2nd June 2012, 11:45 AM
I'll bite on the question posed to students by K.W.
I started to pursue archaeology in 2007 back in America (where I've emigrated from). Literally the week, I made the final decision I landed myself on a role on a dig, before taking nay archaeology classes, which lead to a three year work experience over the summers, just by writing an email and asking the people in charge of the dig if they'd take me. I had absolutely no experience and while the dig was an academic one, it was not through my own university (my uni didn't actually offer much archaeology in our anthro dept.), just to illustrate how easy it was to get a position. That experience lead to another surveying role on another dig. As of 2009 everyone around me was getting paid work, working on summer contracts when not in school. Or they were in school part time and doing contract work full time. Within a year all that dried up and I graduated in 2010 with nothing but those academic roles and no real work experience (aside from everything else I've done workwise, which is loaded with warehouse management and screenprinting experience xx( ) Couldnt find work for the life of me in the U.S. or U.K. so decided to do this masters just to stay on topic.
The only reason I outline all of these boring details of my life is because I think it illustrates the time my generation is growing up in. This isnt unique to archaeology. I don't think professors could have advised students properly on the archaeology job market because a lot of us are still of a generation that began when things were good and looking really positive. I would have done archaeology anyway in the end, but theres only so far academics can go when the magic carpet is still flying high. They do the best they can given the circumstances.
I started to pursue archaeology in 2007 back in America (where I've emigrated from). Literally the week, I made the final decision I landed myself on a role on a dig, before taking nay archaeology classes, which lead to a three year work experience over the summers, just by writing an email and asking the people in charge of the dig if they'd take me. I had absolutely no experience and while the dig was an academic one, it was not through my own university (my uni didn't actually offer much archaeology in our anthro dept.), just to illustrate how easy it was to get a position. That experience lead to another surveying role on another dig. As of 2009 everyone around me was getting paid work, working on summer contracts when not in school. Or they were in school part time and doing contract work full time. Within a year all that dried up and I graduated in 2010 with nothing but those academic roles and no real work experience (aside from everything else I've done workwise, which is loaded with warehouse management and screenprinting experience xx( ) Couldnt find work for the life of me in the U.S. or U.K. so decided to do this masters just to stay on topic.
The only reason I outline all of these boring details of my life is because I think it illustrates the time my generation is growing up in. This isnt unique to archaeology. I don't think professors could have advised students properly on the archaeology job market because a lot of us are still of a generation that began when things were good and looking really positive. I would have done archaeology anyway in the end, but theres only so far academics can go when the magic carpet is still flying high. They do the best they can given the circumstances.