Yes, we are sad, in so many ways. Listen to us in the site hut and you'll notice that the price of food is the most recurring theme amongst the ribald humour because we really are that hard up that the price of value satsumas matter.
I'm in my thirties. I've never been able to afford a car and don't see my owning one in the near future either. If I cannot afford to keep a banger on the road what's the chance of ever owning a house? I don't know any field archaeologist who owns a house who hasn't either inherited it/money or had the luck to fall in love with a solvent partner. Come to think of it I don't know many who came out of uni post the abolition of maintenance grants (a much bigger problem than fees, only fees sound sexier) who have managed to make much of a dent in their loans.
Why do I do it?
Well, I've never been able to leave. Archaeology is so different from other professions that it's hard to fit in anywhere else. Archaeologists are asked to be so self-sufficient from the time we start that frankly, we intimidate recruitment staff who fear we won't fit in. Moving sideways seems to get easier the higher you go though, which is perverse as the archaeological bottle-neck is particularly narrow.
Having had candid discussions with professional headhunters I've been told that our low salaries is one of the biggest problems an archaeologist faces in trying to leave the profession. A low salary, as Gary implied, signifies incompetence to prospective employers. (Especially when that job purports to involve a high degree of responsibility.) When archaeological wages are so much lower than other professionals it is not expected that recruiters from other sectors should be aware of our salary range. As so many application forms ask for present salary the archaeologist is fighting a larger prejudice than Indiana Jones's hat from the start. (Of course wages are low because unlike other professions more of us are required to physically do the job.) The longer you dig the harder it is to leave. I've seen it happen to so many I know. And many who do leave go to labouring jobs. Some want to and that's fine, but others don't but find that the muddy boots image leave many interviewers unsure whether the applicant can "come indoors," even with demonstrable computing/research skills.
And, besides the money. I suppose I am just foolish and a little selfish. I want to know what makes people tick and how we got from here to there and where was there in the first place? And how many theres where there anyway? And if somebody passes by I want to tell them a story and listen to their stories to. Take the word archaeologist apart and you get "old word" with "logos" implying "knowledge." I've always translated archaeology to myself as "nosy storyteller," which is what I am. Ever since I first saw an archaeologist at work I knew that that's what I wanted to do. It seemed to amazing that the very ground could speak for people who were dead and gone. I never seriously considered anything else until it was too late.
Sometimes I regret going into it professionally. I never knew how keenly I would feel the lack of having a family to back me up, even with the simple stuff, like having free storage because I have yet to meet the digger who lives completely out of a bag. I've missed the boat for so many things other people who don't live a semi-nomadic life take for granted, BUT I still cannot imagine a life not digging (and telling stories). It's how I make sense of the world.
I might've been paid peanuts and been treated like a monkey, but I know that I am one hell of a good field archaeologist and not a bad historian either
Whether I get to reinvent myself remains to be seen. Anyway, that's why I "do it."
A car is but a dream of exhaust vapours.
ed. Seem to've dropped some words through the hole in my bucket.
