Should you get a PhD to do Archaeology?

Prospective PhD students reach out to me all the time. They’ve heard my university is better than many others and they’re thinking about applying for a PhD. I’m an archaeology professor so I’m only really qualified to answer questions for aspiring archaeologists. This post builds upon my previous one titled: Should you go to graduate school for archaeology?

At the end of the day, whether you get a PhD, Master’s, or Bachelor’s degree, chances are you are going to work in the cultural resource management (CRM) industry if you want to become an archaeologist in the United States. Having a graduate degree is one of the Professional Qualification Standards outlined by the National Park Service in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Archaeology and Historic Preservation. The NPS maintains the National Register of Historic Places, which is the largest inventory of historic properties in the United States. For projects with a federal nexus, CRMers help government agencies comply with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) which requires federal agencies to identify historic properties eligible for listing in the National Register. “Historic properties” can include significant archaeological sites. The NPS’ rules state these recommendations should be done by professional archaeologists, so it makes sense to get a graduate degree. But, do you need a PhD?

No. You don’t need a PhD to do CRM archaeology. However, I feel like there are some reasons why a PhD can be useful, even in CRM:

1. Your career will have no upper limit. Most of the archaeologists at the highest levels in government agencies have PhDs. For example, state archaeologists have PhDs. Lead archaeologists with the NPS have PhDs. Many of the highest supervisors in CRM companies have PhDs.
2. A dissertation is bigger than an MA thesis: In a PhD program, you will have much more time to conduct a thorough, intensive, and quality research project. It takes longer but you can do more and do a better job.
3. You will have more time for intellectualism: Your PhD studies will be the most time you’ll ever have to simply think and research. This is the part of your career where you will have the least amount of responsibility. After this, you’re going to have a job that sucks up a lot of the time you used to have available to go see guest speakers, meet with visiting scholars, and simply read stuff you want to read.
4. You will be able to learn more about the research process: This is crucial since archaeological excavations and large surveys in CRM require a research design. Folks who have spent 4-6 years thinking about archaeological method and theory are well equipped to make quality contributions to those research designs.
5. You will learn what kind of person you are: There’s nothing like a PhD program to discover what you’re made of. Completing a PhD is very difficult. A lot happens to each of us from the time you start until the time you finish.
6. You will be a rarity in CRM: Right now, there are comparatively few PhDs in CRM. Having a PhD and being able to demonstrate your value to companies could take you to the top of the CRM food chain.

Why do you want to get a PhD to do archaeology?

Whenever students tell me they want to get a PhD, I always answer with more questions: Why do you want to get a PhD? Why? Why would you do this? What are your motivations? What do you want to get out of it?

Most of the time I hear students tell me they want a PhD because they want to become a professor. My response is “Why do you want to become a professor? What is it about that job that makes it rise above all other ways there are to make money?” That’s where responses are all over the map. Here are a few:

• “I just really love teaching.” There’s a national teacher shortage. Go become a teacher.
• “I really love the intellectual stimulation.” Rad. Go get a job someplace that pays well and gives you benefits and start an intellectual conversations mastermind group because we professors very rarely have intellectual conversations. I know from experience. Archaeology professors are rarely in a mindset or setting where our intellects are engaged because we’re focused on all sorts of stuff that is not at all intellectual. You won’t find more intellectual stimulation as a professor than you would anyplace else.
• “I want to do the sort of research I love.” That’s great but research is only at most 33% of a tenure track professor’s duties and even less of an adjunct’s. Also, the longer you stay in archaeology the less research you get to do. Plus, you don’t need a PhD to do research.
• “I had an amazing professor who changed my life, and it made me realize I wanted to have the exact same job she has.” I’m truly glad for you. I mostly had professors that did the opposite for me. I only had 5 or 6 professors I consider role models in the 11 years I spent in higher ed. I suggest you take that prof out for dinner or call them on zoom and beg them to give them the 100% unadulterated story of their career. Then you decide if you want to go through even half of that.
• “Being an archaeology professor has always been my dream job.” Again, reach out to a professor you respect and ask them to dissect their entire career to you. Archaeology is a dream job but one of the worst things you can do to your dreams is make them your job because then they’ll no longer be dreams and won’t quite be a job either.
• “My parents/family expect me to get a PhD and I’m going to do anthropology because that’s my favorite subject.” This is possibly the worst motivation for getting a PhD. Don’t give in to peer pressure. You’re a grownup. It’s time to start doing things because they matter to you more than they do to than other people.
• “There are so few BIPOC/ LGBTQIA+/ immigrant/ working class PhDs. I want to show them that you can rise to the top even if you start at the bottom.” Now I can’t knock this one because it’s a central reason why I do this job. I never saw a BIPOC archaeologist until I became one myself. Providing inspiration for other people is a noble cause and breaking barriers is a great reason to get a PhD. Just make sure you don’t take on too much of the trauma of others in the process.
• “I always wanted to get a PhD. I’m doing this for myself because I know I can do it. I’m going to do this even if I don’t become a professor because it’s a personal challenge.” Now this is the best reason to go for a PhD—because you can. Pure and simple. This response tells me you are self-motivated and will not be deterred by any of my recommendations against it. You’ve turned this into a personal challenge. To get out alive (and sane…relatively) you are going to need to draw upon your own desire to succeed at the monumental task you’ve placed in front of yourself. And you won’t listen to reason because any reasonable person would tell you NOT to get a PhD. The world doesn’t need more PhDs, but they do need the kind of people who have enough resolve and fortitude to overcome significant hurdles and achieve a multi-year goal that very few are able to achieve, and to do this regardless of the outcome.

Making a run at becoming an archaeology professor in the United States

It’s unlikely you are going to get a tenure track teaching job at an R1 school in the United States, but I am literally living proof that you can go from a low-income neighborhood to CRM to academia. If I can do it, others can too. Just, it’s not easy, likely, or common.

Here are some tips for making the moonshot from PhD to TT:

(NOTE: There are no guarantees this is going to work. It isn’t exactly what I did to get here but it addresses the trifecta of things universities are looking for in incoming TT professors: Research, Teaching, and commitment to Diversity [I know they’re trying to make the diversity statement go away but I can tell you that it’s not going to be that easy. Folks with powerful diversity statements are still going to be attractive applicants so I suggest you do not take this lightly. Also, diversity statements do not mean BIPOC candidates have an advantage. In academia, the “Good ol Boyz Club” is alive and kicking. Studies still show a bias for white men in academia. Departments say they want diversity, but don’t hire BIPOC professors. Three out of four professors are still white. Diversity statements have done little to increase diversity; nor have they addressed the problems BIPOC students, faculty, and employees have with academia. Nevertheless, you should make sure your paperwork acknowledges diversity and inclusion as a major part of your career because the people in the department where you’re applying expect to see a commitment to diversity and professors think they’re social justice warriors who are combatting racism even if they aren’t.])

Know your audience and who you will really be working for

In the United States, academia is a public-private corporation managed by politicians with PhDs (I’m talking about university administrators. Not your state’s legislators). By applying to an academic job, you are attempting to become one of the resources the university will use to get money, prestige, and students. You think you’ll be there to do research, teaching, and serve the wider intellectual community. This is not your job. Your job is to make sure students are happy enough to keep paying tuition while also cranking out “research” in a very formulaic, predicable, non-threatening, and advertisable format. Money and human resources are the fuel that keeps this whole thing going. It’s like any other business except it sells evidence that people have done something difficult (e.g. degrees) rather than smartphones, cars, or even professional services. 

They want you to think academia is different than other companies and it is. Nonetheless, it’s still a company. All the rules that serve you will in the wider economy will also help you in academia.

One of the first things you need to learn is who you work for. While this video is not centered on academia, you can use many of the tips as it tells you how things work at any large corporation, which is what universities are:

The people you’re working for at a university are the Department Head (e.g. the Department Manager); the Dean of your College (e.g. the HR Manager); and the University itself (e.g. the Company). Students are not the main part of this equation; however, everyone you talk to in the department will swear all of this is to help the students. You might try and convince us that you are doing this all for 1) the students, 2) your field, and 3) the rest of humanity but we all understand this is not exactly true. Otherwise, why would you need compensation for your services?

(NOTE: The department head may be the “manager” of the department, but the other tenured faculty play a significant role in how each job search goes. There is usually some sort of vote for each new hire. These votes are very political. Old grudges, backroom politicking, alliances, spousal hires, payola schemes, and all sorts of $hit play a role in the final vote for every TT new hire. There is no way for you to know the departmental politics before you apply. They never tell you these things when you’re on the campus visit or when you ask department faculty about their workplaces because it would reveal that their department is a messed-up place that is probably causing them harm. Professors are not chosen for their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Departments say they are looking for something called “Best Fit.” Best Fit is supposed to determine how well you will fit into the departmental political climate as much as what your research can do for the department. The faculty are trying to hire someone who will fit into their departmental alliance/bloc/coalition that will help them further their own career and research goals while also stymying those things for their enemies in the department. Basically, they are looking for someone who helps further their personal and departmental agendas without rocking the boat. For each new hire the department head passes on the department’s vote to the dean and other hiring committees, but their recommendation comes atop a decision made by an unruly mishmash of tenured professors who are seeking to hire you for their own personal reasons. The gateway to their own agenda is the gate that they’re keeping. That’s the gate you are trying to get through.)

As mentioned in the video, most job applicants focus too much on what their research brings to archaeology, how they’ve impacted the students in positive ways, how they’ve helped BIPOC communities, and how all of this will help make the university a better place. These are laudable goals. This should be what you bring to the table, but it is not what the department is really looking for. The department head and job search committee are looking for someone who will make their department look better to the dean, who wants all the departments in their college to improve, which makes them look good and helps them job-hop to become the dean at a more prestigious university or become a university president, thus earning a higher salary and getting more prestige. The university wants to stand out from the crowd so they can attract more students and take the top ones from other schools. Universities can build amenities like lazy rivers, rec centers, and have dope sports teams but they can also hire interesting, engaging, and advertisable faculty who are doing dope research. All of these folks want people who can bring in $$ and anyone who gets a TT position in archaeology needs to show they can rake in at least a little bit of money. Grant money is important but demonstrating you can fulfill the career objectives of your department head and the college’s dean is even more important. They need you to further their own self-interests because they care about themselves more than anything else. Proving this is what your interview process is all about.

We’re doing it for the students

What about teaching? What about it? They know you would have at least been a teaching assistant as a PhD student so they know you can stand in front of some students and talk about archaeology. If you haven’t been removed from your position, they know you can do a passable job at this. They also know student evaluations are not the best measure of your teaching abilities so unless your evals are deplorable they won’t hold you back. Of course, it’s excellent to have above average teaching evals but average ones aren’t bad. None of us have teaching certificates. Nobody taught us how to teach. We’re just doing stuff we saw other professors do. Teaching students is a crapshoot in anthropology departments. Not all of us are good at it but we have to do it to keep our jobs. Some of us are excellent and teaching brings them fulfillment in an otherwise bleak industry. Teaching is supposed to be the primary reason for universities, but it isn’t the primary element in hiring a professor.

What about the students? Again, what about them? You may have good relationships with the undergraduate students while you were going for your PhD and you may meet with the grad students at the place where you are applying. The grad students may even make recommendations for who they think the department should hire. Again, this isn’t about the students or the teaching. It’s about the goals of departmental faculty and administrators since they’re the ones signing paychecks. What students want is not the first priority of any university I’ve ever seen.

For an American anthropology department, the term “Best Fit” = someone who isn’t going to complain, doesn’t do problematic research (e.g. do the kind of research that actually tells people how things really are), and has the potential to land on the cover of Nat Geo while also bringing in thousands of dollars in research and can spawn several peer-reviewed journals articles every year. They want folks who are good at their job, but they really want people who can do an excellent job of furthering the career goals of others while ALSO doing sexy work without complaining about anything. It’s not the smartest or most able applicants that get the job. It’s also not the ones with the most publications or grant funding. It’s the ones who know how to play the game that get hired for tenure track positions in the United States.

It’s one thing to know how to play the game but the problem is you’re playing this game on a chessboard where the squares aren’t the same size, are always in a different configuration, and you don’t always have the same number of pieces. Department faculty, deans, and other actors play an extremely powerful role in deciding who gets hired and none of these folks play by the same set of rules or use the same gameboard.

Getting a TT job is a political campaign.

You can know how to play the game and still lose. This is why it’s extremely difficult to get a TT job in the United States. 

Here are some ways you can increase your odds of winning:

• Attend a Top Program: 80% of faculty come from 20% of institutions. Where you get your PhD strongly impacts your chances of becoming a professor. The rankings vary but you already know which schools are considered the best: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Chicago, Brown, Cornell, Arizona, ASU, UT Austin, Penn, William and Mary, NYU. Just look at where most faculty went to school and you’ll learn which schools hiring committees think are best.
• Choose a trending topic: Once again, universities are looking for research that sells their institution. So are administrators. Students want to work with scholars who are addressing issues relevant to their world. In anthropology, climate change and inequality are “evergreen” topics. Grant-funding organizations are also doling out cash to folks researching those topics. Do your dissertation in one of those domains and you’ll immediately look more attractive.
• Write a dissertation that can become a book + several journal articles: You may have heard of the “Three-Article PhD.” That is a risky pathway for anyone who wants to become a professor because most departments grant tenure based on your publication record, teaching, and service. Three articles aren’t usually enough. Older professors in archaeology wrote books and articles; that’s what they expect to see. The whole tenure process is set up to support this pathway. Your department head and dean are used to seeing folks write books. Remember, they are the ones you are looking to please. This is why, in anthropology, it is in your best interest to write a dissertation in a manner that will be easy to turn it into a book. Even better if the sections chopped from your dissertation book can become articles.
• Make sure you have a second project: Nobody wants a one-trick pony. You need to do a dissertation but also have a second project in the mix that will result in an academic book + articles. This second project should build on your dissertation topic but also demonstrate you have a research trajectory that will help make the department, the college, and the university look attractive to students. I suggest you build upon what you’ve already done for the dissertation but slightly tweak it or do the same thing at another site. For example, if your dissertation examined the environmental impacts of the Middle Woodland Tradition expansion on soils in Missouri, examine the same issues in Ohio. Or apply your Missouri soil analysis to a site in Florida to see your methods can detect population changes and precontact environmental impacts there too. Both projects will be interesting to folks who want to know the environmental baseline before the arrival of Europeans so we can better understand exactly how climate and population have changed this region over the past 2,000 years. This has the potential to be on the front page of Science, Sapiens, and Nat Geo, which is what they’re looking for.
• Make sure you have several journal article drafts on deck: In academia, “research” is measured in money and publications. Publications are easier to get. 
• You should have at least one journal article published by the time you’re on the job market but 2-3 is better. Be careful not to publish all your stuff as a grad student, though. It’s a good idea to have at least 3 journal articles in rough draft format, ready to publish with revisions before your mid-career review (2-3 years in). This means you should show up to the interview with some publications and 2-3 more articles on deck. (HINT: write papers in your PhD seminars in article format so you can easily carve them into peer-reviewed publications if you get hired. Also, long-format blog posts like this one are fair game). Read the book How to Write a Lot by Paul J. Silvia if you want some tips on academic writing productivity. So is Writing your Journal Article in 12 Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher. Read From Dissertation to Book by William Germano for instructions on getting the dissertation published.

• Swim in the Social Media Sewer: Social media is a psychologically negative space but it’s where most Americans are at. There is a very small chance of making a fruitful connection with other scholars via social media but its more useful to game the internet to build a professional persona. I wrote a guide on this, called Personal Branding for Archaeologists. This eBook is getting old, but it still has many useful tips for building an audience and disseminating data online. Social media is a central node in this process. Use it to your advantage.
• Get grants: Don’t have to be the major ones. Just have to show you can bring home the bacon and demonstrate grant funding agencies are willing to invest in your research. You should be writing something every single day. Why not write grant applications? 
• Differentiate yourself (in a professional way): This one is hard to do because too much individuality will be off-putting and not enough will make you seem like every other candidate. I’m not qualified to do a deep dive in this but it’s better to differentiate yourself through your writing and accomplishments than it is through your appearance and behavior. Professors are an extremely conservative bunch. They can look past gender and tattoos (sometimes) but failing to act like a nerdy professor-type is going to frighten them. So will acting too wild in professional settings (ahem, drinking too much at conferences), virtue signaling without backing it up with action, and hashtag activism.
• Build your own seat at the table: Organize conference sessions. Serve on professional organization committees. Do the kind of things professors do.
• Nail the job talk and campus visit: A graduate student who is LARPing as a TT professor still has to nail the job talk. That’s the multi-day live performance where you convince the hiring committee, department head, and other faculty members that you will help them achieve their goals. There is a whole industry organized to help PhD candidates through the job talk carnival so I won’t address it here but nailing the job talk and campus visit is a critical part of getting a TT job offer.

Basically, you have at least to do all the stuff that top professors do BEFORE you become a professor. Doing all that stuff only increases your chances of becoming a TT professor but it doesn’t guarantee it.

Most won’t make it

There is a reason why most PhDs don’t become TT professors even though most of them want to. Tenure track positions are very rare, but they don’t always go to the smartest folks in the room because job applicants don’t properly present themselves and because the job search process is extremely political. Professors are conservative and very susceptible to social norms. We think we are radicals, but we aren’t. Radical action will never come from any professor who is unwilling to get fired. We aren’t designed to create change because we’re the ones who followed all the rules. You don’t get through a PhD program without following the rules and you don’t get a TT job without fulfilling the needs of faculty, department heads, and college deans. Those who rock the boat don’t make it.

Most PhD students also aren’t doing all the extraordinary labor it takes to impress professors. Remember, all of us have PhDs. All of us have books. All of us have articles. All of us have research programs. All of us are doing the things I recommended and much more. Many of us had all these things before we became assistant professors. For example, I had several articles published, a long-running blog and podcast, self-published several archaeology eBooks, had been the guest editor of a journal volume, bootstrapped my own PhD project, was active in national and regional archaeology societies, and had been doing CRM for a decade BEFORE I got hired as an assistant professor. Despite all of that, I wasn’t the top pick of many of my now colleagues. I have no idea who my competition was, and I wonder what they were doing that I wasn’t. I have a feeling it was political—I didn’t fit in with the goals of some people in my department and they didn’t want to hire me. Nevertheless, my department believed in me enough to unanimously grant me tenure 6 years later so I made it after all.

The reality is 90% of PhD students do not have all the stuff I did, and they aren’t doing the things I just recommended. They also aren’t looking to fulfill internal goals of the department and college in which they are applying, which is why they struggle to get hired to tenure track anthropology positions. 

Nobody said this is easy. It’s getting harder every day. Honestly, a PhD is the absolute minimum for becoming a professor. It’s the easiest part of this whole thing. In 2023, we’re choosing assistant professors from deep pools of highly capable, qualified candidates who are doing all these things and more because there are dozens of aspiring archaeology PhD students who are absolutely killing it out there. That’s your competition so you’ve got to ask yourself: Do you really want to do all of that just to become an archaeology professor?

Having trouble finding work in cultural resource management archaeology? Still blindly mailing out resumes and waiting for a response? Has your archaeology career plateaued and you don’t know what to do about it? Download a copy of the new book “Becoming an Archaeologist: Crafting a Career in Cultural Resource Management” Click here to learn more.

Check out Succinct Research’s contribution to Blogging Archaeology. Full of amazing information about how blogging is revolutionizing archaeology publishing. For a limited time you can GRAB A COPY FOR FREE!!!! Click Here

“Resume-Writing for Archaeologists” is now available on Amazon.com. Click Here and get detailed instructions on how you can land a job in CRM archaeology today!

Small Archaeology Project Management is now on the Kindle Store. Over 300 copies were sold in the first month! Click Here and see what the buzz is all about.

Join the Succinct Research email list and receive additional information on the CRM and heritage conservation field.

Get killer information about the CRM archaeology industry and historic preservation.