This thread is of interest to me because I am an avocational who has come to
archaeolgy after retirement from a career as an academic bureaucrat with
formal credentials in history.  The first point I wish to make is that no
one has thought to note that ASA annually honours an outstanding avocational
archaeologist, whose res gestae are recorded at length and almost
reverentially in American Antiquity.  Typically, those who are honoured have
not run the cursus honorem (my bias is beginning to show) of formal
qualification as archaeologists, but have been engineers, business
entrepreneurs or, in the case of a recent laureate, a senior military
officer.  This latter reference is to J.F. Pendergast, without whose
publications over the last three decades nothing pertaining to the St
Lawrence Iroquois can be meaningfully discussed.
 
The second point derives from my own experience:  the 'grunt' skills of
field archaeology can be learned through practice; and the organisational,
conceptualisation and heuristic skills can be transferred from previous careers.
 
FDP Carson
London, Ontario