Someone shared with me a piece that someone wrote about the state of academic archaeology after the SideQuest thing in Austin. To begin, I don't really care what happened at the event. People are free to spend their money on whatever - while I do think if people were genuinely curious about the past they could put that money toward giving students some funding so they could do archaeological research instead of giving YT content creators more money, but that's just my opinion. I read the piece and it was completely wrong about a ton of stuff. As an academic archaeologist (also with experience in private sector), I thought I would give some actual information about the field (at least in the US because that is what my experience and knowledge is). There is this consistent message about programs shutting down as this idea that everything is falling down around us. There are programs closing - just like there are programs opening up. In the US, there are a ton of changes happening to academia and shifts in how things are done. At one of programs I attended as a graduate student, an Engineering major was closed - meanwhile the Anthropology department were hiring 3 new faculty members. Should we equate that to Engineering is dead and the academic field is drowning, while Anthropology is surpassing Engineering as one of the most deserved majors! - No, we shouldn't because that isn't accurate, just like people saying academic archaeology is dying. The truth is that academic archaeology in the US is shifting to focus on helping increase employment for graduates. That was a major criticism I had when going through grad school, it was that some academic archaeology were so wrapped up by their research that they didn't prepare students for employment after graduation. So, what happened? The people in the field took notice and started adjusting. Are things still changing? Yup, as it should. There are positions that aren't get replaced, just like in every field - but new positions in academia are still opening up. Additionally, student enrollment is up 8% in the last 2-years. I can only talk about my students and interns, but a comment was made that people are just graduating with a useless certificate. Every intern I have had is currently working as an archaeologist. Now, I have students that are graduating this Fall who are about to start as interns for CRM firms and then after graduation immediately get hired as archaeologists. So... not a useless certificate, but actually leading to careers as archaeologists. And this is my problem with things like this, people want to give you their opinion as fact. But it's not fact and they paint a picture of archaeology that isn't true because it's the bad guy to them - because they see themselves as some hero figure trying to set things right - when in reality, they know so little about the field that they don't even know what is good and bad. Happy to talk about archaeology with people and currently waiting to hear back from Dedunking about our debate. I'm just trying to get some good information out to the public from someone actively in the field.