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Have Trowel Will Travel

Part 6: The Darker Side

By , About.com Guide

Have Trowel, Will Travel, The Series

There are serious drawbacks to making field technician employment a fulltime occupation. In most sciences, research assistant jobs live and die by whatever contract is being conducted, and conditions are not perfect anywhere. But research assistantships in archaeology, in part because of archaeology's glamorous and shallow image, are particularly vulnerable to low wages and lack of job security. The following discussion is from a field technician in the United Kingdom, who chooses to be called "Digger." It was edited from his original email message to me, but he has seen the edited copy and endorses it. His opinions are his own.

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First, it difficult for even highly trained and qualified archaeologists to find paid employment anywhere in the world. I am British and it is nigh on impossible to find work in the U.K. and Europe. The contract jobs you do get here in Britain are often extremely short, sometimes weekly and if you’re lucky monthly contracts. Employers don't have to provide holidays and sick pay, pension rights or indeed normally legally required notice of termination of contract.

This in turn means a so-called "flexible" low paid, insecure workforce. In several projects in the U.K. employees leave a project prior to its termination because another project overlaps and people require this new project's so called short term "security" and pay. This results in low morale, increased pressure on those remaining staff and lack of consistency of excavation/recording––just as a team starts gelling and working together, it is dispersed. This is short termism and cannot be cost effective. At the same time, many qualified and experienced personnel cannot afford to work at the pay rates offered or are not able to cope with the continual displacement from one project to another, often great distances away. It is difficult to maintain one permanent house or apartment let alone trying to find and pay for temporary accommodation/lodgings at the rates of pay involved.

I believe the reason that the situation persists is because archaeology suffers from the legacy of "Indiana Jonesism." To some, archaeology is considered an adventurous, "sexy" area of study populated by "beardy weirdies," only interested in the nearest bar and the possibility of sexual coupling with nubile students or underlings. People put up with low wages and lousy conditions because they are drawn to the lifestyle. They’re simply not interested in the science. As a result of that, sexual harassment is not uncommon. You would be surprised by the pressure put on female and indeed male field technicians to submit to sexual advances in order to secure their "future employment prospects." It seems you advance your career by the premise "it's who you know not what you know." Archaeology is a small, some would say incestuous profession at the best of times.

Another problem I see is the prevalence of "amateurism/volunteerism/field schoolism" where people actually pay to do archaeological fieldwork (EarthWatch for example––there are others). This "Pay to Play" philosophy has been universally derided and protested against in the music industry and would not be tolerated in any other profession wanting to take itself and indeed be taken seriously by other professions. This situation does not and indeed would not be allowed in law, medicine, architecture, engineering etc. I realise this practise is a historical legacy of the 19th century and earlier Antiquarians, particularly in Europe, but it should be stopped.

I am sorry about the rant, but I feel very strongly about this in a profession, some would say vocation/calling, that I have spent time and money investing in education, training and labour, but it needs to be said. I am talking mainly about my experiences in the U.K., but these tendencies seem to be manifesting themselves in the U.S., and French friends and colleagues have told me of similar practises. I'm sorry I have to use a pseudonym but I have to safeguard my present and future employment although I am not alone ( I know personally many others in the U.K. and Europe) in holding these opinions.

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