Careers In Archeology

Careers In Archeology: Digging For History

Careers in archeology relate to digging up things that will tell you about centuries old history. Archeologists dig up artifacts and try to piece together the remains as to tell us about cities to try and teach us how people lived and their cultures that they had. They find things from hundreds even thousands of years ago.

But did you know that not all careers in archeology involve things that happened long ago?

There are many different archeology careers.

Careers in Archeology: Not Just History Finders

There are different careers in archeology, and they all do not involve finding historical artifacts. For example, there is forensic archeology. If you are interested in law and helping to solve crimes, this may be the career for you. Forensic archeologists dig through evidence at crime scenes and help inspect the evidence. Today forensic archeologists play a great part in helping solve mysteries and crimes.

Another career in archeology is rescue archeology. A rescue archeologist studies a geographic region. As a rescue archeologist you will try to find out why natural disasters happen in that area. Or sometimes you may study an area just to make sure that it is safe to put up a major highway or a building or another structure.

Physical archeology is another career in archeology. This quite new career focuses on a certain group of people rather than on civilization as a whole. Maritime archeologists study shipwrecks. These can be from long ago in history to the present time.

A project archeologist is a type of archeologist manager. Your responsibilities as an archeologist manager would be to oversee all excavations, applying for funds and grants. You would also write up all reports of the activities and discoveries for all of your archeologist teams.

One more career in archeology would be an archaeobotanist. As an archaeobotanist, you will be studying plant remains from a historical site. You will study what kind of plants that they are, how they grew and what they were used for. For example were they used for medicines, or food?

Archeologists: Where do they work?

Archeologists can work at many different places. As an archeologist you can work at many different places. You could possibly work in a museum. You would have to develop and set up displays that are from historical sites. You may also work in high school or college, teaching archeology.

Archeologists also work in national parks. As an archeologist at a national park, your job would be to conduct tours and to offer information to tourists as well as monitoring sites. Or you could work in a government or private funded lab, such as a development lab for a pharmaceutical company.

Archeologists can also be found in theaters, helping to design backdrops and sets for historical drama. Or maybe as an archeologist you can work in a zoo and help design animal friendly displays.

Careers in Archeology: How can you become one?

So this all sounds great to you and you want to become an archeologist. Now you need to know what it is going to take for you to become an archeologist. Well you will need a lot of college. Most archeologists must have at least a masters or a PHD. If you only have a bachelor’s degree it will limit what fields of archeology that you can get into. Training in statistics and mathematics is very important to having a career in archeology.

You will also need to have a very good knowledge of computers and have great oral and written skills. It is also a good thing if you have a lot of perseverance, because it can take years of digging and studying before you come up with a final analysis.

So if this all interests you, then get started because it may take you years to become an archeologist but the end result will be very rewarding and gratifying.