Matthew Gagarin

Dr. Steven Wolferton

UNT Professor/Chair of Department

University of North Texas

9 October 2019

4:26 PM

Interview Assessment #1

My first interview of this school year was Dr. Steven Wolverton, a professor and

department chair at the University of North Texas. Coming into the interview, I was curious

about the processes of archaeology as a whole. This includes how research is started, conducted,

and concluded, what the process of getting into a dig site is, and wanting to learn more about the

field from an inside source. The interview was conducted over the phone, and I got to hear

insightful news on everything that I asked about.

I learned a lot about this career choice from the interview I conducted. Firstly, a

background in science, especially ecology, helps with archaeology since it is a very broad field

that contains a lot of research from chemistry to cartography. Skills such as writing and statistics

are critical to a successful college career. What surprised me, and I realized made sense, was that

community relations was also important because archaeologists need to have positive relations

with the people they are working with, spanning from Native Americans to colleagues and

community members. Another thing I learned was that there were field schools for high school

students. Previously, I only heard of field schools for college students, where they go for a few

weeks over the summer to conduct research. I also discovered that the archaeology career splits
into two paths: a paid researcher who works for an institution to conduct whatever research they

please or a firm consultant who is hired to conduct research for a company. The differences in

these are time for projects and the amount of freedom for projects. A lot of archaeology depends

on what you study and who you work for. Sadly, I also learned that the career outlook for

archaeology is poor as ethical and legal questions are becoming more frequent in the field.

People are also funding less into the social sciences.

During the interview, I came to realize that my questions were very broad, and they

applied to archaeology as a whole where they could be interpreted as very vague. But because of

that, I learned that archaeology is very branching and my questions should cover more specific

topics now that I know better. For the next interview, I will ask more specific questions

following up from the knowledge I gained from this interview.