| ISSN 1357-4442 | Editor: Simon Denison |
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| COMMENT |
A new survey examines the pay, conditions, and range of jobs in archaeology. Simon Denison takes a look
Archaeology belongs to that exotic group of professions - which also includes sport and the arts - which people enter because they genuinely want to do the work, rather than simply as a way of making money.
Many students, fired up by their early discoveries, fix their sights on a career in archaeology despite its promise of an insecure life and relatively poor pay. Some armchair archaeologists, perhaps readers of this magazine, may dream of quitting their own businesses and taking up the life of the trowel or the microscope. Seasoned professionals, engulfed by deskwork, may wonder where the magic has gone; but few would happily turn their backs on a career that has, for most, become an attachment.
So what is this career, which for so many of us seems so desirable? How many people are involved; and what exactly do they do? What are the conditions of work; and how much is the pay? A new report, Profiling the Profession - published last month jointly by English Heritage, the Institute of Field Archaeologists and the CBA - contains many of the answers. It makes a sobering, and in some respects a surprising read.
The report was based on returned questionnaires sent to all organisations known to employ archaeologists, with answers applying to the state of affairs in early 1998. A profile of the profession as a whole was reached by scaling up the results to take account of non-returned questionnaires. Despite this element of estimation, the report represents the most complete study ever undertaken into the archaeological profession in Britain.
The first surprise is the profession's tiny size, numbering only 4,425 people - equivalent to a single medium-sized public company. The whole profession could fit comfortably, en masse, into the seats at the Royal Albert Hall. No wonder it is so hard for some new graduates to find a job.
Only about a third of the profession - 1,341 people - work for contracting units. 605 work as local government curators, 190 in other local government-funded jobs (mainly museums), 156 in national muse-ums, 644 in universities and colleges, and 680 in national heritage agencies. 170 work in commercial organisations not primarily concerned with archaeology, 25 have paid jobs in archaeological societies, and 461 work in other bodies such as independent museums and charities.
If this breakdown suggests a surprisingly wide range of employment within so small a profession, examination of individual job-types suggests it even more strongly. The report found 31 different types of mainstream job in archaeology, with innumerable unusual jobs held by only one or two people (examples: cathedral archaeolo-gist, defence heritage consultant, human history officer). The mainstream jobs include some held by large numbers of people, such as academics (10 per cent of the profession), monuments and buildings inspectors (5 per cent), `archaeologists' (6 per cent) and excavators (9 per cent) - these two representing a difference of rank; and some held by only a few such as photographers, conservation archaeologists and computing officers (each less than 1 per cent).
Pay, it must be said, is not good on the whole. The average full-time archaeological salary is £17,079. This compares with the average full-time salary of all UK occupations, professional and non-professional, of £19,167. Civil engineers earn £28,286 on average; architects £25,882; librarians £19,010. Archaeologists earn just a shade more than road mainte -nance workers at £16,904. There seems little point comparing archaeologists with lawyers, doctors, journal-ists, accountants, City workers - the comparisons would be too disheartening.
Within archaeology, inspectors earn the most, at £27,586 on average. Academics earn an average of £24,443. Excavators and site assistants, by contrast, earn only £10,094. Moreover, a third of archaeologists work on temporary contracts, the average length being 10 months. Archaeology is certainly no guarantee of a cushioned life, although for those who succeed it can be lucrative. The highest-paid `archaeologists' and county archaeologists earn over £30,000, while some academics and inspectors earn more than £50,000.
The 19th century American philosopher Henry David Thoreau regarded the richest person not as the one with the greatest accumulation of goods, but the one with the greatest amount of free time. By `free time' he meant time spent in activities that one would gladly choose to undertake if one had no need to earn a living.
At a time when the conditions of archaeological work are unlikely, for most archaeologists, to change greatly in the near future, this is a thought that those hoping to make a success of the profession should, perhaps, hold close to their hearts.
Simon Denison edited Profiling the Profession. The survey was conducted by Kenneth Aitchison of Landward Archaeology. Copies of the report are being distributed free by the IFA (to its members) and English Heritage.
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© Council for British Archaeology, 1999