What Does the Enrollment Cliff Mean for Archaeology?
What does the enrollment cliff have to do with cultural resource management archaeology?
SuccinctBill
Eating well as an archaeological field technician 1
Field techs are the foundation of CRM archaeology. They are eager, excited, and essential but grossly underpaid. A dollar saved is worth more than a dollar earned which is why it’s critical field techs save their perdiem and food allowance. While there are some financially frivolous archaeologists who spend all […]
The Archaeological Field School System is Broken, Part II
All archaeology students want to know how their degree is going to translate into a gainful employment. Millennials and Gen-Z are as pragmatic as they are impatient. More than previous generations, I feel like they want to know exactly how each action is going to benefit their own personal goals […]
The Archaeological Field School System is Broken, Part I
Field school has become a bottleneck for every student who wants to become a professional archaeologist because most of them are not willing to give up their entire lives to travel away from home for 6 weeks just to see if they want to do archaeology. Here’s what we can do about this.
What do Black archaeologists want from inventory of Black ancestors?
How many African American skeletons are being kept in museums across the United States? How many of these are from persons who sold their bodies to science? How many are from archaeological sites? How many were procured at some distant time in the past when antiquarians, medical schools, and archaeologists […]
“The Chair” is why I don’t blog about archaeology anymore
Since I’m an assistant professor of anthropology, my social media threads are buzzing with conversation about the new Netflix show “The Chair.” Over the past month my friends and family have been asking me things like; Is “The Chair” really what being a professor is like? Is that how academic […]
The 2020 Race Uprisings and Archaeology’s Response 12
Right now, the United States is burning. This is not the first time. It is not the last. In the wake of yet another social maelstrom caused by the Original Sin at the heart of U.S. history, I’ve been getting emails, text messages, and other requests to help archaeologists articulate […]
What undergraduate archaeology students can expect in college
Transitioning from cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology to academia has not been as easy for me as I’d already spent a decade doing CRM before getting hired by a university. This means I’d already gotten used to the rough and tumble world of contract archaeology—going to the field at the […]
Six COVID-19 Cultural Resource Management Archaeology Survival Tips
Cultural resource management archaeology did not exist the last time the world suffered a massive pandemic like COVID-19. We don’t know how the industry or its practitioners will react to global shutdown and rapidly-spreading illness, but we know what happened when our ancestors faced similar conditions. The 1918—1919 Influenza Pandemic […]
Place + Story = Historical Narrative
The San Francisco Bay Area has a unique history based on the role it’s played in shaping the United States. It’s history isn’t always pretty, but it is what makes the Bay Area unique. Echoes of the past are still visible. The landscape was shaped by the fires of Bay […]