Life in the archaeological marketplace

Abstract

This chapter discusses the realities of life as commercial cultural resource management (CRM) archaeologists. The authors compare and contrast their experiences with different projects, and generally describe what works and what does not in the present-day archaeological marketplace. Drawing from their varied professional experiences, the authors highlight those aspects of archaeological work that tend to go smoothly - and also where problems arise. This includes discussion of who decides how archaeological work is designed, and how much flexibility there is in the cost, time frame, and approach of commercial archaeological fieldwork in relation to different sizes and scales of project. The place of different legal and management frameworks used in archeology is considered, as is the role of different types and size of organization, including in particular the place of freelance archaeological contractors.