Profiling the Profession

Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession

Profiling the Profession 2007/08

Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2007-08 is a project designed to gather information about everyone currently working in archaeology and the historic environment.

Every organisation that employs or commissions archaeologists and others who work with the historic environment in the UK was invited to contribute to this project, including those who are self-employed. A two-part questionnaire was posted out to over 2000 employers and individual archaeologists who were asked to submit data for their organisation as it related on August 13 2007.

The results of this project will contribute to the personal development of individuals, and will assist organisations and the profession as a whole in developing and planning for the future. Similar archaeological labour market intelligence has been analysed twice before, in 1997–98 and 2002–03, and the resulting data have been extensively used by the sector. The results of both surveys are available online below.

The Institute of Field Archaeologists is funded to undertake this project by the European Commission’s Leonardo da Vinci II fund, English Heritage, Historic Scotland, Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments and the Environment and Heritage Service (DoE Northern Ireland).

Profiling the Profession 2007–08 is part of a wider project, Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe, which is collecting data on archaeological employment in ten European countries, with funding from the Leonardo da Vinci II fund. The European project will contrast employment in the different countries and examine the opportunities for and obstacles to individual archaeologists’ employment in countries other than their own.

Download the final report here(PDF)

Profiling the Profession 2002/03

Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2002-03 is a survey and assessment of employment within professional archaeology in the UK.

This project aimed to identify, collect, quantify and disseminate labour market information on the archaeology sector. For employers, it provides comprehensive, up-to-date information to aid business planning and improve organisational performance and competitiveness. For individual archaeologists it also provides information that identifies their own position within the profession, and can inform their own personal career decision-making.

This information includes:

information on training needs, skills shortages and skills gaps
details of the nature and extent of the archaeology sector, including accurate employment figures
information on occupations including potential recruitment and career progression difficulties
labour market trends and issues including training investment and supply and other financial, business and staffing issues.

This research has addressed the whole of the archaeology profession and has included volunteers (unpaid staff) along with those in paid employment.

This was a baseline survey, working to fundamentally the same methodology as was used in the previous Profiling the Profession (1997/98) project.

Authors: Kenneth Aitchison (IfA) & Rachel Edwards (Arboretum Archaeological Consultancy).
Publication date: 2003.
Published by: the Cultural Heritage National Training Organisation.

Here you can download the following documents as Adobe Acrobat(.pdf) files. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat reader get it here:

Archaeology Labour Market Intelligence: Profiling the Profession 2002/03 (PDF)

Profiling The Profession: a survey of archaeological jobs in the UK

Profiling the profession was the first comprehensive survey ever conducted into archaeological employment in the UK. It was undertaken with seven objectives:

to identify the numbers of professional archaeologists working in Britain
to analyse whether the profession is growing, static or shrinking
to identify the range of jobs
to identify the numbers employed in each job type
to identify the range of salaries, and terms and conditions, applying to each job type
to identify differences in employment patterns between different geographical areas
to help those seeking to enter the profession

Author: Kenneth Aitchison (Landward Archaeology).
Publication date: 1999.
Published by: the Council for British Archaeology, English Heritage and the Institute of Field Archaeologists.

Profiling the Profession: A survey of archaeolgoical jobs in the UK