21st July 2011, 10:20 AM
As someone who has solely plied the commercial archaeology route, I would have to recommend academia to anyone pursuing a 5-year career plan. There is nothing you can achieve in 5, or even 10, years of commercial archaeology that would make the misery and sacrifice worth while. Maybe to me academia seems like a halcyon career of long term employment, reasonable wage structures and sun-kissed field schools in exotic locations, and some lecturer types can put me right on this, but if someone were to insist on pursuing archaeology then I can't conceive of any career plan that you could follow within commercial archaeology that could offer the apparent rewards and comforts of academia. Plus they seem to do more interesting archaeology, under less pressure.
Still, I fear there is little advice you can offer someone starting out in field archaeology. We were all there once, and I remember vividly all my lecturers and workmates on my training digs warning me of the horrors and disappointments of a career in archaeology, but at such a tender age you convince yourself that you are quite happy spending your life living out of the back of a fiesta, and spending whatever pittance you got paid for being an underpaid, overqualified navvy on the strongest drink you can find to dull the pain in your joints. I honestly think that students and other prospective archaeologists just don't believe us: they're convinced it's all some scam to keep them out, and that secretly we're all pushing wheelbarrows full of cash around our mansions chuckling at the fools who are scared off by our miserable posturing. I've actually heard them say "it can't be that bad, otherwise no-one would do it."
Still, I fear there is little advice you can offer someone starting out in field archaeology. We were all there once, and I remember vividly all my lecturers and workmates on my training digs warning me of the horrors and disappointments of a career in archaeology, but at such a tender age you convince yourself that you are quite happy spending your life living out of the back of a fiesta, and spending whatever pittance you got paid for being an underpaid, overqualified navvy on the strongest drink you can find to dull the pain in your joints. I honestly think that students and other prospective archaeologists just don't believe us: they're convinced it's all some scam to keep them out, and that secretly we're all pushing wheelbarrows full of cash around our mansions chuckling at the fools who are scared off by our miserable posturing. I've actually heard them say "it can't be that bad, otherwise no-one would do it."