A survey of UK Field Archaeologists

[matthew.law]

We thought it would be interesting to find out a little bit about the people who work as field archaeologists in the commercial sector in the UK. If you work, or have worked in the last six months, as part of the fieldwork team (perhaps as an excavator, supervisor or surveyor) on commercial archaeological projects in the UK, please take the time to answer our short survey. We estimate the survey should take less than five minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous, and you may leave blank as many questions as you choose.

http://wikiarc.limequery.org/index.php?s...&newtest=Y

We hope that by asking the archaeologists themselves, we can provide reliable information about the make-up of the profession to various archaeological interest groups. The survey closes on January 16th 2009, and results will be published soon afterwards.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to fill out the survey, and please do forward the link to any other field archaeologists you know.

http://www.wikiarc.org

[chiz]

be interesting to see how compares with Profiling the Profession, and Invisible Diggers.
you going to do this every few months? charting trends on the short term through the recession, levels of job mobility and how much people move, accomodation type, percentage time spent unemployed/unwaged, reasons for leaving profession etc etc

[BAJR Host]

This is a great step.. I strongly advise people to let everyone know about this ... and get filling in.

"Gie's a Job.."
Prof. 'Dolly' Parton

[matthew.law]

Thanks very much Hosty and Bob!

We're certainly planning to keep running these to attempt to track chnages in the profession, although we hadn't yet agreed an interval. If there's a good response, we'll probably run another in six months. It would be nice to think we could have a meaningful sample of archaeologists in the UK fill this out. This is all a bit of a test right now, so please do forward the link to as many relevant people as you can.

Bob, you mentioned some quite interesting things we had missed out of this survey, which I'm taking note of for next time. Other suggestions for improvement gladly accepted.

[kevin wooldridge]

Maybe in these trying times a question pertinent as to whether you are currently working or how long since you last worked in archaeology might be useful.

I filled it in. Very good.

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

As Kevin said a question about whether a person is still working in archaeology would be useful. I was curious about the inclusion of a question about any religious beliefs, any particular reason? I have no objection to it-just curious.

[matthew.law]

I did wonder whether we should put that in. From an employment conditions point of view it's absolutely pointless, but I think demographically it could be interesting, even though I imagine the result won't come as much of a surprise :face-huh:

Thanks for taking the time though, and for the suggestion (and thanks to Kev too)

[trowelfodder]

It would also be helpful to have included a section on previous job titles/positions as any people i know are taking jobs as site assistants becuase there are no other jobs, but are useually employed at supervisor or project officer level.

I also didnt really understand what the where were you born question ha to do with anything? But have filled in my form - after reding the current archaeology article on profiling the profession and laughing away with my colleuges at how we seem to be employed in an entirely different archaeological profession to the one profiled!!

[BAJR Host]

"Gie's a Job.."
Prof. 'Dolly' Parton

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

"even though I imagine the result won't come as much of a surprise"
Still,it would be interesting to know how many folks have religious leanings in what I always imagine to be traditionally an atheist job.