Having now worked as a finds specialist/lab
archaeologist/material culture researcher (whatever you want
to call it) in the USA, UK, and Australia, my feeling is
that the situation is best in the USA, next best in the UK,
and worst in Australia.
In the USA, there's an embedded culture of hiring lab
archaeologists in both the contract and museum spheres. In
my experience, even historic house museums with only three
archaeologists on staff will usually include a dedicated
lab/artefact post, and many of the major CRM firms have lab
staff. So on balance, it's far more possible to make a
career in artefact work in historical/post-medieval
archaeology in the USA than the UK or Australia.
Paul's already addressed the British situation. I would
only to his comments that add the expectation in Britain is
often that the finds specialist will be multi-period rather
than period specific - which can present challenges to those
of us who are much better in one period than another.
However, it's not entirely doom and gloom - though I concede
that one position does not an artefact paradise make, at
least two of the people on the shortlist for the recent
Sheffield historical archaeology lectureship were finds
specialists, including the person Sheffield hired.
Here in Australia, I have managed to pay taxes as a
free-lance material person over the last year - though this
has been partially a matter of good luck (and the Australian
tax threshold). I'd argue that the artefact culture is far
less developed here on balance than either the USA or the
UK. I'm happy to be corrected by Greg, Iain, Leah and Gaye
(and any other Australian listmembers who might be reading),
but I don't know of a single Australian CRM firm or museum
that has a permanent historical archaeology artefact
specialist staff member. Nor do I know of a university
archaeology department that has a historical archaeology
artefact specialist on staff. As far as I'm aware (and once
again, I'm happy to be corrected), Victoria is currently the
only state or territory to have state-wide artefact
management guidelines, and the only state or territory to
have its own archaeology lab (though an archaeology lab with
only one - part-time - archaeologist actually on staff).
And while we could all cite notable exceptions, this lack of
guidelines carries through to site reports; if no one's
going to actually _require_ artefact analysis to take place,
then some people are inevitably going to save money by
leaving it out. Even where it does take place there are
often problems; for example, I'm sure many of us based down
here know examples of important recent Australian
excavations where the ceramics analysis was carried out
through sherd counts rather than vessel counts.
Now, the situation has undoubtedly been improving here over
the last decade, so I don't want to give the impression that
things are irredeemably bad, or that I'm trying to tar
everyone with the same brush (because I'm not), but where
the USA has managed to maintain its tradition of
professional artefact specialists, and the UK has a
once-proud tradition that currently faces some issues,
Australia has never really had an artefact tradition in the
first place(or perhaps it would be fairer to say that it's
still building one from the ground up?)
So this is one area where I think we can all envy our
US-based professional cousins.
Alasdair
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 22:33:53 +0100
From: paul courtney <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: What is an arch; the finds problem
I don't know how bad the situation in States but in Britain
there is a major
problem re artefact expertise. The museum profession is
gradually turning
all curators into managers and increasingly labels subject
specialsts as
dangerous dinosaurs to be made redundant at the next
re-organisation. Finds
are generally not sexy in academia and finds work is often
low paid in CRM
work and seen as low status work; plus you are often given
impossible time
limits to do anything meaningful. Most artefact specialists
in British
archaeology are now free-lance (there may be some rich
free-lances but I
haven't paid tax for 10 years) and aging. My wife recently
went to a meeting
about the lack of object expertise in museums but the main
response was to
expect academics and others to provide the expertise to
museums for nothing-
fat chance. In Britain any academic who does anything which
doesn't benefit
the next research rating is going to get roasted by their
boss and CRM
people have to eat and put money into that over lean pension
fund. And who
is going to specialise in finds and make your career
prospects even worse
than in arcaheology generally.
paul courtney
Leicester
UK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Alasdair Brooks
Material Culture Specialist / Lab Archaeologist
SHA Newsletter Current Research Editor for Australia/NZ
1/62 Gooch Street
Thornbury, Vic 3071
Australia
03 9416 8484
0429 198 532
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