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What pay is like for Archaeologists in the United States - ZSilvia - 16th January 2011
Doug, excellent video. Just got around to watching it. It is interesting about the rising gap between crew chief and lowest wage earner. I think that might be more depressing than the inflation bit because it goes to show how undervalued the field tech. is now and is becoming. I wouldn't be surprised if temp workers are the future with more experienced, higher paid chiefs keeping an eye.
I see your point about a potential interest in construction/contractors. It might come down to exactly what type of development company is in question. I suppose a company doing historic restoration might be more interested in supporting the archaeologist (for higher profits, historic property value increase, Native American curse on the property value a-la Poltergeist, etc) than a company putting in pipes. I know people who work for a few medium sized construction firms that gets contracted mostly for municipal installations and upmarket properties (private marinas, golf courses, etc) and much to my disgust they do what they can to avoid calling in the archaeologists because it slows down their allotted development time. They call them in when it is pretty much unavoidable, if the find is so obviously intrusive that there is nothing they can do, or if the find is on public property. Sketchy stuff definitely goes on regularly and I am certain it is not just the companies I have in mind. Where I come from, construction hates archaeology when it hurts someone's wallet. Take this with the fact that the construction working class is in America tends to be highly Republican and anti-government. Archaeologists are nothing more than red-tape and wasted money to them. This is why the pitch needs to be different when archaeologists engage with these businesses (and their workers) a little more...especially if there is potential for archaeologists to benefit from Labor Laws. I don't know what the solution is though.
What pay is like for Archaeologists in the United States - Doug - 19th January 2011
ZSilvia Wrote:. It is interesting about the rising gap between crew chief and lowest wage earner. I think that might be more depressing than the inflation bit because it goes to show how undervalued the field tech. is now and is becoming.
its funny you mention this. someone sent me a paper published 12 yrs ago on the topic of workers. The data is not perfect but on page 173 the data they do have shows that the wages use to be a lot closer. I am planning on doing the wages for project managers and PI's. to see if this is a trend across all of archaeology with the top getting richer and the bottom well staying the bottom.
you can see the paper I am talking about here
http://sonoma.academia.edu/MarkWalker/Papers/151783/Class_Confrontations_in_Archaeology#Share