A day in the life of a archaeologist?

Question

what do they do in a day and how much money do they make?

Answer 1

You already have a good part of your answer.  Here is a couple of day descriptions for you.

When I worked as an archaeologist, we were get up early and head out to the site.  There, we would dig until lunch.  We had to bring our lunch to the site given that it was a bit remote.  Then, we would dig until 5 pm.  By digging I mean with bamboo, brushes, trowels, and shovels.  We would then dry screen all of the removed dirt.  (Sometimes it was sent back to be screened with water, etc).  It was summer and very hot at times.  So, you needed to bring plenty of water and sunblock.  We'd go back to camp and hang out with coworkers until sometime past dark.  

We lived in tents for 10 days at a time and came home for 4 days in between.  Sometimes we could bring campers, and sometimes we had hotel rooms.  You would usually get paid a per diem in addition to pay.

When I worked in a museum, it was like most other jobs.  I would go to work for normal hours, etc.

As far as pay, you is much better to have a masters if doing archaeology.

Answer 2

It depends on what kind of job an archaeologist has. Some archaeologists work in contract archaeology. Some work at colleges and universities. Some work in museums. Some work for the government.

Contract archaeologists come in several types: business people who negotiate contracts and do all the paperwork, diggers who run the excavations or do the actual digging, and lab specialists who analyze the finds. A fourth type consists of people who write up the reports for the projects. Typically, the business people make about $60,000 a year, the dig directors make about $50,000 as does the lab manager, lab techs make about $10-$12 an hour as do the people who do most of the digging. Report writers can be hourly wage earners or salaried at about $35,000 a year.

Federal government archaeologists are much like contract archaeologists in terms of their job descriptions. The government might pay a little better or a little worse, depending on where the job is located.  Jobs in Montana pay less than jobs in Washington DC.

Professors make about $50,000 a year to start and many can make well over $100,000 a year by the time they retire.  They spend most of their time teaching classes.  They only dig and play with artifacts in the summer. They also spend a lot of time writing articles to publish in professional journals.

Most museum archaeologists work as curators and never go out on digs. They manage museum collections, build exhibits, work in education programs for kids, and they might even give tours.  They make about $50,000 per year.

So, there is no real way to describe a day in the life of a typical archaeologist because there is no such thing as a typical archaeologist.