Eating well as an archaeological field technician 1

Field techs are the foundation of CRM archaeology. They are eager, excited, and essential but grossly underpaid. A dollar saved is worth more than a dollar earned which is why it’s critical field techs save their perdiem and food allowance. While there are some financially frivolous archaeologists who spend all their perdiem, the wisest CRMers know perdiem has huge potential to supplement base salary and is critical to their longevity in CRM.

I used to be one of the frivolous ones, spending all my perdiem on fancy dinners and long nights at the bar when I first started working in CRM. But I ended up working with some folks who showed me the error of my ways. 

• I had a crew chief who used his perdiem to pay for his wife’s tuition at a local community college so they didn’t have to take out any loans.
• I have a friend and fellow CRMer who used perdiem and food allowance money to buy a new car when his broke down. He had enough to pay down the loan significantly lowering his monthly payments.
• In 2011, I saved enough perdiem in 9 months to buy plane tickets to Hawaii and cover two weeks of lodging for my wife, son, and I. Didn’t have to crack a single credit card while we were there either.

Those are just the stories I know personally. There are undoubtedly others who have done the same or more extraordinary accomplishments from just being frugal with that food money.

What enables an archaeological field tech to save their perdiem?

The easiest way to save perdiem is to be self-sufficient when you go out into the field. Save money by being prepared so you don’t have to buy anything when you leave town if you don’t want to. Being able to store food and prepare meals in your room is a way you can save hundreds of dollars each field session. To do that, you’re going to need the Holy Trinity of Archaeology Field Lodging, food, and a few other supplies.

When I first started in CRM, the Holy Trinity of Field Lodging wasn’t guaranteed. You could find it, but it took some work. There were hotels that said they had internet, but they meant you could use a desktop computer in the lobby. Some places had a mini-fridge or microwave, but they didn’t always have both. I spent an inordinate amount of time scrolling through the list of motels near our project areas to figure out how I could attain the Holy Trinity. Fortunately, things have changed. What is this Trinity of which I speak?

The Holy Trinity of CRM Archaeology Field Lodging

As long as you’re in a place with electricity, I consider this the minimum of what CRMers need while in the field:

Free internet,

A mini-fridge, and

A microwave.

If you can provide those three things, you can keep CRMers reasonably satisfied. They are also essential to cooking and storing food in your motel room. Unless you’re deep in the backcountry, all three of those things are available in 70% of the places where cultural resource management takes place in the United States in the 2020s. Sometimes you can find other amenities like laundry, free breakfast, pools, and hot tubs.

(NOTE: I also consider air conditioning and heat a necessity depending on what region in which you’re working. No AC in AZ is a no go. Similarly, no heat in North Dakota is abuse.)

(ANOTHER NOTE: Free breakfast is also a rad luxury but not a necessity. You can save money and thrive without free breakfast if you plan accordingly. Also, you may be leaving for the field before they set out the breakfast anyway and they may be unwilling to put it out early enough for you and your crew.)

(MOST IMPORTANT NOTE: In a world where Airbnb and short-term rental homes are cutting deeply into motel profits, you can negotiate to arrange for the Holy Trinity with the motel before you go. Imagine you’re a hotel manager and someone calls you and says that they’ll rent out half a dozen motel rooms in rural Michigan for 2 months from Monday—Thursday, which are their slowest days, if they can provide mini-fridges and microwaves in your rooms. It’ll cost less than $1,200 to get all that stuff off Amazon, which will help you bring in like $4,800/week for 8 weeks. Spend $1,200; generate $38,400 in revenue. And, your rooms will be open for the busy weekends. Seems like a no-brainer to me.)

Maintaining your health in the field is another powerful motivator to cook your own meals in your hotel room. You can save money while providing healthy, filling meals for the whole time you’re away from your kitchen if you have the right equipment and supplies. Staying healthy means doing what you can to eat things from throughout the food pyramid, not just sugar, fat, and super processed carbs. Finding vegetables is the hardest thing in the field. Many remote towns don’t have grocery stores, which is crazy because many of those towns are near where things like beef, poultry, vegetables, and fruit are grown. You can fill this void by bringing fruit and veg from home. This is even easier if you have proper equipment.

What do you need to cook in your motel room?

Those CRMers who cook in their motel rooms use a wide range of equipment but the following list is pretty basic for several reasons:

• It’s cheap to get these items. Most of them you already have at home
• They take little space in the company vehicle. I used to pack this stuff in the duffel bag I used for fieldwork. Some of this I still bring with me in my carry-on luggage when I travel with my family.
• They can make a wide range of dishes.
• They take little to no cleaning.

Field Tech Hotel Room Cooking List

The following list assumes you have electricity. There is a whole other list of supplies if you’re camping out in the field. Here’s what I used to bring with me to the hotel for the 9 years I was doing CRM full time. I still bring many of these items with me when I travel to the field even though I’m not a full time CRMer anymore.

Cooking and cleaning items:

Ceramic bowl, spork or spoon and fork, tiny sponge, shampoo vial of dish soap, a pocketknife or scissors you don’t use in the field or on polluted sites, and an electric hot pot.

All of this should be able to fit into the electric hot pot.

You can bring a propane-powered camping cook set (pot, burner, ect.) but don’t use it in the hotel room. An open flame at most motels is grounds for getting kicked out. If you use propane, you’ll need to do it outside in the parking lot or motel patio.

I also bought one of these portable electric kettles last year and have been bringing it with me during regular travel. It’s great and boils water super fast. They’re great for making easy stuff like ramen or minute rice and are easy to bring on airplanes but the electric pot is better for making full meals.

Food storage: You should plan on doing what you can to make all of your meals in your hotel room. This means you need a way to bring food with you into the field. My friend Justin Dunnavant totally impressed me with this UCO Mess Kit when we were in the field in the Virgin Islands in 2022. I saw it cover his needs flawlessly for a month. I got one once I got back to the mainland and have used it backpacking and for lunch at work. It is definitely a good thing to have. If you don’t have this sort of thing, the cheap sandwich sized Tupperware work great for everything that isn’t too soupy. Cheap sandwich sized Tupperwares can become bowls and plates. Use them till they melt or crack, then recycle them. You will only need 2 or 3 because you can clean them in your room.

Insulated lunch bag: You can use a simple plastic grocery bag or get one of these insulated bags that are washable and easy to reuse. 

Reusable grocery bags and these lunchbags cut down on how many plastic bags you’re using in your life. There’s also a chance you’ll keep your lunch cool until you eat it with one of these.

Freezer packs: Sometimes I used one of those freezer packs in my lunchbox to keep things cool. “Blue” chemical ones stay frozen the longest. You can also use a small water bottle, but it won’t last much after lunch. If you’re gonna go with the water bottle, freeze Pedialyte in the bottle so you have a hydrating beverage at the end of the day.

With that mess kit, you can make a lot of different meals for dinner and lunch. I’m kinda a minimalist on this so the whole kit I just described can fit in the corner of one duffel bag easily. Some people go bonkers bringing refrigerators, Yeti coolers, crock pots, and George Foreman Grills. That’s great if they want to cook up a storm; I always contributed to big things like BBQs and crocks of delicious food but was doing what I could to not take up too much space in the company rig with a bunch of gear that I was only going to use once or would make such a huge trough of food that I had no way to keep it cool. Do your thing but remember to cause no harm and be a good citizen. 

What sort of things could you be making in the field?

That depends on you. What do you like to eat? What do you think you can make in a motel room? How much time do you want to spend cooking? Personally, I do not like cooking so the things I suggest folks make in your room are very basic, requiring boiling water at most. However, I’ve worked with a few gourmets who really enjoyed cooking good food. These are just a few things I make for myself while deployed on a field project.

Coffee: I am hopelessly addicted to coffee so I make sure I never find myself more than a few hours away from a fresh cuppa joe. I’ve had several renditions of one of these French press mugs. Here is another version. I highly endorse them.

A French press mug is great for coffee and tea. It is much cheaper than the Starbucks instant Via packets. I keep some Vias in my toiletries bag just in case everything goes wrong. I also bring tea and EmergenC’s if I’m feeling sick, but coffee is my main jam.

Here are some meals I regularly eat when I’m in the field.

Breakfast:

Oatmeal: Instant oats with cinnamon, clove, turmeric, coriander, nuts, dried fruit. You can spice it up with dried milk powder, peanut powder, and/or cocoa packets if you want. Prepare the dry mix yourself, enough for the whole week, in a large Tupperware or ziplock bag while you’re at home. Boil water. Pour oat mixture into bowl for breakfast. Add boiling water until texture is right. Add honey, sugar, peanut butter, ect. to taste

Coffee: Boil water. Add coffee grounds to French press mug. Wait until its ready. Pour into paper cup. Add milk sugar ect. To taste but I suggest buying good coffee and drinking it black.

Breakfast cereal: You know what to do. Buy the kind of cereal that comes in a bag or toss the box. Granola is my favorite, especially if you add nuts to it. Buy milk when you get to the town where you’ll be staying, and you know you’re going to have a refrigerator.

Fruit: Apples and oranges travel easiest. Dried fruit is easiest of all to bring with. It’s also good to eat what’s its hot because fresh fruit is gonna get whack in your backpack when it gets toasty. Bananas rule if you can keep them from getting yucky.

Breakfast sandwich or wrap: This is a great one if you can get ahold of cheese, lunchmeat, and other fixings. Here’s where those fast-food condiment packets really come in handy.

Yogurt and granola: Pretty self-explanatory. Mix yogurt and granola in a bowl. Add nuts, dried fruit, or fresh fruit to make this more substantial.

Lunch:

Sandwiches and wraps: These are the easiest, most versatile, and best field lunch. Tomatoes are yummy on sandwiches but its best to put them on when you’re ready to eat otherwise your whole thing is gonna get doughy. Cheese can get sketchy too, especially in the heat. PB&J is most reliable sandwich on the planet. A triple decker PB&J is my mainstay in the field. Been eating them for 20 years.

Wraps/Burritos: These are another great way to break up the monotony in your diet. Just make a sandwich on a tortilla and voila. Make a PB&J on a tortilla, roll it up and cut it into little pinwheels. My kids used to love these “peanut butter sushi” when they were in preschool, and I like them in the field as a 43-year-old man. Veggies, cheese, meat, PB&J— all are great on a tortilla, just not all together at the same time. One or two wraps should do the job. Best of all, tortillas can’t get crushed in your grocery bag like bread can. 

Charcuterie board: This is a great “panic lunch” (e.g. “I don’t know what the Fu¢k to bring for lunch and I woke up late, so let’s just pile some $hit into a Tupperware and get to the truck). Just chomp cheese, crackers, lunchmeat, veggies, and tuna fish, or salmon while your’e out in the field. It’s a field tech charcuterie board.

Leftovers: Most are sketchy when unrefrigerated unless it’s pizza or Chinese food. Mexican leftovers can be serviceable unless they’re covered with tons of cheese and sour cream.

Dinner:

Dinner is the easiest meal since you have the most time to prepare it. Here’s where you can shine.

Motel Room Curry: For this you need some Trader Joe’s Indian or TastyBite packets. Boil water and make some Minute Rice. Heat up the curry pack. Fill your bowl with rice and add curry until you’re full.

Motel Room Ramen Bowl: Another banger but this can be greatly improved if you get frozen veggies from the grocery store after you get there. Frozen mixed veggies and edamame make this meal more complete. In your boiler pot, throw in the water you’d use to make a brick ramen packet. Then, pour in a bunch of frozen veggies. Bring to a boil and cook the veggies until their piping hot. Now, add the ramen brick and cook until it’s to your liking. Eat while hot.

Motel Room Bean and Cheese Burrito: Not getting enough tortillas in the field? Make some of these puppies and you’ll be good to go. This one works excellently with a can of black beans, kidney beans, or garbanzos. Make minute rice in your boiler pot. Open a can of beans and microwave a serving of them until they’re piping hot. Scoop rice onto a tortilla. Add beans. Throw on some shredded cheese, hot sauce, or salsa if you like.

Hotel Room Nachos: For this one, you’re going to need a paper plate. Put a bunch of corn chips on a plate. Cover them with canned olives, black beans, or bean dip. Cover with shredded cheese. Microwave until the cheese is melted. Add salsa, onions, tomatoes, peppers, or hot sauce to taste.

Chips and salsa: Self explanatory. Not really a meal but sometimes you don’t want to do anything but take a shower then just lay there and watch shows.

Pizza: Order a whole pizza for yourself and save some for lunch.

Soup: Canned or dried. In a box or a packet. You can heat it directly in the hotpot but will need to clean it out good so it doesn’t damage the heating element. Amazing for cold days. Bread and cheese can round this out nicely.

The “Universal Meal”

This is good for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Bread or tortilla + vegetables, cheese, and protein. Needs little refrigeration if you choose the right cheese. Add various sauces and spices for taste.

Some Personal Tips for Meal Prepping while in the Field:

• You are eating to live. This ain’t gotta be gourmet $hit. You just gotta save $ and make it to the next day. 
• Simple and consistent is best. The fewer ingredients, the less food you are going to waste.
• In the field, never separate yourself from your lunch. Ever.
• The goal is to have enough food to eat without having to eat out every night so you can save your per diem. You are sacrificing now so you can enjoy yourself later.
• Think about how you’re going to get vegetables and nutrients in towns where there aren’t any grocery stores. Do what you can to provide fiber for yourself: fresh fruit and root vegetables are easy to bring and cook in a boiler pot. Dehydrated soups are good too.
• Limit your intake of fried foods. Those drain your energy over time, slime up your gastrointestinal tract, and are so unhealthy.
• Don’t eat from a gas station more than once a day.
• Make sure you have the level of calories you think is sufficient each day. Some folks don’t eat breakfast. Skipping lunch in the field is dangerous. Dinner is also important too.
• Slowly expand your rotation of meals. That you won’t get sick of eating out of a motel room’s mini-fridge for a couple years.
• Know about where you’re staying. Is there a grocery store? Will you have a fridge?
• Just like camping, plan your meals (B/L/D)
• Try not to eat out more than twice per field session. When you go out, get enough to have leftovers if you have a mini-fridge
• Minimize trips to the bar or eliminate them altogether. Saves you money. Keeps you out of trouble. Better for your health.
• If you drink, try to drink in public and don’t overdo it. Try not to drink alone in your room. Try not to get wasted in someone else’s hotel room. Remember, when you’re in the field you are always at work. Even when you are sleeping. Don’t let alcohol lead to decisions that ruin your career.

GROCERIES: It’s a good idea to bring a bag of groceries with you to the motel because you never know what’s going to happen when you get out there. Bring at least enough stuff for the first couple days. You may not have time to go to the grocery store when you first get there. The town may not have a grocery store. You might get back from the field so late that you just don’t wanna go. When getting groceries for fieldwork, focus on non-perishables, except for fruit, because you may not always get a mini-fridge in your room.

I always bring the basics: Bread or tortillas, salsa, tortilla chips, oatmeal, minute rice or couscous, peanut butter, jelly, honey or maple syrup, curry packets, crackers, sardines or kippered snacks or salmon (if you’re in your own room), canned chicken, tofu pate, jerky, summer sausage, fruit (fresh and dried; apples, oranges, banana, persimmon, grapefruit, tangerines [any fruit that is harder to bruise]), protein bars or granola bars, soup or chili (dry or liquid), canned beans, Pedialyte, bean dip or refried beans, Stove Top stuffing. I did not bring that stuff every time because I planned what I was going to eat for each meal for the duration of my field trip. Most of this is stuff I eat regularly anyway so it always overlapped with regular grocery shopping for my family.

Optional items: (e.g. If you’re actually going to cook): onion, potato, sweet potato, yams, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, carrots, celery, lettuce, spinach, and tomatoes. Get frozen vegetables if you have access to a mini-fridge with a freezer and a grocery store after you get there.

If you have a fridge: Cow’s milk/soy milk/ almond milk/ oat milk, cheese, lunchmeat (try not to let it freeze), grapes, butter, salad dressing, salad greens, alfalfa sprouts, and breakfast cereal. Soy and oat milk don’t really need to go in the fridge, but I like them better when chilled.

Spices and Condiments: I’ve seen people go crazy on this one (as in bringing a tackle box of spices to every field trip). I usually just bring hot sauce like Tapatio, curry powder, honey (if you’re going sweet for breakfast), salt, and pepper. Sometimes I bring fast food salad dressing packets if I plan on making specific dishes. Ramen noodle flavoring packets come in handy for all sorts of uses. So does one of these camping spice shakers.

Best Places to Eat in the Field

Pizza: Hands down the best (as long as you’re not LI). Buy a whole pizza (gluten free crust works too) and eat off it for 2 days. Doesn’t need refrigeration. Tastes good frozen, cold, warm, or hot. Available in vegetarian too. Also good for breakfast.

Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese: Leftovers are good even when lukewarm. Microwaves easily. Can last unrefrigerated for a night. Not good frozen.

The hotel breakfast bar: FREE, FREE, FREE! I have a good friend who used to say the breakfast far has his favorite flavor— FREE! When you’re staying at the Motel 6 and you are eating to live, free food is your best friend. Just pirate whatever you can off the breakfast bar and eat it for snacks, lunch, or even dinner. Pop tarts, mini cereal boxes, condiment packets, and fruit are all excellent ways to supplement your field groceries.

Mexican: Without the cheese, Mexican food is great in the field even when it’s not warm. Burritos, tacos, rice, and beans are usually decent the next day for lunch. Cheese gets sketchy when it’s not refrigerated and the weather is warm, but I’ve been known to bring 4-inches of a carne asada burro from last night in the field for lunch. Breakfast burritos are the “pizza” of breakfast foods. Feel free to hook up some eggs from the breakfast bar, throw it in one of your tortillas, and party on.

Ital (Vegan Rasta Food): Organic, vegetarian, flavorful, not that drippy so you can bring it with you in a Tupperware. Ital food burns so cleanly in your digestive tract and is loaded with fiber and spicy goodness. It is very hard to find Ital food on the mainland, but this is second to pizza as my favorite thing to eat in the field when I’m in the Caribbean.

Worst Places to Eat in the Field

Gas stations: Tons of sugar, salt, and fat. Sus meats. Leathery taquitos. Woody potato wedges. Gas station food makes you feel bloated and weak within an hour after you eat it. Not recommended for breakfast unless absolutely necessary. If you partake, you’ll need to balance gas stations rubbish with fruit and real food.

Indian, Ethiopian, and other ethnic foods: I love Indian food, but it can be risky to bring for lunch in the field. Same with Ethiopian. Besides accidentally spilling all over my backpack, ethnic restaurants that I haven’t eaten at before can be hit and miss on my digestive tract. Both could end up in a gnarly, embarrassing blow out the next day in the field so I refrain while in the field. (For whatever reason, the store-bought curry packets don’t seem to roll through my intestines the same as food from Indian restaurants). For me, Indian and Ethiopian food is better enjoyed when I’m in town. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably also have a certain ethnic food that doesn’t agree with your GI tract. Do what you can to minimize that sort of thing while you’re in the field.

Gourmet anything: Too expensive for not enough calories. I don’t shop at Whole Paycheck Foods for a reason. Never forget, you’re just eating to live. You don’t need caviar.

Dehydrated camping meals: They’re easy to make but they’re expensive and can make you constipated. Plus, they have like 2300% of your daily sodium intake. I save camping meals for when I’m backpacking because I can usually get by with stuff from the grocery store.

Fast food: (McDonalds, Wendy’s, Five Guys, In and Out, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Hell, ect.): All of that stuff tastes good going in, feels like crap once its in your stomach, and it’s embarrassing coming out. Being mindful of your GI tract is important for any archaeologist because sometimes you have to $hit in the woods at work. Nobody wants to sweat out a pile of sadness in the desert somewhere because you tore up a Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich and some fries last night. It also makes you stink when you sweat. Nobody wants to work in a trench next to someone who’s sweating out last night’s binge drinking and culinary mistake. Most importantly, too much fast food will kill you. Live longer by cooking in your hotel room, cutting out fast food, and moderating your drinking.

Field Food Doesn’t Have to be Unhealthy

I don’t like to cook. I can also eat a wide range of foods although I’m weening myself off meat these days. When I was doing fieldwork like 20 days each month, I truly got sick of eating at restaurants. Fast food is whack. It made me fat and weak, but in many towns that was the only alternative. Other chain restaurants are expensive and aren’t usually worth the money. Basically, I got sick of spending money to eat things that made me feel like crap every day.

Fortunately, I worked around folks who showed me the benefit of making food yourself in your hotel room. Cooking in my hotel room saved money and, most of the time, was healthier than eating in restaurants. 

I encourage all cultural resource management archaeological technicians to do what you can to save as much of your perdiem as possible. I also encourage you all to start making at least some of your meals in your hotel room. It saves money but, most importantly, it keeps you from eating all that salty, fatty, sugary, unhealthy food that predominates across our American landscapes. Just like a professional athlete, your career depends on keeping your body healthy. What you eat plays a major role in your field career’s longevity. 

I hope his blog post gave you some helpful ideas that you can use. Take whatever recommendations you find useful but make sure to modify, improve, and expand upon what I know. I love learning more about what folks are eating in the field and how they’re preparing it so I can improve my own abilities. Please, send me a comment if you have anything to add to this discussion.

Want to add a suggestion or ask a question? Write a comment below or send me an email.

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