The experience of an early career archaeologist
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 03/06/2016

As an early stage career archaeologist and a young person (16-25 years) my experience, concerns and development will have been the same as many other individuals in similar positions; personal experience may help to shed light on where provision for young people is lacking and how it can be improved. To do so I will be splitting this paper into two; provision I experienced and provision I help to provide, to try and understand and tackle the issues surrounding it. As a young person my first experience with archaeology was aged 16, which was the first time I experienced an archaeological excavation, but my interested was sparked nearly ten years previous. Since then I have gone on to do an undergraduate degree at the University of Bradford and used their placement scheme, undertaken a Community Archaeology Training Placement Bursary (youth-focused) with the Council for British Archaeology and am now working as an outreach archaeologist for the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological
Network. I will explore from my perspective what provision was available for myself, as a young person, interested in archaeology.
I will also discuss the opportunities I have helped to create. I will do this by looking at a variety of projects, I have had involvement with which were specifically created for young people to interact with archaeology; these included working with Young Archaeologists Clubs, working in schools and more recently targeting specific groups of young people such as Duke of Edinburgh and Girl Guiding UK.

Megan CLEMENT (CITiZAN)