Galen Clarke/Tribune

University of New Mexico junior Harry Kanwin digs in a 3-by-3-foot hole while looking for artifacts left behind by the ancient Clovis people who used the area outside Socorro to camp. Kanwin said he had been finding mostly flakes in the productive hole yielding many artifacts.

Galen Clarke/Tribune

University of New Mexico archaeology students on a dig outside Socorro learn to excavate in a slow, methodical manner so they can locate each artifact in its original position as a way of recording its exact location.

More Local Business

• Mineral leases concern residents in eastern New Mexico
• PNM: Power Saver plan would reduce electricity use in peak demand cycle
• Air-bag waiver brings Tesla car plant one step closer to Albuquerque

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

With an Indiana Jones-style hat perched on his head and dirt covering his burnished skin, Bruce Huckell assists nine University of New Mexico archaeology students in the hunt for evidence of 11,000-year-old Paleoindians.

Sweaty and tired, the students methodically dig into square plots of land southeast of Socorro for hours on end.

But in a cactus field full of young undergraduate dreams, precious artifacts from the past aren't the only thing Huckell's students are discovering.

They're also busy trying to find their place in a profession that is rapidly changing from a world of academic pursuit and grant writing into the "lowest bidder takes all" business of contract archaeology, a profession inspired by New Mexico's construction boom.

"Today's archaeologists have to be trained not only in the traditional subjects but they also have to be exposed to courses on laws and they also have to have some idea of finances or business," said Huckell, who is also an archaeologist and senior research coordinator at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM. "That way, if they are going to be a contract archaeologist they can manage time, money, and people."

`Feast or famine'

Contract archaeology involves the survey and occasional excavation of a site before anything can be built on it. After the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was passed, urban development and road construction companies have had to consult archaeologists before undertaking any projects.

The preservation act was instated so that significant historic properties and artifacts would not be lost or destroyed inadvertently by construction projects.

Contract archaeology companies constantly compete against one another in order to secure work for their employees.

"It's feast or famine," said Carol Condie.

Condie graduated from UNM in 1972 with a doctorate in archaeology. She started her own contract company, Quivira Research, in 1978.

"Only a couple of times in the entire time I've been in business has it been steady," Condie said. "And there's no rational reason whatsoever. The economy can be booming and all the contract archaeologists can be starving to death or the economy can be in the dumps and all the contract archaeologists can be so busy."

An independent contractor must be able to tolerate a certain degree of financial uncertainty.

"It probably takes a person who isn't too nervous about knowing where their next meal is coming from," Condie said. "I don't know if it takes guts, but it probably takes a specific personality type that can roll with the punches."

Pencils and permits

On the upside, becoming an independent contractor in the archaeology industry can be done without a large amount of start-up capital.

Condie said she didn't have to take out a loan from the bank in order to start her own business.

"An archaeological contract firm runs primarily on computers, paper and pencils," Condie said. "We have a few expenses, like everybody now has a GPS system. You need survey equipment. You need transit. It doesn't cost much to start an archaeological firm."

To compete for business conducted on state land, Condie must be in possession of two permits from the state: the General Archaeological Investigation Permit and the Human Burial Excavation Permit.

"The permits don't cost anything but you have to have various kinds of qualifications," Condie said. "You have to have your Master's. You have to have `X' number of experience working in the southwest, working on field projects."

In an effort to attain more employment opportunities Condie's company also does work with historic architecture. Her last job involved recording the historical details of an old church in Roswell that is scheduled to be demolished to make way for the expansion of the Roswell Senior Citizens and Recreation Center.

Bidding for work

Being a self-employed contract archaeologist has allowed Condie the ability to be selective about the type of work she undertakes.

"You're not under any stress to take everything that comes down the pike," Condie said. "I don't have to keep anybody busy except me, so that's a real luxury to be able to pick and choose."

Condie said about 95 percent of her business consists of call-backs from clientele that have found her company to be competitive and fair.

In contrast, Kathy Travis, president of Lone Mountain Archaeological Services Inc., one of Albuquerque's largest contract archaeology firms, said the way her company procures its business is by competitively bidding on projects.

"Rarely does someone call us and say, `Here, I want you to do this work,' " Travis said.

Travis writes an average of three proposals a week in her bid to gain more work for the company. On occasion, the company is so busy that Travis has passed up the chance to bid on a project.

"Once in a while, it is because we just have too much work and we don't want to extend ourselves and short change our clients by taking too many jobs," Travis said.

The competition between small contract firms and large ones is stiff yet friendly.

"We're in competition with smaller firms and larger firms, and we all kind of work together," Travis said. "When we're too busy to do a project, we may say, `Why don't you contact so-and-so? They do really good work,' and by the same token we've had smaller companies that can't field a large project and they'll pass on our name."

Seeking academia

Travis began working for Lone Mountain back in 1995 after she graduated from the University of Southern Colorado with a Bachelor's degree in archaeology.

"I ended up moving to New Mexico because there were more opportunities at the entry level as an archaeologist," Travis said.

Lone Mountain has two offices, one in Albuquerque and one in El Paso. It has a total of 42 employees on staff, 30 of whom are archaeologists. Travis said the company hires an average of 12 additional employees per year to work on a project by project basis.

And there's no shortage of applicants.

"We've had many students and archaeologists with Ph.Ds or working on their Ph.D. come and work with us basically as a second choice," Travis said. "Because they couldn't get the teaching position that they wanted. Because there wasn't enough of them to go around."

With a limited number of teaching positions available in the industry more and more archaeology students are finding their way into contract archaeology. Huckell said that for every teaching job that opens there are 60 or 70 applicants.

"There's just a very limited number of teaching positions open, and mostly I think when someone becomes a professor of archaeology or anthropology and they become a tenure they're there for life," Travis said. "I don't think you see a lot of turnover in those positions."

Back in the cactus field, the sun burns down bright and bitter, beating against the tender skin of the UNM students. Some of them dutifully dig into the ground in search of the next ancient artifact prize. Some of them sift through dirt in search of small bits of tooth enamel or obsidian flakes that would have once been attached to a primitive weapon.

As Huckell fiddles with the core of an apple he's eaten, the beautiful turquoise ring that sits on his finger vividly rebels against the surrounding brown and green environment. High-pitched complaints from the dozens of locusts bumbling around the site intertwine with the sound of Huckell's voice as he talks about his profession.

"Our principal job as archaeologists is to try to understand what happened in the past," Huckell said.

But it's the future of archaeology that will prove to be more interesting.

"Over the years, employment opportunities have shifted significantly to the world of contract archaeology," Huckell said. "A very, very small percentage of students will go on to academic jobs. It's probably under 5 percent. The academic job market is very competitive."