In archaeology, we use them to process a wide variety of information. They are particularly useful in cataloguing artifacts and organizing architecture. In graduate school I worked on an excavation database with over 250,000 artifacts, so I learned to work on computers then. I had some programming experience as an undergraduate and now I use web pages with my classes. Yes, it is certainly the case at Bowdoin where the archaeologists, both in Classics and Anthropology, are active in field projects.
Archaeology is broken up into a number of sub-fields.
There are archaeologists who focus on museum work, others who study pottery or specific classes of artifacts, and then those who concentrate on excavation. I do digging. The excavation that I direct is located in Southern Italy, south of Naples. Yes, for an archaeologist, primary source material is in the ground. It has to be taken out and studied, just like going into a library or an archive trying to find text for your research.