(This is the first in a 3-part series on a workshop focused on the future of cultural resource management archaeology that was given as part of the University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology Centennial celebration.) Cultural resource management companies in Tucson joke about the fact that some of them have […]
Every now and then, I hear from an aspiring archaeologist who is confused by the things they read on social media about the cultural resource management industry. The source of their confusion comes from the following conversation: 1) Somebody says CRM archaeology sucks. 2) Even though archaeology is their dream […]
Last week I helped a friend and peer get a good shot at her first job in cultural resource management archaeology. She’d just finished her anthro B.A. and I worked with her this summer. I quickly recognized that she had a lot of talent and promise. She’s the kind of […]
(This is a guest post distilled from conversation threads created by the active and experienced members of two cultural resource management archaeology Facebook groups: the “North American Archaeological Technicians” [390 members] and the “Archaeo Field Techs” [1,557 members]. Personal identities have been omitted in order to protect the privacy of […]
This week, a discussion was sparked on the Facebook Archaeo Field Techs’ Group (FYI: If you’re an archaeologist or an aspiring one and you have a FB account, you need to join this group. It’s an excellent way to stay current on happenings in the industry). The conversation focused on […]
In my experience, most cultural resource management companies do not like to hire new employees. New hires take time to get up to speed. A CRM archaeology PI once told me it takes 18 months to two years just to get a new field tech, crew chief, or principal investigator […]
My wife isn’t an archaeologist but she is a hiring manager. She uses the same processes to hire new employees as nearly every archaeology company (except her job doesn’t use the hidden job market as liberally as the cultural resource management archaeology industry does). Her department has some entry-level positions […]
I once heard a story about paper and archaeology that I will never forget. A close friend told me that she once worked at an emergency data recovery project in Arizona where a prehistoric village had just been inadvertently discovered. The excavations included the meticulous removal of a significant number […]
Time is money in cultural resource management archaeology. Sometimes, field archaeologists and GIS specialists have strained relationships within their CRM companies because field archaeos do not always know how to create maps using GIS software. We think the GIS people can just conjure a map from thin air in less […]
Don’t you just love it when you get a PDF of a project area floating in the middle of some unidentified terrain? Just a polygon overlain upon some barren desert, forest quadrat, or urban freeway with very little context? And, you’re, somehow, expected to plan your cultural resource management archaeology […]
