Due to so many things that happened during the last 2 weeks I forgot to mention that more than 1 week ago I have quit archaeology company, after more than 1,5 year of my presence in that business.
What can I say about working on archaeological excavation sites in Ireland? For sure there was more pros than cons.
Methodology of excavation in Ireland is completely different to what we have learnt in Poland, and I must admit that our - continental (not only Polish) methodology is much more efficient and systematic than the methodology I experienced in Ireland. Unfortunately lots of our energy and time is being wasted due to the way of digging in Ireland. It is clearly visible on wide sites (couple of hundred square meters). In Poland we divide field to grid of 10 square meters boxes and then divide people to couple of teams of 5 people. Each team cleans surface, explores the archaeological features in the box of 10 square meters, thus having 4 teams of 5 we can very fast explore and record about 80 square meters per day. After each day we have an exact number of 10 square meters boxes of the site completely explored, planned and closed and we don’t need to care about them later. In the Irish methodology we have to clean whole surface of the site (sometimes it is hundred square meters). Usually we need from 1 to 3 days to clean the surface, but quite often it rains and the surface once cleaned is completely disturbed by rain water and it needs another cleaning.
Next thing that was very annoying is the attitude of so called “archaeologists” of National Road Authority (some of them don’t know the basic methods of recording the site). It is obvious that carrying on the works in the heavy rain is completely pointless. You can not clean the surface (which is usually clay), you can not draw the plans and quite often you can not see anything interesting. For many of the National Road Authority inspectors it is not so obvious. They demand to keep people on site sometimes even under very heavy rain. If they were a real archaeologist or if they were at least people with some experience on field they would probably know that people present on site under heavy rain were rather pretending of working than doing something real. That was really annoying, when sometimes we had to dig or to clean the surface under heavy rain only because some ignorant of National Road Authority was going to visit the site.
In Ireland many things, especially the comfort of the work depends on Site Director, his or her experience and attitude to his or her staff. I will describe two completely extreme examples.
Almost half of my time I spent working in Irish archaeology I was working for one very experienced and open minded man from England. He is a person who knows what he is doing and who stick to his plans more or less. He knows his staff well, people’s capabilities and limitations, what is very important he has never been pushing people, trying to use their available power in the most effective way and not wasting time for trying to force anybody to do something that he or she can not do. Most important thing. He knows that most of the site assistants have Master degree in archaeology, and they are more or less experienced people. Work under his orders was very comfortable and easy, and - as far as I know - he has never limited the challenging task to the small group of people. On the contrary he has been trying to give every person of his staff something really interesting to do.
My other site director - an Irish girl - was in the extreme opposition. On her site there was never time and will for discussion or suggestions. Chaotic decisions and orders were changing all the time. All members of the staff were completely annoyed, especially when her decisions were completely irrational and were showing lack of experience in directing the group of archaeologists. Even more annoying was the fact that she was blaming us for her wrong decisions. If someone pointed her out her mistakes was lost completely and could forget about any promotion. Of course I was one of them - when I told here that the camera batteries were not charged. Pushing people all the time, changing moods couple of times per day and limiting the challenging tasks to only small group of people (I don’t blame them) made her staff very nervous and stressed.
The thing completely not understanable for many of us is the way of promotions in many of the archaeology companies. Unfortunately there is many examples when your promotion depends on how fast you lit the cigarette of your boss. There are people in many companies who were site directors in Poland, people with a great field experience who haven’t been promoted for year or two, and at the same time they are people without any archaeological degree, with some experience gained in Ireland who were promoted very fast. The best example is an archaeologist without big experience, who couldn’t speak proper English nor fill the context sheets who became supervisor very fast. I knew also an Irish girl with bachelor degree without any experience except the one got during the studies who became supervisor very quickly.
Some of you probably suspects that I wouldn’t complain if I would be the one of the party. Not at all. There is nothing personal, I was quite happy with my latest promotion and I knew that I got it due to my experience and the work I did. I am challenging myself to acquire in my life as much as I can, but only by my own work and time and energy I devote to the things and not by personal relations, protections or simple “ass licking” (sorry for being vulgar).
So what is good in Irish archaeology firms? I like very much quite easy attitude of the company to its employees. I had never had any problems with holidays, trips to Poland nor with having a day off immediately. Polish archaeologist are usually in much better situation than other Poles employed in Ireland who can not have many holidays, and thus they can not visit Poland so often as we can. Most of the site directors and supervisor are rather easy going people and they don’t make the problems to anybody, so even if you are out of the party and you have no any hopes for being promoted nobody will never make any problems to you. Of course there are exceptions everywhere, however I can not comply on that.
Thanx to my site director I have gained some experience in using new digital equipment that is rather unavailable on excavations in Poland and I could take a challenges that I had never had in Poland due to the lack of equipment or limitations of the budget (due to the new car of the bosses).
The most important advantage is the conditions of work compared to Poland. My friends in Poland are working 10 - 12 hours per day (8 hours of supervising, drawing plans and sections, taking photos and exploring interesting objects and 4 hours of paper work in the office), 6 days a week for 500 - 600 Euro / month. In Poland, usually we do not have cabins on site nor proper place to eat our lunch (usually we do it in the van), our toilet is the nearest forest or bush. And, what is the most annoying, our salaries are often delayed, because one of the bosses is just about to buy a new car or simply to keep our money on his or her account for a couple days to increase the income.
After all I am quite happy with my experience in Irish archaeology and the number of good memories is much bigger than the number of bad ones.
One week ago I have started a new job in the growing IT business.
What is your opinion of what has or hasnt been found near Tara (ie the area where they intend to build the road)…are some of the head arachealogists politicking to justify their own jobs or is there something of real value there????
on a lighter note..history of brewing in Ireland http://www.mooregroup.ie/beer/index.html
I’d like to read more about your experiences on digs in Ireland, Mac. But for now, a hearty congratulations on your new endeavour. I wish you well with it and I am sure it will be a great success.
Good luck with the new job - I suspect that we’ll hear more about it soon
Paul
Hello!
I am sorry, this comment does not have any link with the article, but I want to be sure that it will be read…
I am a french student, spending one year in Ireland, and I am currently working on the Polish immigrants in Ireland and there life in the country. I found your blog, which is very very interesting. Would you allow me to ask you, by e-mail maybe, some concrete questions about your everyday life here?
No obligation of course, just let me know!^^
Thanks
Yep.
Good luck with the new job mate.
u have not had any thing too say about lazy a few polish workers who seem too think that we are there too do there work
heh?
in proper English please?
Wow! It’s amazing this “guide” of archaelogical excavation in Ireland. I’m an italian student, very close to degree, and lately I had the idea to go in Ireland to work as archaeology. I don’t know the opportunity of workplaces in Poland, but in Italy is quite impossible to find them. If you want to work, you work GRATIS for an university. The other chances are two: the cooperative and the sovrintendenze (a peripherl facilities of “Department of goods and cultural activities”). For the first one the max salary that you can have is 900€ for month, but quite never you can work for many months. And the last one, the Sovrintendenza, it’s very hard to be employed. Due to these reasons, I’ll try to work abroad and the Ireland seems a good place. It could be an important experience, earn a salary and increase my curriculum vitae. I have already seen other comments about the life of irish archaeologist, but your article is very exaustive. Thank you very much
goodbye!
ha, were you with acs by any chance? I did a ba in archaeology and worked with them for a year~ big mistake. I agree with you that it changes with directors, but i also worked with an irish girl for a large part of my time there and she did pretty much what you said, it made the atmosphere onsite terrible and in the end i packed it in for another company.
another thing that annoyed me was that,at times the whole enterpise seemed to be a lesson in futility, with many disagreements, and particularly cleaning back vast tracks of site, in the rain when you cannot really do a thing.
ass kissing and onsite politics are annoying yes,but you get them in every type of job, and that girl with her ba who got supervisor? we have long holidays @ college in ireland, i left college, having also done with about a year and a half of shovel monkeying, it’s quite likely she had the same, but it sucks that people with 2 or more years experience weren’t asked to take the job.
in my opinion irish archaeology, well irish contract archaeology uses the people that they hire like a slave, you’re their labour, you are nothing but meat. grr we need unions,and a better wage, for a graduate career you must admit the conditions and salary are fairly paltry
I am a little dissapointed by this Krystian, these kind of generalizations are the reason that Irish Archaeology is being brought in to disrepute. Polish people in general need to understand cultural relativism. Your opinions apply to one company only “Headland” which are a very poor example by any standards. They are not all like that
Ed, this is my blog and usually I am describing my experiences. However, most of my Polish friends - archaeologists - have been working in Ireland for a some period of time and their opinions about the methodology of excavations are pretty the same as mine. It is just different school of archaeology. From our - continental and Polish - point of view our way is more efficient and faster.
As for my experiences. I worked for a few site directors. One of them English man is the bright star that shines among the others and you know that. As for the Irish site directors, at least two that I know and I used to work for are very professional, but other 2 were really unprofessional and in some way neurotic.
Despite of the level of professionalism of the site directors all of them stuck to the methodology - more or less insular and all of them were doing wide surface digs instead of fast and sufficient exploration of 10 square m boxes.
Hi Krystian,
A very fair response. I am just a little worried that you would consider “commercial Archaeology” to be Irish Archaeology. To be honest fast and efficent sounds like the German way (no offence
my advice is tóg é go bog é Mac, Archaeology is not professional yet. Why else would they hire someone like me 
tóg é go bog é - I like it, and I know what it means
as for the commercial archaeology
it is more or less 90% of our professional opportunities, and I am pretty aware of the differences.
Nevertheles, most of the rules were shaped by National Museum of London but it doesn’t mean that it is the best way of archaeology
As I said… the one common thing for Ireland and Britain is wide surface digs, which is fairly less efficient than 10m2 boxes way.
Im will ask my Archaeology lecturer about this to see why the difference exists, it sounds interesting. Yes MOLAS and many other ideas from london have not always been applicable to Ireland
my last site in Carlow was bigger than Croke Park, had to trowel the whole thing too!! madness
Hey K,
Am delighted for you today, in my Archaeology lecture today my Lecturer Paul Gosling MIAI used your above experience in Irish Archaeology as a lesson in what to expect on a dig. Well done
Eddie, do you mean, I and my blog entry was mentioned during the lecture at the university?
Yes, your whole experience above was used by my Archaeology lecture today (in the power point presentations he uses) as an accurate experience of what Irish Archaeology is like.
Was it ok or bad?
it would be nice to be informed about that, but of course, things published are available for lectures etc.
It was great, he used your picture as well, he used a few different peoples experiences in Irish Archaeology and people in the class believed yours to be the most accurate and most informative. I told them to all to read your blog
xxxxxxx is his address for royalties enquiries
Woops i should not have put his address up, can you remove it please!
no roylities… it is published
so there is no problem I don’t want any royalities 
I mean it would be good to know before
Usually I inform somebody if I am goind to use something from someone’s website or blog
but afterall it was good
so I am glad that I could somehow participate in Irish archaeology studies 
Was kidding about royalties! thanks for all the smiley faces
Hi. Interesting view point and glad for the debate.
I myself am an archaeologist with several years experience of work in Ireland, although I’m English. I have a number of complaints about the NRA situation in Ireland. This mostly centres on the fact that their archaeologists represent a developer - nay the largest developer in Ireland - and are, or believe they are, in charge of on-site methodology and the extent to which sites are excavated. To me it is intolerable to have such power in the hands of developers, and hope to god you get one of the more understanding and conciencious ones - their practices vary across their sectors.
I have to point out, however, that working in the rain on pointless jobs like you mention is not, in fact, their fault, or their expectation. I believe that the option is always there for us to not work but our employers are not going to allow that (as they won’t get paid) and most people on site would rather tolerate the crappy conditions so that they, also, can get paid. It’s all about the money. Which is why you, and I, are here.
Regarding the contintental site methodology, I wonder are you talking about research or commercial excavations? Possibly you mean that there is no difference? I am under the impression (and I would appreciate being corrected) that most of your archaeology in Poland tends to be on known upstanding sites comprising positive features (deposits, walls etc). Irish sites tend to be previously inknown sites, the extents of which are not exactly known prior to open-area excavation. Box-grid type archaeology is very familiar from older type excavations in the UK and Ireland. Do you mean that the topsoil is removed in small 10×10m boxes by machine, leaving 1-2m baulks in between? If so then I am sure you can see the problem that this causes in terms of accessing these baulks with a machine after you have resolved these boxes. I hate to think what the flooding situation would be with all our rain too, without anywhere for the water to drain in those boxes. Perhaps you mean that the site is stripped by machine totally, and then (presuming your large site is absolutely covered by archaeological feaures) the whole site is cleaned before those features aredealt with? I have not come across this situation, as all large sites I have worked on are dealt with in smaller bite-size areas (if not as small as 10 x 10m) which are resolved before moving on. If this is the situation you mean then I have to agree that your director must have been two sandwiches short of a picnic, but it sounds more likely to me that you have spent, like most of us, too much time trowelling back without due recognition for the hard job you have done, and are grinding an axe that you have had been crafting during all that long time. Perhaps it is time we re-appraised out techniques over here, but it’s patronising having someone from another country tell us that the way we have managed to get along in dificult circumstances is totally wrong, and that we should do it differently (that is an attitude on site that comes from Polish, English, Swedish and any number of other foreign nationals, not what I am accusing you of).
Commercial archaeology in Ireland is an interesting choice for study for anyone outside of Ireland. You have to, though, appreciate that for several years we have been rescuing data from literally 1000’s of sites every year for several years due to the boom in development. This takes alot of staff, and most of them will not stay in the profession, as you have not, because the conditions are demanding, tough, and most often tedious.
This means that there has been a huge lack of sufficiently trained people. It is all too frequently the case that the number of people who cannot communicate in English out-number those that can. I don’t want to turn this into something else, but this situation is impossible given the numbers of staff who can’t fully communicate about the archaeology, and this is completely due to the desperate need for staff. Fortunately or unfortunately that is now changing and the work is drying out. The lack of recognition you refer to is unfortunate, but sometimes understandble (I don’t mean that it makes it right).
I have worked with many hundreds of people in the time I have worked here, and all of us (I was the same) have started off giving out about the conditions, the bosses, the NRA and everything but the kitchen sink (because there isn’t one). In that time I have learned that there are many reasons for doing what we do, and that frequently the bosses are guilty of making the wrong choices. Hey I’m sure your new profession will have some of these problems, but at least you’ll have a kitchen sink
Hi, Krystian!!
What a surprise, I found your article by accident while looking for another job oportunities:))
I’m wondering if You remember me:) We studied together
And by the way, you have deam right about archaeology, that is why I really want to quit and go back to Poland. Maybe, someday…
Good luck with new job!!
Justka