The Reality of Commercial Archaeology for Early Career Archaeologists

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper will present the outcomes of a second survey of European and world archaeologists intended to understand and explore the realities of early career archaeologists in commercial settings. The first survey conducted by the European Association of Archaeologists Early Careers Archaeologists Community focused only on academic archaeologists while this survey is exploring all non-academic archaeologists. Preliminary findings show concerning trends in the US, UK, and across Europe for early career archaeologists. Major findings including increasing levels of education requirements with multiple degrees at the same level (i.e. two or more masters degrees), large periods of prolonged unemployment and chronic underemployment leading to large numbers of archaeologists becoming reliant on non-archaeological part-time jobs, and an unsettlingly high number of archaeologists completing professional work that is unpaid. Additional preliminary findings suggest that almost half of those surveyed have felt disadvantaged because of their personal background or attributes while another half of archaeologists surveyed reported being advantaged because of those same traits, e.g., gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or economic background. These are difficult findings and trends to examine and this paper will break down these trends and other findings from the survey once it has come to a conclusion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37734.0