Real Archaeologist please answer this!!! Approximately how much would it cost to for equipment to survey &?

Question

excavate land in the Sudan? Also how much to pay your staff? I'm not sure how much to pay for local help or how much to pay people willing to come & work on a team. Thanks.

Answer 1

if you'd want a somewhat accurate answer you'd need more information. you need to define your objective better. this could be a very expensive endeavor, the logistics of it would probably have quite a few variables.

at the low end it would be in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Answer 2

It depends on how big the survey area is, what you are looking for, and what kind of survey you are doing.  If you are surveying a smaller area for just initial poking around to see what is there, a team of 10 trained folks will be sufficiant, but the bigger the area, the more people you have, the faster it will be done.  How much to pay local help depends on the local economy... most non local people will require at the very least wages, and more than likely housing and per diem.  If you are looking to get college trained people, you should probably be paying them $15 per hour or so, plus per diem, and at least in the US it is normal for a company to cover housing (hotels etc.)  Unless you put them up in tents and provision them.  The problem with Locals is that even though you don't have to pay hotel or per diem, there is no telling what kinds of people you will get, what training they have,  and no way of telling if they will be honest about the work.  Above all of the crew's personal needs, there is the cost for screens, replacement screen material (because screens ALWAYS break), shovels, pickaxes, buckets, tents, tarps, generators, all of tons of paperwork, and let's not forget the fleet of vehicles you will need to get all the gear and crew out to where you are digging, as well as the petrol that you need to run said trucks and generators.  Then there is the red tape of government... You will need licences and permits from national, state or local governments, or any / all of the above, the time to deal with landowners... do historical backround research, to see if anything has been done previously, and then any costs to see that research.  I guess I would say rough estimates could range from an easy $500,000 for even a modest project, to the Millions of dollars for an expansive one.