Studying Archaeology - My Personal Experience and Problems with It

As the title says, I'm talking about my perspective on the study of this particular field. I studied archaeology between 2003 and 2004/05 but didn't complete it and instead switched to Cultural Anthropology.

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[twogungunnar]

I'm a working archaeologist in North America (The Pacific Northwest & Great Basin...Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah & Nevada primarily).
Some basic facts about actually doing it for a living:
1. Most of the paying work is to satisfy legal requirements. We very rarely excavate. Mostly it's "survey". If some kind of engineering project (like a new power line or road) is being built, we have to go in there and walk around the project area and see what's there. Sometimes you might dig small hole just to test, but formal excavation is very rare.
2. There's prehistoric stuff all over the place just laying on the ground. Once you train your eyes on what to look for, it's all over the place.
3. We have to count rusty cans. The regulations are written so that anything that's 50 years or older qualifies as potentially historically significant. In the areas I work in, this means I spend a lot of time counting rusty cans from old camps. They don't tell you about this in school.
4. The pay sucks, and employment is sporadic. In any other field with my level of education (masters) and experience, I'd make double what I do now.
5. It's a really small community. You're never more than 2 degrees removed from any other archaeologist you meet. This makes for a lot of gossip and drama. This is another thing they don't tell you in school.
6. It's a lot of fun! You get to go hiking and camping with your friends and they pay you for it! Granted, it's not much money, but my job is to literally go into the wilderness with like-minded weirdos and hike around and look for stuff. After a day of hiking and looking, it's time for libations at a dive bar in whatever tiny one-horse hick town we're staying in.

Yes, I could make more in some other profession, but doing archaeology is good for you. Marching around outdoors miles and miles away from civilization is good for you physically and psychologically. It's healthy, overall it's a helluva good time, and even the miserable times make for decent stories later. I've been stranded overnight, shot at, lost, almost struck by lightning, etc. etc., and wouldn't exchange any of it for being chained to a computer under fluorescent lights.

My recommendation: Try it, but keep your options open. Go to Archaeological Field School, and then get a paid job for the summer field season while you're not in school. Do this for a couple summers and see if you like it. If you do like it, get a master's ASAP. If not, you're not out anything, and I promise at the very least you'll have some interesting memories.

[InquisitorThomas]

The main problem with Archaeology: you don't actually fight Nazis or find magical artifacts and people still treat you like a douche for wearing a fedora.‎

[novazo]

I've always wanted to go to an archeology dig site to find an ancient sword pommel to end my enemies just and rightly.

[yoni]

I must say, it has been a childhood dream of mine becoming an archaeologist and for the same reasons as you Skall, I wanted to know how ancient cultures lived. And honestly, the more you talked the more I was being fascinated, you revealed so much new stuff that I wasn't even aware was part of archaeology and it made it all the more exciting. I live in Israel and I have visited a few archaeological sites to the north and south, but what I want the most is to travel across Europe and see some of ruines that inspired the greatest minds in history

[sdaniels]

Thank you. I am a high school teacher. Although my students don't talk about being archeologists, your comments on practical career considerations is useful and topical. I can see myself using this in the classroom.

[numbersto]

Archeology translator:
Archeologist: This a religious ceremonial item!
Translation: We have no records about this item, and absolutely no clue what this is.

[MikaelKKarlsson]

Now we want to see a video of Skall staring at pottery shards. Right?

[FoardenotFord]

I wanted to study archaeology since I was 11 years old, I ended up going to Boston University and graduating with my BA in archaeology in 2015. I can relate to most of what you've said here (except that I find pottery sherds and serialization interesting). Many of my professors (not to mention my parents) said the exact same thing - you won't find a job. It's hard when the folks you look up to in the field tell you not to bother. I was lucky enough to have excavation be a requirement for my degree, and got to dig at a Maya site in Guatemala.

Since graduating, I've taken a job in software sales to pay the bills. I'm not sure if I'll go back to school to pursue archaeology or go in another direction. I will never regret studying archaeology, it is an absolutely fascinating field and there is much work to be done in the world by archaeologists. Thanks for making an honest video about the reality of it. If you want to study something and pursue a career in it, don't let anyone stand in your way, but it also helps to have realistic expectations and an open mind

[Raakhushili]

As a person doing a Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archeology I think this video is absolutely mandatory for everyone thinking of jumping the bandwagon of this area of knowledge. Sadly, Archeology is not about "knowing how the people lived", but about "how to know how the people lived". It requires technique and method, and almost never intuition, nor imagination. It's 50% slow-paced excavation, 50% staring at long Access databases/AutoCAD designs/typology catalogues. It's a method, not a science (or that's what most of the good profesional arcaheologists would tell you about their work, but I don't deny there's a lot of archaeologists that see themselves as "scientifics", lol)

Still, it has a lot of fascinating things if you are up to take the "hard tour". It is not a bad thing if you decline Archaeology in favor of more "flavoured" fields of historical and social enquiry like Sociology, History or even Philology: there will always be things you like more and do you better than others, and all this fields of enquiry are equally important to the knowledge of our past (everything is better than reading a Tsoukalos book and start pointing at UFOs at every monumental site and deny any other explanation).

So, as an arcaheologist, I'm totally with this video: Arcaheology isn't for everyone, but there are more options you can think of if the past times amaze you.

[bogih.d.]

I study archaeology too - in central Europe btw, and our teachers told us the same thing at the beginning. It was harsh, but hey, challenge accepted! :)

[paulroschman]

I'm currently in my second year of a B.A. in Archaeology, and have to agree with you on the subject of looking at pot sherds. Last semester I spent around 40 hours in my University's museum counting the size, shape, and number of grains of sand in the profile of broken pots. However I was lucky enough to get to go to Jordan on a dig for about a month in the summer following my Freshman year and it was really that experience that really convinced me that this was the right fit, and all the grunt work was worth it. I'll be going to the same site again next year, and while not every school offers opportunities like this, I personally wouldn't recommend giving up on a discipline without trying out the fun parts first.

[Inside_Archaeology]

As a working archaeologist in the UK I thought this was quite good. I've never had to memorize much for pottery beyond the basic identification of if it's diagnostic and sometimes a rough period but perhaps it's different where you studied. And yeah the career does require a decent amount of travel, things seem to be picking up here in terms of the availability of jobs though, there is a huge surge in infrastructure projects and the archaeology companies can't find as much staff as they need currently so they're all desperate for people, which is slowly driving up wages. Doesn't mean you'll ever be able to buy a porsche or fly first class though. Does mean everyone thinks your job is really cool!

[Dragonitsch]

I am studying prehistoric archaeology in germany and I literally cracked up when you said "it involves staring at tiny pottery shards for hours" XD

[ktkalicka]

Thank you so much for this honest and detailed account of studying Archeology...One can tell it's causing you much more pain and frustration than pleasure, and since job opportunitities are scarce, you porbably made the best decision to leave it behind. I like history and the scientific part wouldn't scare me off as much because there is a laboratory aspect to it apparently (dating schards and studying patterns) which is still something that wouldn't bother me. Again, depends on how your thinking processes feel most comfortable and what your true passion is.

[IanCowen]

Honestly, this just furthers my interest in archaeology; definitely something I want to further consider

[shawnmongillo]

I think 'reasons you _should_ consider being a <insert career here>... from someone who decided not to be'... should be a thing. Gave a lot of insight into how to temper your expectations, and approach a field of study from a grounded perspective.

[afzk]

That Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo with the recreated Norse village: it is simply amazing. The best museum I've ever visited. All of the exhibitions are excellent. When I see places like that, I wish I could work there even if it was sweeping the floor (but it must be hard to land a job at a place like that), I can see how anyone who'd visit could be inspired to be an anthropologist

[omgrussian]

I graduated just this last December with a BA in Archaeology from a particular University in Burnaby. What you said at roughly @5:05 in the video is quite true, as is most of of everything else in the rest of the video.

However, I'd like to share my opinion that the dry boring theory that frustrated you really IS the juicy practical methodology that helps form your perspectives (of the past and present) and praxis-based theoretical frameworks that enable one to make conclusions as to how things may have been in the distant past.

Cultural Anthropology is very similar indeed, except generally (I feel that) you're talking about people who are alive today or were alive in the very near past such that they were involved in some kind of ethnographic endeavour. I went on a field school last summer as part of my Archaeology degree and the real hands-on experience excavating a site was tremendous not only for my desire and CV to work in the field but also to stay interested in archaeology for the future.

You never know, you could always go back to school to either audit interesting courses or even to get a certificate or degree!

[greerpatterson]

I've just finished my undergrad studying archaeology. Majority of it was theory and that I'm about to start honours I'm finally able to do a field excavation as apart of my course for a few and the lab work analyzing what we find!!

[yvyibree]

I am so passionate about archaeology that one of my wet dreams is naming different styles of pottery! But I went to law school first so that I can study archaeology without financial pressure.