PhD options

[Oxbeast]

I have said for the last few years that I would only do a PhD if it gave me the opportunity to teach myself significantly more skills, and skills which would be useful outside of archaeology at that. I mean things like databases, GIS, surveying, statistics. Even things like interviewing people and questionaries. Someone more sciencey than me might include materials analysis, soil chemistry, etc. A friend of mine worked on a CASE studentship looking at perceptions of landscape. She was then able to get a job in the department of law looking at perceptions of crime. Now she is back in the archaeology department looking at something else. There is no way that I would (or even could) proceed without funding. A PhD like 'lets look at all the archaeology from period X in area Y' might just be too vague to be useful, not add to a skillset, and be too general to get some really good publications from.

Another thing to worry about is that you may be overqualified for certain roles. when we needed someone new, some bod with a PhD turned up. All right, he did come across as a bit of a know it all, which not everyone necessarily would, but that may have been a reason why he didn't get the job.

[Kel]

I'm just a beginner but I've scrubbed plenty of pot sherds with folks who have PhDs and no other job options. From what I've seen, you do a PhD because it's important to you on a personal level. These days, you don't seem to do it to improve your job prospects unless you're aiming for academia, which appears to be an increasingly unlikely/insecure option. I've certainly met people who've been handicapped by their "over qualification" in several employment fields, not just archaeology.

[Unitof1]

"Your odds are closer to 1 in 250. Those I would say are very generous odds."

but they are probably better than earning a living out of digging

[Boxoffrogs]

A recent National Trust post had in excess of 700 applications for a single position...

[cwmbrancity]

Thank-you all for taking the time in providing your well thought out responses

I'm at a loss what to say now myself, plenty to think about if nothing else, although i kinda suspected things were as dour as some of the information given

There are multiple reasons for wanting to follow the doctoral path.

The main one concerns a desire to apply a lot of the pro's and cons of so much of the post-processual bs i waded thru b4 and focus it on the archaeology of a relatively small micro-region. One of the inspirations for this was a guest-lecture i went to by Dominic Powlesland (sp?) and his work on the Vale of Pickering. An inspiring speaker to say the least. Rather than get trapped by chronologies, he showed how you can get a richer sense of an area by broadening the overall chronology of a place. Blah blah anyway, so thats part of the motivation. And, so far as the theoretical slant goes, a case of underpinning the motivations behind certain human behaviour. My hope would be then to apply such theory to an archaeology of a very distinctive, and relatively small, geographical region, ie: the Black Mountains, and then put its archaeological heritage into context.

Secondly, with summer digs run by Uni's during the summer, my hope was to really focus a whole lot more on the practical skills required. Any niche skill-sets that might improve employability etc. This has been something that has proven difficult in the extreme to acquire while working near enough full-time outside of archaeology. My undergrad and MA were almost worthless in this respect, as archaeology job specifications demand a whole lot more than i can claim to have. I can not give up the work i'm doing yet to dedicate more time to building up my archaeological skills/cv, because if i did i'd be effectively homeless. I work a 6 day week and after 3600 job applications (of all varieties and spheres) and literally only ONE interview, if i gave this job up i'd be left on the rock n roll......so i'm saving all i can in order to achieve some kind of financial buffer IF this PhD plot works out. A very harsh lesson/double-edged sword.

In Wales there is a fair amount of money and wank thrown at "Heritage Interpretation", due in part to the Assembly Govt and the region's industrial heritage, and part of my thesis would be to demonstrate how a prehistory of the Black Mountains could fit in to all this, with one rather obvious but twitchy eye on post-doctoral options.

All your time and help is gratefully appreciated

[ATTACH=CONFIG]819[/ATTACH]

[Unitof1]

glad to be of help

[JSA]

Don't do it. If you have had to pay for your postgrad courses you are not in the top flight and will be wasting your time, especially if you have no experience in archaeology. The only sense in doing it would be to further your archaeology career, which is as you admit, nonexistent.