In the Spring of 2021, the ACC undertook an online survey, distributed in partnership with the discipline’s major professional organizations (including the SAA), in order to assess financial roadblocks to broad participation in archaeological field schools. Field schools play a key role in shaping the discipline of archaeology in North America, providing a vital context for recruiting the young scholars who will not only become majors in archaeology’s related disciplines, but also fill the pipeline of future faculty and professionals. The ACC’s anecdotal sense was that cost was a critical obstacle to recruiting a more diverse student body, but we lacked solid empirical data that could help our members make cases to university administrations and potential donors for additional resources and curricular support.
The results of the ACC’s survey of field school costs were instructive, if not highly representative. The typical respondent to our survey was a white, cisgender woman, who was 25 to 35 years old and an anthropology major at a 4-year public institution in the United States. Of our 765 respondents who completed the survey, 69% had attended a field school. The typical respondent participated in their first field school during or after their third year of college, and for most, this experience was located in the US.
Fieldwork does not appear to have been a curricular expectation for most of our respondents. 63% of the respondents noted that their academic programs did not require a field experience as part of their major while 30% did have some kind of field requirement. Many respondents (48%) did not know of opportunities to gain field experience within the course of regular academic semesters, suggesting considerable potential demand for extra-curricular and summer field experiences.
We asked our respondents who did attend field schools to rank on a scale of 1-5 a set of factors shaping their decision as to whether or not to attend an archaeological field school. Respondents generally ranked cost, schedule/timing, and availability of information as extremely important (median = 4), followed by safety and feeling of inclusion as moderately important (median = 3), followed by flexible accommodations as moderately important, but less so (median = 2). Of the factors ranked as extremely important by the typical respondent, cost had the highest average rank at 3.81, with availability of information being a close second at 3.41, followed by schedule/timing in third at 3.38. For factors ranked as moderately important by the typical respondent, the average rank for safety and feeling of inclusion were also very close at 3.07 and 2.98 respectively, with flexible accommodations having the lowest average rank at 2.48 (Figure 1).
Of those respondents who did not participate in a field school, our respondents ranked cost as the most important factor in their decision to not attend field school (Figure 2). The typical respondent ranked all the other factors–availability of information, interest in research program, schedule/timing, and lack of accommodation–as only moderately important in their decision to not attend field school. Cost by far seems to be the principal determining factor in dissuading students from attending field schools.
We tried in our survey to put a number on just how much additional costs students were bearing in order to participate in field opportunities. It is clear that curricular field opportunities offer real student financial savings. 50% of our respondents (n=195) indicated participation costs of $50.00 or less, and an additional 18% indicated costs ranging from $50.00 to $300.00. Clearly, curricular field opportunities are a critical way to keep participation costs for students low. In contrast, extracurricular field schools place considerably higher financial burdens upon our students. 191 respondents provided us with cost estimates for extracurricular field opportunities. Of these, only 34% cited costs of between $0.00 and $300.00. 50% of our respondents indicated costs ranging from $350.00 to $3500.00, while a concerning 16% listed costs over $3500.00.
Perhaps the most concerning result of the ACC’s field school cost survey came in response to a question regarding institutional financial support for extracurricular field opportunities. Despite the sizable student population relying on field schools beyond their home institutions for archaeological training, only 17% knew of sources of financial support for attendance available at their home institution. 83% either did not have any support from their institution or did not know of any sources.
Taken together, the responses to the ACC’s survey of field school costs suggest that centers of archaeological training have a significant task ahead if we are to decrease financial roadblocks to participation and enhance the inclusivity of field training opportunities. It is clear that we need to work collectively to raise new resources supporting field training while also raising awareness of existing sources of support. Lowering the cost of field opportunities by embedding them in the curriculum is one approach that clearly reduces the financial burden on our students. Lowering participation costs is ultimately just one plank in a broader effort to enhance the inclusivity of our discipline and the diversity of the academic and professional pipelines. The raw data from the ACC Field School Cost Survey, which are fully anonymous, are available on the ACC website [insert link when ready].
Acknowledgements
The ACC would like to thank Stephen Mrozowski for organizing the initial analysis of the survey results and John Steinberg for undertaking the preliminary examination of the data. Thanks also to the Society for American Archaeology, American Anthropological Association, Archaeological Institute of America, Society for Historical Archaeology, and the Institute for Field Research for their help in distributing the survey to their members and students.