Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry, what did you say? Oh, what do I do?
I’m an archaeologist. Yes, it is awesome.
I used to dread this inevitable exchange. Now, don’t get me wrong—I love what I do. To quote the famous archaeologist Kent Flannery, it’s the most fun you can have with your pants on.
Maybe I dread it because I feel awkward talking about myself, but mostly it’s because there are usually two paths the conversation immediately takes:
To answer the first question: I don’t go anywhere. Well, that’s not exactly true, but my research focus is in the Midwestern US. So unlike many of my friends who spend their summers in Mexico or Vietnam, I’ve been to exotic locales like Trempealeau, WI. I’ll get back to this later.
As for the second thing, yes. I have fought many Nazis.
If I can divert you away from this opening exchange, I usually try to get into the realities of what real archaeology is like. Hint: it’s probably not what you’d think. Most people don’t really have any idea what it is archaeologists actually do, so let me clear up a few misconceptions:
1) Most archaeology isn’t glamorous.
Well, at least not in the way people seem to think it might be. There are two types of archaeology in the US: Academic, and contract-based. Sometimes they are mutually exclusive, and sometimes they overlap (universities sometimes provide CRM services, and CRM archaeologists often publish in “academic” contexts).
- Academic archaeology is through university professors or museums. In the US a university archaeologist will typically dig for about 6 weeks during the summer, and the rest of the year is spent analyzing artifacts, teaching college courses, and trying to secure funding for the next round of excavations. This is a simplification, but I think it’s generally accurate.
- Contract-based archaeology is called Cultural Resource Management, or CRM. If the name sounds boring, that’s becuase much of it is driven by historic preservation laws, and the name reflects that relationship. Basically, laws exist in the US that protect historic places. Sometimes when a construction project is funded by money from the federal government, or when federal permits are required, archaeologists must determine if the project will impact archaeological sites (similar requirements are often in place at the State level as well). If it will, then the site is usually at least partially excavated before it is destroyed. The vast majority of archaeology in the US is CRM. A large amount of CRM archaeology is simply determining whether or not archaeological sites are in an area. Only some of the time are there actual large-scale excavations.
Archaeology is lot of hard work. You get very sweaty. Very dirty. Your back will hurt a lot. You will work in the rain. At the end of the day, a lot of archaeology is digging holes and filling them back in. But it’s still pretty cool, and I can hardly believe it’s a job I can actually do.
2. The most important artifacts are garbage.
I would love to find a pile of gold. The media makes it sound like there are gold hoards all over the place, and that they’re easy to find with a little luck. Well, maybe there are, but archaeologists aren’t really concerned with finding them. We’re more interested in finding garbage — basically, stuff that will tell us about how people lived. Roman gold is really cool, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about what it was like to be a Roman. Food garbage and house foundations, on the other hand, can say a whole lot about what life was like. Also, it’s almost never like Pompeii. We usually don’t have temple ruins or lost cities. More often than not, we’re investigating something much more modest like a house or a garbage pile.
Another popular question is, “what’s the best thing you’ve found?” Most of the things I find in the Midwest are tiny pieces of broken pottery, or little broken tools made of stone. Not very exiting in the public eye. To archaeologists, artifacts are good and all, it’s equally if not more important to know where they’re found, or what they’re found with. The coolest thing I’ve experienced was when, in the middle of excavation, I sat back and realized I was sitting inside someone’s house from 1000 years ago. It basically just looked like sand, but it was pretty incredible when I stopped to think about it.
3. We tend to work very slowly.
Archaeology is slow. Excavations are slow. Analysis is slow. This is because we do things very carefully and it all takes a long time. Exavation is done very methodically. We dig to specific depths and constantly measure to make sure we’re doing it right. Excavate a little, then fill out paperwork. Take photographs. Excavate some more, fill out some more paperwork. Make maps. Take more photos. Measure everything. Sometimes doing it properly means going slow, and by the end of the field season only a small part of the site’s been investigated.
Analysis takes a long time. Everything has to be double-checked. Labels are applied. Everything is sorted. Categorized. Entered into a database. Everything gets new bags. Pottery pieces are glued together. Charcoal is sent off for radiocarbon dating. If stuff gets mixed up or mislabeled, it’s really hard to sort it out in the future. That’s one reason there’s so much paperwork. Makes sorting out problems easier.
Then of course there’s writing up your findings and publishing them. This is another whole dimension to why it all takes a while. Depending on the project, it might end up being several years before results are made widely public.
4. You don’t have to go somewhere exotic for archaeology.
Getting back to where I started: People tend to associate archaeology with exotic places. Jungles. Deserts. Foreign countries. Why? Probably Indiana Jones. In reality, people have lived on every continent except Antarctica for thousands and thousands of years. There’s a lot of archaeology wherever you are right now. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, a major research institution and Big Ten school, is built on top of dozens of Native American burial mounds. 900 years ago, a Native American city with thousands of people was flourishing just across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis. The idea that archaeology is an exotic thing taking place in a jungle just isn’t really true. A lot of archaeology is being done in farm fields in small-town USA.
5. It’s science.
Yes, archaeologists like to find cool things. What qualifies as cool for me may not for non-archaeologists (see #2), but we still want to make exciting discoveries. That said, we’re not just going out trying to track down fancy objects. We’re not excavating for the sake of excavating. The whole reason we care at all is to answer questions about how people lived, how societies functioned, what life was like, and how humanity has changed through time. We follow a scientific process to learn these things. We start with hypotheses based on our existing knowledge, then collect data through excavation and analyses. Hopefully, the hypothesis is supported by the things you find. If not, tweak the hypothesis and start over. Either way, what do artifacts say about the people who left them behind?
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