It's a tough time to be a graduate. Jobs in any sector are scarce and the chances of being able to actually apply what you have learned through your degree in the workplace are slim. This is a very real problem for students of archaeology and Beatrix Arendt addresses options available in "Making it Work: Using Archaeology to Build Job Skills for Careers Other Than Archaeology" in the latest issue of Public Archaeology.
"A recent online article in The
Daily Beast listed archaeology as one of the thirteen most useless undergraduate
degrees. The article failed to identify transferable job skills gained while
engaged in archaeological work. Further, archaeological field programmes and
labs offer an alternative learning environment that benefits some students.
This
article reviews two archaeological projects that used archaeology as a form of
social activism to provide employment and education to an under-served community
as a fundamental aspect of its goals. The Hopedale Archaeology Project is an
archaeology field project based in a north-east Canadian community that provides
education and work opportunities for Inuit students. The Veterans Curation
Program based in the United States provides temporary employment to recently
discharged military veterans in an archaeological and archival curation lab.
These programmes assist individuals to
re-establish themselves within the
workforce and add to their academic and professional growth, as well as
incorporate a public outreach component that makes archaeology and history more
accessible to the public.
Most archaeologists engage in a wide range of administrative and management
skills to conduct excavations as well as computer and digitization skills, which
are applicable in practically all work environments. Harnessing these skill sets
and using them for alternative education and work opportunities can make
archaeology and history more accessible to the public, while assisting
individuals to re-establish themselves within the workforce by adding to their
academic and professional growth.
Engaging in archaeological
projects lends itself to the development of specific learning situations,
particularly incorporating active learning where individuals have the
opportunity to explore and experiment. Many other researchers have
explored the educational value of archaeology via activities that require
analytical thinking, problem-solving, and cooperation; however, few have analysed the
potential for using archaeology as a tool that provides transferable job skills
in fields outside of archaeology."
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