Glossary

Culture resource management The theory and practice of managing, preserving, and interpreting cultural resources within a social and legal context.

Hunter-gatherer society A society whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, using foraging and hunting, without significant recourse to the domestication of either.

For a relatively small profession, the range of jobs archaeologists carry out is very large and so the skills one archaeologist may need to acquire are very different from those of another. It also means that people enter the profession by many routes, but there is also flexibility for students to change direction while still studying, or for professionals to change direction as their careers progress. In addition to the obvious academic careers within universities, or full-time posts carrying out excavations and surveys, there is a plethora of jobs providing specialist back-up in the laboratory, for instance dealing with human and animal remains, ceramics, soils and plant remains; there are archaeologists in local and national/federal government overseeing the preservation and development of our heritage, what is generally referred to as ‘cultural resource management’ (see Cultural Resource Management). Archaeology also needs to be presented to a wider public, not only through museums, but also through specialist books, magazines, and television programs (see Popular Culture and Archaeology). It is a subject with a worldwide appeal, with relevance wherever humans have set foot, from the great civilizations of the past in, say, Egypt or Central America, to the ephemeral remains of the first hunter-gatherers who colonized much of the planet. Thus, even before training starts, you need to have some sort of idea about what sort of archaeologist you would like to become.