However, there are individuals who maintain that one must first earn not only a narrow natural science Ph.D., but also a solid scholarly reputation in a scientific discipline before trying interdisciplinary research. Parenthetically, there is a limited consensus that it is very difficult to complete the Ph.D. in a social or humanistic field and then move into archaeometric research because natural science generally requires up to six years of sequential learning in basic science and mathematics. This leaves the question of interdisciplinary graduate education still open, as well as the more general need for scientific literacy on the part of all types of archaeologists. Geologists study chemistry and physics as an essential part of their education. Consequently, geologists have long been able to borrow the instruments and techniques designed by chemists and physicists and use them to study the earth.
Archaeology needs archaeometry to achieve the same borrowing efficiency to study cultural remains.
With sites vanishing and the cost of thorough excavations and even surveys becoming more and more prohibitive, archaeologists could, unlike geologists, run out of at least prehistoric archaeological remains in less than 100 years. In less than 100 years there will be 20 billion people on the earth. The necessary intensive agriculture will churn and rechurn all but the most inhospitable land. Already, archaeologists are beginning to turn from excavation to survey, from artifact studies to artifact-ecofact relationships, and from materials to models. In the current university education and research context in the United States, archaeology is mainly incorporated into anthropology or classics departments.