Off-Topic: Archaeology for Fun and Profit

Fixed positions with good salaries can be difficult to find, and now is a particularly bad time for commercial archaeology, because the construction industry--which provides most of the revenue for commercial archaeology--is at a standstill. But like Faine, some of those who get a taste of the work can't easily leave it behind. Faine's experience working outside the field led him to realize that he "did actually want to be in archaeology, regardless of job security."

Commercial archaeology exists because the construction industry is required by U.K. law to pay for the analysis of physical remains destroyed during development. This includes everything from building remains to pottery, coins, bones, and garbage. Oxford Archaeology East was created when Cambridgeshire County Council's Archaeological Field Unit merged with Oxford Archaeology, a commercial group. Of the 2650 archaeologists registered in the United Kingdom in2007, 1122 were employed by the private sector.

A commercial archaeology career typically starts with education, followed by temporary digging jobs. To increase his chances of securing a better job, Faine decided to retrain and find a specialty, because "it's wise to have an extra string in your bow," he says. He did a second master's degree in human and animal osteology--bone anatomy--at Bournemouth University. His dissertation was about dental health in early medieval Wales: "I looked at the teeth of skeletons found in an old cemetery," he recalls. Today, his main job is digging out, measuring, and interpreting animal bones. Measuring tons of bones can be tedious, Faine says, but "you can tell the species, the size of the animal, the size of the population, what they are eating, if they were healthy, or what they used the animals for."

Becoming a specialist, as Faine did, can be a helpful step in career terms.