Why are archaeologists payed so low?

Question

$11 an hour after four years of uni and three years of digging is pathetic.

Answer 1

It's all about demand. People tend to find doctors, lawyers, and Accountants more useful, ergo they are paid more. Entertainers like movie stars and baseball players offer us a welcome reprieve from daily life, so we pay lots of money for them to do their thing and keep us entertained.

Digging up bones to study long dead cultures has, at best, an indirect benefit to our society. It's unglamorous work. to boot. People just aren't in a rush to know exactly what history is like, people are generally concerned with the "now." Low demand means low wages.

People who do those kind of things have a higher purpose for doing it than the money. They have a genuine passion for Archeology. I, for one, would rather work for nothing pay at a job I was truly passionate about (to the point of waking up excited to go to work) than have an empty life while making a 6-digit salary working for some investment banking company.

Answer 2

Where are you digging? That's part of the problem, because, yes, that's pathetic. I've worked for a year and a half, and my next job pays $13.50/hr. Where you are is definitely a factor, because this is not a job people take to get rich. Most archaeologists would love to work in the Southwest, for instance. Therefore, the Southwestern firms can pay crap wages because someone, somewhere, will take them. DC's got so many people that they can also afford to hire cheaply. Go out to, say, Wyoming, where they're having oil booms. They need people desperately. The Midwest isn't terribly popular, so you can get some money there, too.

Also, some companies are just cheap. Again, there will be people who will take the crap wages jobs, so some companies, when making their bids, will take that into account and be cheap with the employees. If you've worked for three years and you're not in the Southwest or the Bahamas, you're worth more than than $11/hr. However, if you are just out of school, you'll have to put up with the low end for a job or two. It'll get better quickly, as you get experience.

If you want to make more than the normal $11-$14/hr, go back to school and get your master's. You can be the boss-man then and get paid a bit more. Or quit archaeology and work in construction. You still get to be outdoors doing heavy manual labor, but you get paid a lot more and you get health insurance.

Answer 3

I personally do not know how much they make but I would have to question that rate as I don't think it is that low. However, if you love what you do then the $ should not matter. I would love to be an archaeologist and to find an artifact that told me something about a culture. Imagine if you were the first person to touch the object in 400 or more years. Who else has that opportunity.That would be amazing to me.

Answer 4

More archaeologists volunteer than get paid. Many people pay to work on sites. There are very few companies that perform archaeology. So where does any money at all come from?

Grants, and government-mandated archaeological work on public construction projects, for example roads.

My first course in arkie grad school was how to apply for grants.

*oh for the guy up there who thinks dinosaurs co-existed with humans, they didn't, not by a long shot.

Answer 5

as an aside: there is evidence showing dinosaurs and humans coexisted, DUH!

I m also struggling to decide what to do with my anthro BA, its a lot of fun finding the answer.

Answer 6

Any ditch digger will tell you the SAME thing! I guess people who get their hands "dirty"- are not afforded the same "respect" as those who push papers from one side of a desk to another. It's just one of the sad realities of the working world...

Answer 7

Why are celebrities paid so much if they do absolutely nothing for society?

It's a mystery.

Answer 8

Because know one cares about dinosaurs, except for 4th graders. Not trying to be rude.

Answer 9

I hear that their pay scale is in the dirt. ;)