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Have Trowel Will Travel

Part 3: Suggestions from a Former Lord of the Trowel

By , About.com Guide

Have Trowel, Will Travel, The Series

Over the last couple of weeks, I've heard from a couple of former shovel bums, both of whom prefer to remain anonymous, and both of whom have offered their personal observations of the hobo field crew life. Today, suggestions about finding and keeping those elusive field archaeology positions.

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The most important thing you have to do to survive as a Lord of the Trowel (a.k.a. shovel bum) is to keep yourself informed...so you can have a project to go to when the current one is complete. These are a few rules I tried to follow by the time I started my undergraduate studies.

  1. Most important ~~ Know what contracts are being let by whom.

  2. Contact whoever is giving out those contracts to see who is bidding on them.

  3. Check out the staff of the bidding organizations for personnel strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes.

  4. Prepare individualized resumes and letters of interests to send to all bidding organizations

    4a. Make sure there is no one on your reference list involved in a blood feud with any of the honchos in the bidding organizations.

    4b. Don't stress your photo experience if the Assistant PI is publishing photos in National Geographic - go with your mapping skills etc.

  5. Follow up letters of interest with phone calls or better, an encounter at a professional conference - especially if you are giving a paper.

  6. Try to get on at least one "pure" academic research excavation, even as a "vacation" for every three or four salvage projects.

  7. When considering which opportunity to accept, consider giving a slight preference to learning new skills over dollars per hour.

  8. If you want to be settled for a while after the next project (like maybe to take the last of your courses to actually graduate) consider whether the up-coming project might lead to post-excavation lab work and/or an opportunity to publish something.

  9. Second most important thing -[especially in the Southeast] - Make sure that the crew will be given time off for Mardi-Gras, St. Pat.'s in Savannah and the SEAC.

In my opinion, it helps a lot if you are lucky enough to start getting field experience in your mid-teens.....so you can have a couple years field experience on a variety of sites and a variety of skills under your belt before you cut loose to be a Lord of the Trowel. I worked with one fellow who had started when he was 12 - he had grown into something of a legend when I went to field school with him.

I also think that shovel bumming, if combined with some field linguistics and ethnography, can lead to a range of career options that do not require SOPA certification or the angst of seven years as a demeaned asst. prof. brown-nosing for tenure.

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