Addressing Anthropogenic Safety Concerns in the Archeological Workplace: A Case Study

Summary

The changing nature of contract and academic archaeology has led to new safety challenges that cannot be addressed simply through adherence to OSHA regulations. In this paper we move beyond the still-relevant environmental safety challenges that were the focus of earlier work on archaeology and workplace safety, and examine anthropogenic safety issues that can commonly arise during fieldwork. We address issues such as potential theft, assault, harassment, uncontrolled animals, as well as the witnessing of crimes and other human-made safety challenges, and look at how other industries have responded to similar issues. We then introduce a recent long-term, large-scale urban architectural survey as a case study in how archaeologists can proactively respond to these challenges. Lastly, we argue that these challenges need to be explicitly addressed by employers within the archaeological sector, and that field safety manuals should be updated frequently as to enhance archaeologists’ ability to participate in the Section 106 process and to effectively conduct research in a safe and efficient manner.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage