The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

You cannot see attachments on this board.

I've just found out there's an association of women plumbers.

It's name is stopcocks.

I like this.

[Tamas]

And the founder is a man?

[Oexmelin]

Not directly responsive, but seems to me that the rural economy of England in the 17th century has present relevance in terms of demographics, disruptions to traditional work patterns, religious radicalism, political polarization . . .

Relevance is not always a function of chronological closeness.

Obviously - but for that to work, you have to have faculty who are invested in making those claim of relevance (many aren't), and those appeals to analogy (which are always looked with some suspicion). Plus, this sort of outreach isn't valued for tenure & promotion. But my point about the narrowing of historical imagination within the profession still stands: while this sort of public outreach is good for the general public (and would hopefully circle back to university boards of trustees), one would hope colleagues studying the 20th century would not need these sorts of enticement to look beyond the comfortable familiarity of the near-contemporary.

[Jacob]

I'm into early medieval history in Northern Europe - viking age Scandinavia and the world it interacted with, as well as the preceding centuries. As a general public person, I guess it's lucky that 1) it's really trendy right now in a pop-cultural sense; and 2) research is funded by several (or at least one, but I assume several) national governments as part of the national project - "this is our history, this is our identity, of course we want to invest in producing knowledge about it."

I think this maps to a number of other nations - European, but some Asian ones as well - where the national history and archeology is fairly well funded and has some career paths available?

[Syt]

Ex-colleague's wife is an archaeologist in Austria. She's basically working project to project (often part-time), whatever gives funding and needs people in either the dig sits or at the desk/archive, with very, very few long term time positions ever opening up (and then you need to know the right peopl ... ). Her passion is for the neolithic era, but she rarely works in that field because there's just so much funding going around and if she waited for open spots she'd probably be twiddling her thumbs for years between gigs.

[Threviel]

When I took archaeology at university they talked about the the first poor 20 years. If you persevered, worked hard  and chased low paying project jobs you might get a steady job after 20 or so years.

As an aside archaeology is insanely boring in practice.

[Iormlund]

The only archeologist I've ever met was working as a line operator at a white goods factory.

I'm glad I didn't go into history back in the day.

[celedhring]

The only archeologist I've ever met was working as a line operator at a white goods factory.

I'm glad I didn't go into history back in the day.

The only one I know ultimately transitioned to journalism, and she's become a bit of an expert in yihadi extremism.

She was working at a Maccy D's at one point though.

[mongers]

The only archeologist I've ever met was working as a line operator at a white goods factory.

I'm glad I didn't go into history back in the day.

Man, that guy will one day start The Revolution.

[Josquius]

The lunatic I went out with was a (art) history grad and worked as a museum curator.
I learned quite a bit about how shitty that scene is.

It was shocking how so many several hundred year old paintings were stored and uncatalogued.

Its interesting it has such a  high end image despite being sub minimum wage beggar level stuff.

[The Larch]

I do know an archeologist that works (or at least used to work) as such, and her work was mainly doing preliminary inspections of construction sites to check for possible archaeological remains that would have to be preserved. If it wasn't mandatory by law it's the kind of work that would most probably never be done.

[garbon]

I have one professional archaeologist on my course. She's now pursuing another degree in her aim to become a professor.

[Caliga]

I do know an archeologist that works (or at least used to work) as such, and her work was mainly doing preliminary inspections of construction sites to check for possible archaeological remains that would have to be preserved. If it wasn't mandatory by law it's the kind of work that would most probably never be done.

My brother used to do that shortly after he graduated from college with his archaeology degree.  He loved the work, but the pay was so poor he had to walk away from it.  He works for Google now doing regulatory compliance for Google's undersea data cables.  As you can imagine, the pay for that sort of work is: better.

[Syt]

 

[DGuller]

  Should it have been "I'm a doctor"?