Off Course?: A Career in Archaeology Outside of the Academy

The field of archaeology is all too familiar with the changing nature of university education and the implications of these changes for faculty, students, and the field. “National Adjunct Walkout Day” took place on February 25, 2015 (Flaherty 2015), helping to draw further attention to the disparities of a system where secure and long-term positions are all too few, and administrations rely on low-paid graduate students whose futures are all too uncertain. As long as the major career goal of archaeologists continues to be work in a university setting, these problems are going to persist and worsen within the profession. The current situation is rife with irony. The fewer the students, the lower the need for faculty positions; yet, an increase in student numbers creates graduates for whom there may be no employment. Responsible faculty members are beginning to hesitate to encourage brilliant young scholars to enter the field. Clearly, one solution is to encourage graduates with archaeology degrees and skills to seek employment outside of the Academy. What are the challenges and pathways for achieving such a goal?

Paradigm Shifting for Defining Success as an Archaeologist

First, disciplines like art history, anthropology, and archaeology would benefit from a redefinition of success and a rethinking of achieved status in the field. Many accomplished archaeologists who now work in what are often called “alternative” careers, like cultural resources management, geo-spatial analysis, and defense, will tell you that they sometimes feel like second-class citizens at academic meetings and conferences. Several years ago, at a meeting of anthropologists who work for the Department of Defense (DoD), an academic colleague remarked with surprise, “But wait a minute, you all have PhDs from tier-one schools!” Whether it is founded in truth or not, non-academic authors joke about their “applied” papers and sessions being scheduled for poorly attended late evening or early morning sessions of conferences. Even if it is only a perception, the profession needs to grapple with the commonly held belief that only colleagues who failed to secure a position in the Academy would ever consider an alternative career.

In addition, sometimes academic colleagues ask those of us who work for defense and industry to defend the ethics of our career choices (Hamilakis 2009; Stone 2011). Many of these attitudes and questions are posed from positions of ignorance. There is no question that greater communication between archaeologists who work inside and outside of the Academy would be of benefit to everyone. I suspect that there are very few academic colleagues who know and appreciate the fact that some governmental cultural resources managers have secure jobs with the opportunity to intensively study large tracts of land with budgets that allow for annual field survey supported by state-of-the-art imagery, geographic information systems (GIS), and cutting-edge geophysics (Fig. 1). Archaeologists who work with industry and government agencies also have the opportunity to identify and protect thousands of significant archaeological sites, not just within the United States but overseas as well. In addition, archaeologists who work for federal agencies in the United States, especially DoD, have an opportunity to advocate for the rights of indigenous people. At Fort Drum, we have protected over 200 ancestral places, organized four Head of State visits between the 10th Mountain Division Command Group and Nation Leadership, signed one inadvertent discovery agreement, and organized access to ceremonial sites. At Fort Drum, the cultural resources manager is also the Native American affairs coordinator, and there is no question that it is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job.

Where Are the Opportunities Outside of the Academy?

So the question is, how do we communicate the existence of alternative professional opportunities to students, and how do we prepare them to be successful when those opportunities arise? This Forum certainly offers a good beginning. For work in the government, every archaeology student needs to be aware of the website USAJOBS. The job series code for government archaeologist is “0193.” A student looking for work should keep an up-to-date résumé in the system and should set...