Who's who here

MayoArsehole

Hey,

I did a B.A in Heritage in GMIT and got work in commercial Archaeology on the road projects during the boom. I have to say for the first 6 months it was the greatest time in my life, i adored the people working in it and I could not wait to get on site every morning to dig for stuff, I just loved it to bits. I would not be the most academic which is where it all began to come apart from me, after about a year at it I started to feel ashamed at how woefully out of my depth I was on an academic level (especially with some of the foreign archaeologists who really were nasty some of them in making you feel like a fool) still though I done my best, the end came for me while cleaning (clearing topsoil by trowel for further site investigation) a site in Kildare somewhere when I had just had enough of moving dirt around and being made feel stupid and ended up taking it out on a foreign archaelogist and I got sacked for it, something I have always regretted and had to live with.

I thought this story might give you some insight in to the kinds of people (me) that are often attracted to archaeology, we have naive ideas that it is about finding stuff but indeed it is about finding stuff out, and that can be amazingly intresting, some of the people I met were incredibly intresting and I miss those first months I had still 7 years later. As the great Champolion once said "archaeology is a beautiful mistress but she brings a poor dowry" still though I could not reccomend highly enough having the experience of it and yes as somebody says you may not feel as idealistic about it when you get in to your 30s but it is a beautiful direction to go in your life while you still have the joints for it, I still miss it terribly.

MayoArsehole

I myself am a bitter cynic who spent 2 years digging holes in commercial Archaeology 6 years ago in Ireland and UK but still have no idea why. Oh wait I was getting paid to do it and I got by for ages before anybody realized I couldn't even spell Archaeology.