professionals being forced to volunteer before getting paid.
It is also not so much about volunteering which everyone agrees is a good thing to gain experience so much as the amount of time required. People are having to volunteer for months, years before getting a job. Basically, if you can’t afford to be unemployed for months (year or more) on end and volunteer full time during that period than archaeology is no longer an option as a career. Really pushing out the poor students and anyone without strong support systems.
Anonymous
May 1, 2013
In italy, this is normal.
Emily Johnson
May 2, 2013
Great post, Doug! I agree with what you’re saying and I think that this stigma surrounding the archaeological hierarchy is indeed holding the profession back. I wonder how the system of entry and ladder-climbing might be redesigned without getting ourselves into an ‘everyone’s equal, but some people are more equal’ type situation. I think Sam’s ‘archaeological minimum wage’ is a good start, although I’m unsure of how realistic that is right now. I’m really worried that there might not be an answer to any of these questions!
p.s. I feel like I should quickly point out that the excellent quote at the beginning wasn’t actually written by me. I wish it was, but unfortunately I haven’t gained interesting, well paid employment.
Doug Rocks-Macqueen
May 2, 2013
apologies that was Hannah Simpson- fixed now. hopefully no damage done
minimum pay- first, yes there should be decent pay but I an not sure it is the problem so much as a symptom.
Jana Irving
May 4, 2013
I am having the same issue. Not enough experience to get a freaking call back. Luckily I just found a dig site I can volunteer at near where I live and actually get some lab time. There is no reason we should have to volunteer and work at McDonalds (which I do) in order to survive. The system so favors the kids that were completely supported in college and could take summers off from work to dig. Hopefully volunteering will help for next year. I can hope right?