Expert: Ralph Salier - 2/27/2009

Question
Hi Ralph,

I was required to do a informational interview for my career interest class and archaeology has always been a career I wanted to go into. I am required to ask a few questions, and i would be extremely grateful if you can help me out. I would love to find out more about this career from someone who has had experience.

1)What activities, duties, and work do you do everyday?

2)How were you trained for this career?

3)What is the salary range for people in your line of work?

4)What are some of the fringe benefits you enjoy?

5)What are the positive aspects of your work?

6)What are the negative aspects of your work?

7)What are some of the major trends you see in this career field? What predictions can you make about this field in the next five to ten years?

8)Is there a lot of competition to get into this field?

9)What are the strongest skills a person must have to do well in this career?

10)What personality traits do the most successful people in this career have?

11)In what other fields can a person with your training go?

12)If you had to choose all over again, would you still enter this field? Why or why not?

13)What is your next career move?

14)Where can i get information about your career?

Thank you sir for your time, I appreciate it a lot!
-Nardeana

Answer
Hi Nardena,

1) when in the field, we lay out sites, dig in the designated areas, map artifacts, move lots and lots of dirt and carefully collect the mapped artifacts in its own bag to retain location information and site data for later evaluation in the lab.

2) Studied at the university for 4 years and had many field seasons both before my education and during.

3) Depends on where and what kind of work you are doing but a "shovel bum" (a worker) may make $15 dollars per hour + living stipend during the field season.  A supervisor or site director may make in the $20 dollar per hour range.

4) Working in the fresh air, doing what you love and beyond this you are lucky to have any fringe benefits.

5) Working with many people on different sites, learning and discovering new things and gaining a better understanding of the people we are excavating.

6) a lot of hard work, dirty, dusty, long days, hot days. bugs.......

7) Due to government regulations any time an environmental evaluation needs to be done, an archaeological one does to.  Under Pres. Bush, the number dropped but now under Pres. Obama, this may go up.  Hard to say.

8) Some but it is hard to say how much.  Many people leave the field due to poor pay and conditions.

9) Percistance, Patience, Perserverance, Geology, Pallanology, Limnology, Malacology, Osteology, Comparative Osteology, Metallugy, Ceramics technology etc.....

10) Patience, Love of science, intuition

11) I always tell people going into Archaeology, that you need to have a back up plan.  Study economics, Education (become a teacher), Social Work, other similar fields that allow you some time off that then allows you  to do archaeology but will make more money if you need it.

12) Yes.  It is what I love to do even after 30+ years!

13) I plan to dig my own grave (An archaeologist joke)

14) Any university or college that supports a program in Archaeology can provide more information and then there are lots of books about the subject and web sites too.

I hope  this helps.  If you have more questions or if I did not answer one sufficently, let me know.

Ralph