Back about 34 years ago, the SAA held a conference in San Diego. The keynote
speaker at the banquet bemoaned all the wonderful and promising students who
did not complete Ph.D. or M.A. programs and how the field suffered for not
finding a place for those otherwise outstanding people. At the time, I thought it
an odd topic. While the audience applauded, none of them had a place for
anyone below their academic rank because they were already competing for the few
professor track teaching jobs. Now, there is the key to this whole thread. We
are no longer constrained by academic teaching jobs. We have developed an
enormous field that embraces historians, planners, biologists, museologists, applied
anthropologists, and a few university field class professors as well. There
are so many niches today that did not exist back in 1970. The chap who
castigated people of "lesser" academic rank really was not being fair to the rest of
the profession. I, for one, believe the National Park Service and other federal
agencies should allow for equivalent life experience in determining who is
qualified to conduct archaeology.

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.