Why Do Archaeology Students Know Less Than Zero About Archaeology?
By: Archaic Inquiries
Tags: Anthropology, Skills, Archaeology, College, Education

Let me start by saying this isn’t one of those “let’s take a shit on Millenials” posts.

No, this is more about how students and newly minted archaeologists are not served the education that they need. That’s actually the whole reason for this Cultural Resource Management publication here on Medium — to help fill that hole a little bit.

It’s worth explaining a bit what prompted me to start this publication now, though. After all, much of the material already published (like how to get an actual paying project as an archaeologist) was sitting on my computer already written.

First, a bit about me. I own an archaeology company — or a cultural resource management company for those readers who don’t know the lingo. But I work very part time, as I have three small kids, there is only so much local work near me, and I am lucky enough to be the parent who does most of the kid chores like pick up and drop off on a daily basis. So I also like to teach college courses every once in a while, especially in the winter, when even North Carolina can get icy and unpleasant.

When the class I was supposed to teach at a local university fell through (completely separate story, which I won’t get into), I was left scrambling to try to find one or two sections of history/anthropology/archaeology/whatever to teach. Luckily I live where there are 20+ colleges and universities within an hour of me, so I used my own job prospecting playbook and fired out emails to the various anthropology, history, classics, and religious studies departments in the area.

My own undergraduate alma mater (not named, but I highly recommend them for a high-value undergraduate education even if you figure out who they are) was among many that didn’t have anything so close to the coming spring semester when stuff was already booked. But the chair went a bit further to say that they didn’t really emphasize contract archaeology (that is, doing archaeology for money in the private sector) and so had nothing for me. But, hey, did I take on interns, because they had some undergrads who were going to need to get jobs in the near future.

Think about that. Within two sentences, the chair of this ancient, well-regarded, mighty anthropology department admitted they did not work to provide job skills to their archaeology students, but maybe I could do it for them by being saddled with unskilled interns?

How do I know the interns (who were touted by name as having had not one, but two field schools) would be unskilled? Because I — like many of you readers — have hired, worked beside, or even worked under plenty of archaeologists who had just been handed that shiny diploma or graduate degree and sent out into the wilds of the job market with the assumption they wouldn’t get eaten by bears or fall into a messy crew vehicle, never to be heard from again.

Which got me thinking for the millionth time: Why is this?

The obvious answer is because anthropology and archaeology departments generally don’t teach the skills practicing archaeologists like myself (and maybe you) use. Well, yeah, but why not?

It occurred to me that I probably had more hours of archaeological experience than the entire anthropology department faculty did. You could maybe even throw in the Classics department as well. And I’m not an old guy — I’m in my mid-thirties. (CORRECTION: I do not. I had forgotten that they have on staff a really awesome archaeologist from the CRM world whom I have been lucky enough to work with a time or two. He knows who he is. Tip of the hat to you!)

Sure, there are archaeologists in anthropology, Classics, religious studies, and even history departments all around the US (and the world). But these are mostly people who talk about archaeology. Who think about archaeology. Who read about archaeology. Who write about archaeology. But don’t actually do much archaeology.

In that context, how could anyone reasonably expect even a professor with an active fieldwork program that digs two months every summer to know as much about how to do archaeology as the greasiest, surliest, laziest archaeological field technician with a couple years of experience? It’s not really fair to expect them to be as practiced as someone who does this every day.

Now, are there exceptions? I’m sure there are. Hopefully the reader went to a program that’s an exception, where they were taught things like how to draw a profile that’s not on a napkin from Denny’s, can tell you what a plow zone is when looking at the soil, and can tell the difference between a piece of ice and a quartz flake (I bet some readers know which guy I’m talking about with the ice mix up). There surely are exceptions, and I’d love to hear about them.

But by and large, most archaeology field schools do not teach very many useful skills beyond the ability to show up for work after a long night of drinking. And the classroom is even worse. With the exception of some lab methods and perhaps artifact identification, I can’t really recall being taught much in either undergrad or graduate school that turned out to be useful in my job. In fact, my high school geometry class probably taught me more that I use than 95% of the wisdom imparted to me by awesome, entertaining, but totally-don’t-do-this-much-in-real-life professors.

I don’t know what the answer to this problem is. I mean, it’s hard enough to find people to hire or work with who know which end of the shovel to put in the ground. So I don’t know how a university would be able to tell if someone should be teaching their archaeology classes. But then again, maybe that’s exactly why it’s so hard to find archaeologists who know their work — they end up needing years to develop the tools they were never given.

This is where I kind of throw my hands up because I don’t see how to even bring this problem to the attention of archaeology programs. I mean, what do you say? “Hey, I know y’all already feel under fire as colleges use more adjuncts and fewer tenured professors, but you also are teaching a job most of you have never done. Bee tee dubs, you should probably also tell your PhD students that after wasting their youth, they’ll still be starting out as field technicians because there’s no full-time teaching jobs for them.”

Yeah, telling hard-working, well-meaning faculty that to their face would probably fall under the heading of Acting Like A Bag Of Dicks if it showed up in Jeopardy.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment below.

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