Combine it with deep curiosity and an ability to ask difficult questions, and you have a remarkable archaeologist. I have occasionally spent time with successful excavators whose passion and utter conviction that their site is all-important have enabled them to overcome seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Louis and Mary Leakey were two of this breed. So are Francis and Maisie Pryor, who dig and administer the Flag Fen Bronze Age site in Britain, and Richard Leventhal of UCLA, excavator of the Maya city of Xunantunich in Belize. But enthusiasm is not enough.
All professional archaeologists are active stewards of the past for the future.
You must believe in stewardship. And you need a mind that thrives on detail, since a great deal of archaeology includes minutiae-small attributes of stone tools and potsherds, analyzing computerized data, or studying tiny details of the past for weeks on end. You need to be fit enough to walk long distances and to thrive on improvisation under difficult circumstances. Imagine, for example, filing Land Rover wheel bearings out of nails when you are hundreds of miles from a service station. Archaeology straddles the humanities and the sciences, but it is, ultimately, the study of human behavior - of people.