Normalising Failure
Episode 331 of the CRM Archaeology Podcast tackled a topic that archaeologists rarely discuss openly: failure. Not failed excavations or collapsed site interpretations, but personal and professional failures, from rejected grants to disastrous interviews to toxic field projects to abandoned research plans, or to jobs that simply never materialized. Over the course of the episode, hosts Andrew, Doug, and Renee shared stories that were funny, uncomfortable, and deeply familiar to anyone who has spent time in cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology.
What made the conversation especially interesting is that all three hosts are clearly successful professionals. Between them, they have worked in CRM, academia, media, consulting, public archaeology, and management. Yet the episode revealed something many archaeologists eventually learn: Success in archaeology is often built on repeated rejection. Doug compared the process to baseball statistics. Once archaeologists move into management, grant writing, or consulting, rejection rates become extremely high. Winning one out of every ten proposals or applications may actually represent a strong success rate. Andrew described a similar experience working with television production companies, where countless meetings, pitches, and interviews resulted in only a handful of actual opportunities.
That pattern exists throughout archaeology. Academic archaeologists face rejected journal articles, denied grants, and failed faculty searches. CRM archaeologists deal with seasonal contracts, layoffs, difficult crews, and projects that disappear with little warning. In both cases, a tremendous amount of unpaid labor often goes into opportunities that never work out. The emotional impact of that instability is significant. Studies on archaeological labor conditions have increasingly focused on burnout, precarious employment, harassment, and retention within the profession. A growing body of research in archaeology and heritage studies argues that the field often normalizes exhaustion and instability, particularly for younger professionals trying to establish themselves.
Several moments in the episode touched directly on these broader issues. Renee discussed difficult field experiences involving unsafe expectations, hypercompetitive survey culture, and supervisors who viewed physical exhaustion as a personal weakness rather than a legitimate safety concern. Those stories reflect wider conversations happening across archaeology today about workplace culture and professional ethics. Organizations like the Society for American Archaeology have increasingly addressed these concerns through ethics statements and professional conduct policies. The SAA’s Principles of Archaeological Ethics emphasize workplace responsibility, stewardship, and accountability within archaeological practice. Research has also shown that these workplace problems can disproportionately affect women and underrepresented groups in archaeology. In their 2018 article in Advances in Archaeological Practice, Maureen Meyers and colleagues examined the prevalence and consequences of harassment within archaeological fieldwork environments, demonstrating how toxic workplace culture can directly impact career retention and advancement.
At the same time, the episode emphasized that failure itself is not necessarily destructive. In many cases, the hosts described learning more from failed experiences than successful ones. Bad supervisors taught them how not to manage crews. Rejected interviews improved communication skills. Toxic workplaces clarified professional boundaries. Andrew described eventually succeeding in academic interviews partly because he had experienced enough rejection to stop overthinking the process. This suggests that archaeology often suffers from survivorship bias. Students and early-career archaeologists typically see the polished side of professional life: conference presentations, publications, promotions, and discoveries. They rarely see the dozens of failed applications, abandoned projects, and awkward interviews behind those accomplishments. The reality is that most archaeologists who remain in the profession long enough to become successful have failed repeatedly along the way.
The episode ultimately served as a reminder that rejection is not evidence that someone does not belong in archaeology. More often, it is simply part of working in a field shaped by competition, contract labor, limited funding, and human unpredictability. Failure may not appear on archaeological CVs, but it is one of the most common experiences shared across the profession. Whether or not this is something beneficial for the development of a personal career path, or demonstrates a gaping issue within the field of archaeology, is something that remains open to discussion…
Further reading
Hardy (2014) Obstacles to Career Progression in Archaeology: Precarious Labour and Unemployment
van Ouveren (2025) A history of precarious labor in Dutch archaeology
Meyers et al (2018) The Context and Consequences of Sexual Harassment in Southeastern Archaeology
Heath-Stout (2020) Who Writes about Archaeology? An Intersectional Study of Authorship in Archaeological Journals
Want to hear more about this topic?
CRM Archaeology episode 331 - “We are all failures!”