Profiling the Profession 2020: Introduction

Profiling the Profession 2020 is a survey of employment and training in professional archaeology in the United Kingdom. This is the fifth in a series of surveys that began in 1997-98, which has allowed for longitudinal, time-series datasets to be built up that describe the changing nature of professional archaeology over the past quarter-century.

Data were gathered that applied to archaeological employers and individuals working in archaeology in March 2020 – immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic began to seriously affect working practices and immediately after the UK left the European Union. The project has captured the time-sensitive critical data required to understand how these events have impacted upon the sector, including data on employment conditions, staff qualifications, diversity and training issues.

Changes in 2020 survey

The project has been undertaken in a different way from previous iterations. Employers were asked for information about their organisation, not about the individuals working for them.That information about individual archaeologists has come from the individuals themselves. In some areas, the scope of the information collected has broadened – to allow archaeologists as a sector to be compared with broader, national datasets on health and wellbeing, for example.

Funders

This project has been funded by Historic England under a COVID 19 Emergency Response Funding Agreement, with support from Historic Environment Scotland, FAME and the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.

Image Credit

Archaeology at Crossrail by rich_pickler from Flickr CC BY 2.0