Questions to Ask an Archaeologist
For a student with an interview assignment, a class expecting a visiting speaker, a visitor at the rope beside a trench or in a museum gallery, and anyone wondering whether the job could be theirs. The questions run in the order such a conversation tends to take: how a site is found and dug, how its age and meaning are worked out, the finds, the real job set against the film version, who owns the past, and how people get started. Choose a handful from the groups that fit your setting instead of working down the whole list.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Finding and digging
How do you know where to dig?
Why ask it
Nearly every audience opens with this, and the real answer is less of a hunch than people hope: old maps, aerial photographs, a survey of the ground, or a building project that needs the land checked first. Follow it with which of those led to the site they are working on now.
How do old things end up buried in the first place?
Why ask it
A question children ask and adults forget to. Floods leave silt, wind drops dust, plants rot into soil, and people level a ruined house and build on the rubble. It also shows why depth and age are different things, so ask how far down the oldest layer on their site lies.
What can you tell about a site before anyone lifts a trowel?
Why ask it
Quite a lot. Instruments that measure the soil's magnetism or resistance, laser scans from the air, crop marks in a dry summer and pottery scattered on a plowed field can all outline what is buried. If there is a survey plot on the table, ask to see it beside the plan of what was actually found, because the mismatches are the best part.
Which tools do you use the most?
Why ask it
A pointing trowel, a bucket, a tape, a camera and a tablet or clipboard tend to come first, with the brush from the films a long way down. Younger children like hearing about the biggest tool on site and the smallest, so ask for both.
What happens on the first day of an excavation?
Why ask it
Pegs, tape measures, a grid, a decision about where the spoil heap goes, and often a machine taking off the topsoil. For a class it swaps the picture of someone brushing a skeleton for the picture of a crew measuring a field, which is closer to the truth.
Why was this site chosen, and why now?
Why ask it
A dig always has a reason behind it: a road about to be built, a cliff eroding, a research question, a season for training students. That reason sets the budget and the deadline, so it explains most of what you hear afterward about which parts were dug slowly and which were not.
How do you decide how much to excavate and how much to leave in the ground?
Why ask it
Excavation takes apart the thing it studies, and a layer can only be removed once. Plenty of archaeologists leave part of a site untouched on purpose for whoever comes later with better methods, so the telling follow-up is what they chose to leave and whether that was hard.
How do you read the layers in the side of a trench?
Why ask it
As a rule the lower layer was laid down first, but pits, ditches, tree roots and burrowing animals cut through and muddle the order. If you are standing at a dig, ask them to point at the real section and say what happened first, second and third.
What has to be written, drawn or photographed before a find is moved?
Why ask it
Where an object lay and what lay beside it is most of what it can tell anyone, which is why recording eats more of the day than digging does. The follow-up that makes this land is what an object is worth to them when it turns up loose on the spoil heap with no record at all.
How long does an excavation take?
Why ask it
Anything from a few days ahead of a pipeline to summer seasons repeated over decades, and who is paying usually decides which. Ask how long theirs has run and what they would do with one more month.
Have you ever opened a trench and found nothing?
Why ask it
It happens to everyone, and an empty trench still counts as a result: it shows where a settlement stopped, or that the survey was misread. How easily they tell the story is a fair sign of how comfortable they are with being wrong in public.
What happens to the site when the dig is over?
Why ask it
Trenches may be filled back in, built over or, now and then, left open for visitors, and who decides depends on the landowner and the rules in that place. People on a site tour often assume the hole stays, so the answer changes how they look at it.
Dating and evidence
How do you work out how old something is?
Why ask it
There is seldom one method. The layer a thing came from, the style of pottery or tools around it, and laboratory methods where suitable material survives are usually combined, and they do not always agree. Ask which one they leaned on at their last site, and what they did when two dates clashed.
What can radiocarbon dating tell you, and what can it not?
Why ask it
It works on material that was once alive, such as charcoal, bone or seeds, and it returns a span of years with a probability attached, never a single year. A good follow-up for an older class is how wide the span was on one of their own samples and whether that was narrow enough to settle anything.
How do you work out what a building or an object was used for, and how sure can you be?
Why ask it
At a dig or in a gallery, point at one thing and ask it about that. A careful answer separates what was observed, say a hearth, postholes and burnt grain, from the label put on it, a kitchen or a granary, and admits which other readings are still open.
What can you learn from one broken piece of pottery?
Why ask it
Sherds are among the commonest finds on a great many sites and carry more than they look as if they should: a rough date, where the clay was dug, what the pot held, who was trading with whom. If there is a finds tray or a museum case nearby, pick one sherd and have them talk you through it.
What does ancient trash tell you that nothing else does?
Why ask it
People recorded what they wanted remembered and threw away what they really ate, broke and wore out. Ask what one pit or dump said about meals on their site, and whether it contradicted anything written about the place.
What can a skeleton tell you about a person, and where does that stop?
Why ask it
A rough age, height, healed injuries and signs of heavy work can sometimes be read from bone, while a name, a character and most causes of death usually cannot. Asking for the limit along with the finding keeps the answer careful. Keep your own tone respectful, since the subject was somebody.
What do seeds, pollen and other tiny remains add to the picture?
Why ask it
Buckets of soil are washed and sieved for things too small to notice in the trench, and those remains speak to crops, weather and how wooded or open the surroundings were. Best asked on a lab visit, where someone can put a charred grain under a microscope for you.
What did people here own that has not survived?
Why ask it
Wood, cloth, leather, baskets and food rot in most soils, so what comes out of the ground leans toward stone, fired clay and metal. Their guess at what is missing shows how much imagination the job needs, and they may name a waterlogged, frozen or desert site elsewhere that fills the gap.
How do you study people who left no writing?
Why ask it
For most of the human past, objects and marks in the soil are the only testimony there is. Two follow-ups work well together: what they wish a written record could settle, and what the ground has shown that a written record would have left out.
Which new technology has changed your work the most?
Why ask it
They may name laser mapping from aircraft, ancient DNA, chemical traces in teeth that hint at where a person grew up, or 3D models built from ordinary photographs. Ask what it showed on one of their own projects that a trowel alone would have missed, and whether a small project can afford it.
Which textbook account has been overturned since you trained?
Why ask it
New dates, genetic work and returns to old sites keep unseating accounts that were once taught as settled. Whichever example they pick, notice whether they sound pleased or rueful, which tells you where they stood at the time.
Finds
What is the best thing you have ever found?
Why ask it
Leave 'best' undefined and see what they do with it. Many pass over the handsome object for something plain that answered a question, such as a coin sealed under a floor or a single cereal grain, and the reason they give is a short lesson in what the profession values.
What is the strangest thing you have dug up?
Why ask it
The crowd-pleaser for a class visit. It may be ancient, or it may be a modern bottle cap at the bottom of a layer that was supposed to be undisturbed, and that second kind comes with a detective story about how it got down there.
What is the oldest thing you have ever found?
Why ask it
Get the age and how they know it in the same breath, since 'oldest' invites a round number. A class will want something to measure it against, so ask them to turn it into generations: how many great-grandparents back was that?
What find looked like nothing in the trench and turned out to matter?
Why ask it
A stain in the soil, a lump of rust, a handful of slag. The story usually passes through an X-ray machine or a specialist's bench, and it shows how much discovery happens months after the digging has stopped.
Have you ever found something nobody could identify?
Why ask it
Most finds rooms have a box of mystery objects, and the standing joke is to label them 'ritual'. The method is the thing to get: comparison collections, wear marks, a photo sent round to colleagues, or making a copy and trying it out.
Where do the finds go after they leave the ground?
Why ask it
The usual route is washing, labeling, conservation, study by specialists and then a storeroom, with only a small share ever reaching a display case. Which institution ends up holding them differs from place to place, so find out who keeps theirs and whether the public can visit the stores.
Has a find ever made you feel close to the person who left it?
Why ask it
The answers tend to be small things: a fingerprint in fired clay, a toy, a mended shoe, a dog's paw print across a tile. Save it for late in the conversation, once the technical ground is covered and you want to know why they keep doing the work.
What do you still hope to find one day?
Why ask it
Gold is rarely the wish. A preserved timber floor, a scrap of writing or the missing edge of a settlement is more likely, and the wish points straight at the question that is nagging them.
The real job
Which period and part of the world do you specialize in, and why that one?
Why ask it
If you do not already know, ask this before anything else in the group: someone who works on Roman towns and someone who works on hunter-gatherer camps will give different accounts of writing, dating and what survives. The 'why' often turns out to be an accident, a first field season or one teacher, more than a plan.
What does an ordinary day on a dig look like?
Why ask it
Most descriptions start early and include a great deal of soil moved by hand, paperwork before the light goes, and weather that overrules every plan. Go after small details such as the hours, the lunch and where people sleep, since those are what help a student picture being there.
How much of your year is spent digging, and what fills the rest?
Why ask it
For many archaeologists the trench is the smaller share, behind cataloging finds, writing reports, teaching or assessing land from a desk. The split differs a good deal between employers, so get their own figure and ask whether it is typical for their kind of post.
What happens in the lab once the digging season ends?
Why ask it
This is where a site turns into knowledge: finds counted and weighed, samples sent away, drawings redrawn, a report written. Compare the length of the write-up with the length of the dig, and find out whether any site of theirs is still waiting to be published.
What do films and video games get wrong about archaeology, and what do they get right?
Why ask it
The complaints come quickly: lone heroes, grabbed treasure, nobody taking notes. Hold out for the second half, because plenty of archaeologists were first hooked by exactly those stories and will say the thrill, at least, is accurate.
Do archaeologists dig up dinosaurs?
Why ask it
No, and most have been asked. Archaeology studies people and the things they left behind, while animals that died out long before humans are the business of paleontology. Asked with a smile it earns a laugh and a clean definition, which a young class takes in better than a correction.
Have you ever found gold or anything valuable, and what happened next?
Why ask it
Precious things do turn up, and the aftermath is the story: who had to be told, who watched the trench overnight, and the fact that the finder on a professional dig does not take it home. Rules on valuable finds differ by country, so ask what the procedure was there.
What is the hardest part of fieldwork?
Why ask it
You may hear about mud, heat, cold, sore knees and long drives, or about filling in by hand a trench that took a month to open. Anyone weighing the career should hear this before the story about the best find, not after.
Have you worked underwater, in a cave or anywhere else hard to reach?
Why ask it
Not all archaeology is a square hole in a field. Even an archaeologist who has stayed on dry land will know someone who dives on wrecks or works high in the mountains, and the logistics of air, light and getting fragile things out in one piece make a good tale.
Do you ever make copies of ancient tools or buildings to see how they worked?
Why ask it
Experimental archaeology means chipping flint, firing pots or raising a timber house to test an idea against real materials. The failures are the better half: a pot that cracks in the fire or a roof that leaks rules something out.
Who owns the past
Who owns the things you find?
Why ask it
There is no one answer. It may be the landowner, the state, a museum or a descendant community, depending on the country and sometimes on the kind of object, so ask how it works where they dig and whether they think the arrangement is fair.
What do you do when you come across human remains?
Why ask it
Expect talk of permits, careful recording and consultation with descendants or faith communities where that applies. Law and custom differ widely, so the questions to add are what is required in their area and whether remains are reburied. With young children, check with the speaker beforehand that the subject is welcome.
Should museums return objects to the places they came from?
Why ask it
A live argument on which archaeologists hold a range of views. You will get more from one named case than from the principle, and the detail to listen for is how the object left its country in the first place, because that history tends to decide the matter.
How do you work with the people who live beside a site, or who descend from those who made it?
Why ask it
Strong answers describe practice: local people hired and trained, communities with a say in what is dug or displayed, results handed back in a form they can use. If all you hear is that relations are good, ask for one decision that changed because of what local people said.
What is lost when a site is looted, besides the objects themselves?
Why ask it
An object pulled from the ground with no record loses its layer, its neighbors and most of its date, so the knowledge is gone even if the piece later surfaces in a collection. An archaeologist whose own site has been robbed can describe what the holes looked like the next morning.
How do you feel about metal detecting and private collecting?
Why ask it
Views run from flat opposition to close cooperation, and the law is not the same from one country to the next. What usually separates the two camps is whether the find spot was recorded and reported, so ask where they draw their own line.
What should I do if I find something old in my yard or out on a walk?
Why ask it
Many archaeologists will say to leave it in place if you can, photograph it and note the exact spot. Who has to be told, and what the law expects of you, depends on where you live, so get the name of the office or scheme that handles it locally.
What did archaeologists do a few generations ago that would not be accepted now?
Why ask it
Standards have shifted on human remains, on consulting the communities concerned, and on what was kept and what went on the spoil heap, and early excavators often dug fast and recorded little. Then bring it home: is there anything from their own first seasons they would handle differently?
Getting started
What made you want to become an archaeologist?
Why ask it
Listen for the exact moment: a museum case, a school trip, a film, something picked up on a beach. In a student interview this is the answer that becomes the opening quote, so take it down word for word.
What did you study, and what do you wish you had studied as well?
Why ask it
Routes in differ by country and by employer, so treat theirs as one path among several. The wish list is the half to keep: digital mapping, statistics, a language, chemistry, or simply learning to drive.
What kinds of archaeologist are there?
Why ask it
Specialties divide by period, by region and by material: bones, plants, pottery, metals, shipwrecks, standing buildings, satellite images. Helpful for a student who already likes one science or craft and wants to see where it would fit.
Who employs archaeologists, and where do most of the jobs come from?
Why ask it
Universities and museums are the employers people think of, but in many places a large share of paid work is checking land ahead of construction. The balance is local, so ask what it looks like in their region and which employers take on beginners.
How can someone my age get onto a real dig?
Why ask it
Field schools, museum volunteer days, local societies and community digs are the usual doors, some with age limits or fees. Press for the name of one program near you, and whether newcomers get a trowel or start at the finds-washing bowl.
Which skill do newcomers to a dig most often lack?
Why ask it
Probably something plain: drawing to scale, describing soil the same way twice, writing a clear paragraph, staying good company through six wet weeks. Every one of those can be practiced long before a first season.
Can you make a living as an archaeologist?
Why ask it
Pay, contract length and security vary by country and by sector, so ask what a beginner earns where they work. Many will also speak plainly about seasonal contracts and what they did in the gaps between them.
If you were starting out again today, what would you do differently?
Why ask it
This gets past general encouragement to one concrete change: a different specialty, an earlier field season, a skill picked up sooner. It makes a good closing question, because the answer is usually the line you remember.
Talking to an archaeologist at a dig, in a classroom or in a museum
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Fit the questions to the setting
A speaker visiting a class
Collect one question from each student a day ahead and sort them by group, or the hour turns into twenty versions of the best find. Open with how they know where to dig, spend the middle on finds and the film myths, and keep a career question for the end. Ask the speaker beforehand whether they are bringing objects to handle and whether human remains are a suitable subject for the age group.
At the edge of a trench
On an open day the digger talking to you has a few minutes and a trench to get back to. Ask about what is in front of you: which layer they are in, what the dark patch is, what came out this week. Stay behind the rope, keep off the trench edge, which can give way, and pick nothing up unless it is handed to you.
In a museum gallery
A curator or gallery volunteer may not have dug the objects on show. Ask where a piece was found, what was found with it and how it reached the collection. The questions on dating and on who owns the past travel best indoors.
An interview for an assignment or a career project
Send the questions ahead, ask before recording, and plan on six to eight for half an hour. Begin with what made them want the job, take one or two from each group that suits the assignment, and end with what they would do differently. Before you leave, check the spelling of their name, their job title and the names of any sites they mentioned.
What to listen for in the answers
The find and the story about it
Six postholes in a ring is what was in the ground. A house is what the archaeologist makes of them. When an answer arrives as a finished story, ask what was physically there, and you will hear how much is observed and how much is argued.
The word context
Archaeologists mean the exact layer and position a thing came from, and everything found alongside it. Once you hear the word, ask what the context was. A bead from a grave, a bead from a workshop floor and a bead from a drain are three different pieces of evidence.
Dates as ranges
If you are told a hearth was last lit somewhere between two dates a couple of centuries apart, write down both ends. Turning a range into a single year for a school report makes the claim stronger than the person who gave it to you would accept.
'We do not know'
Treat it as a finding, and ask what would have to be dug up, or what test would have to be invented, to change it. The reply can be the most interesting thing you hear all day, because it describes work nobody has done yet.
Questions that go down badly, and what to ask in their place
What is it worth?
Most archaeologists will not put a price on a find, since a market value is what sends looters out with spades. Ask what it told them, or what it would have cost its first owner in work or trade, and you get a real answer.
Can I take a piece home?
Even a thumbnail of pottery belongs with the site's records and the other finds from its layer. Ask whether there is a handling collection, which some museums and field teams keep for visitors, or whether you can hold something under supervision.
Aliens, giants and lost super-civilizations
If a video has half convinced you, do not open with the theory. Ask what evidence would have to exist if it were true, and whether anyone has looked for it. That gets a serious reply, and often the point that such theories take the credit away from the people who really did the building.
Exactly where is the site?
Locations of unguarded sites are sometimes kept vague to discourage digging at night. If the answer is general, leave it there, and if you are told in confidence, do not post it.
After you have asked
Write it up the same day
Period names, site names and technical terms slip fast. Read your notes back within a few hours, mark anything you are unsure of, and send the archaeologist the two or three sentences you plan to quote so they can correct a date or a spelling.
Take up any invitation
If an open day, a volunteer session or a local society came up, get the name written down before you part. Offers made in passing are easy to lose, and they are how a good many people first end up holding a trowel.
Thank them with a detail
A thank-you note that names one thing you learned, the paw print in the tile or why the trench was filled back in, shows the visit landed. It also makes a second invitation easier for the speaker to accept.