Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology Benchmarking Survey Project, 2024

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Breaking Free from the (Institutional) Matrix: Archaeological Career Pathways In and Between Academia, CRM, Non-Profit, and Museum Spheres", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2014, ACUA created the first Job Market and Benchmarking Survey project to discern perceived and real deficiencies in professional qualifications of maritime archaeology students. The project provided valuable data concerning what skills and qualifications students needed to be successful in the field. Almost a decade later the field has evolved as new technology and client needs require updated skills. As such, ACUA created a second benchmarking survey in spring 2024 to capture how those needs may have changed. The survey went out to over 100 individuals, representing state and federal agencies, CRM companies, non-profits, universities, museums, and other organizations. This paper highlights the data collected from the 2024 survey as well as a comparison to the 2014 survey, and demonstrates how job market demands have shifted over the past decade.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Breaking Free from the (Institutional) Matrix: Archaeological Career Pathways In and Between Academia, CRM, Non-Profit, and Museum Spheres   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow