Article in The European Archaeologist
This article was published in The European Archaeologist, issue 40, Winter 2013/14
Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe
The EAA Committee on Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe has been working to deliver the Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2014 project since it began on 1 October 2012.
This is a project supported by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union that is bringing together participants from twenty European states to identify how archaeology is defined as a profession in those countries. It is seeking to find out what they do, how they are qualified and rewarded, and most importantly, how to maintain the skills of professional archaeology in the post-2008 economic situation we all find ourselves in. It is a successor to the previous Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe project which ran from 2006-2008.
The project partners have met three times: in York, Rome and then in Pilsen in 2013 immediately before the 19th Annual Meeting of the EAA. Partner organisations in twenty European states are gathering data on employment in all areas of archaeology – including commercial, academic, governmental, museums – in their own countries. The data will cover how many people work as archaeologists, what kind of work they do, what kind of organisations they work for, how much they are paid, what qualifications they hold and many other points of interest.
The data are now being processed, and during the next year they will be producing national reports on the state of archaeological employment in their countries. Once these are complete, a transnational report, comparing and contrasting the situation and approaches to professional archaeology across all of the countries will be prepared and launched at the 20th Annual Meeting in Istanbul.
The committee held a full, open session in Pilsen, which attracted a respectably sized audience on the Saturday morning of the conference to hear twelve papers that looked at the situation in ten of the participating countries and two – Switzerland and the USA – that are outside the project partnership.
The conference presentations and further details on the project are available at http://landward.org/discovering-archaeologists/.
If anyone from a country not already represented in the project would like to participate – it is still possible for new partners to join – then please email Kenneth Aitchison, European Project Coordinator, at kaitchison@yorkat.co.uk.
Kenneth Aitchison (York Archaeological Trust), Gavin MacGregor (Northlight Heritage) and Heleen van Londen (University of Amsterdam).