What Does the Enrollment Cliff Mean for Archaeology?
What does the enrollment cliff have to do with cultural resource management archaeology?
Higher education
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 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 […]
My One Wish for Cultural Resource Management Archaeology in 2019 2
Cultural resource management archaeology was never even mentioned during my undergraduate career. I finished my Bachelor’s degree in 2001 but didn’t learn about CRM until about a year after I’d already graduated. Things had changed a little bit by the time I finished my Master’s in 2005. A course on […]
To the First Generation Archaeology Student
Before continuing with this post, I just have a few things to say to all the first-generation and working class college students in the United States: You matter. You are worthy of college. Your university is better off having you there. You belong in college. Hard work, dedication, and skills […]
What would archaeology look like if it were easy?
I haven’t given up on the idea of buying historical properties, fixing them up, and maintaining them as a rental property. I feel like this is also a viable way we can keep the historical fabric of American neighborhoods alive. I’ve written about this before, but my previous timeframe might […]
CRM archaeologist: Thinking about going back to school? Read this. 1
As I was writing this blog post at the end of August, 2018, I started thinking about the upcoming academic school year. Courses and programs of great value to the next generation of cultural resource management archaeologists exist (like the Heritage Resource Program at Simon Frasier University). Not all of […]
Which college courses helped my archaeology career?
Last month, I noticed a familiar name in anthropology news. Current University of North Dakota dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Debbie Storrs, a former anthropology professor at my alma mater University of Idaho, recently proposed conflating anthropology and several other related fields into a new School of […]
It is okay to use your anthropology PhD in another industry
As we approach the summer, hundreds of anthropology college students are starting to seriously think about their job prospects. Students who will return to campus at the end of the summer are thinking about conducting research or landing a summer job related to their major. If you’re an archaeologist and […]
Should archaeology jobs should happen before college? 1
In 2014, I attended a workshop at the Society for American Archaeology conference in Austin that focused on building a career in archaeology. The workshop was taught by Carol Ellick and Joe Watkins, who are also the authors of the powerful book The Anthropology Graduate Student’s Guide: From Student to […]