Field Safety Part III: Man-Made Horrors

As frightening as nature may seem at times, humans introduce a variety of man-made dangers to their own environments. Vehicles, heavy machinery, utilities, and noxious chemicals all pose a threat to field archaeologists.

Driving

The most dangerous thing that any archaeologist does on a daily basis is driving, which is a danger we share with members of every profession, even office workers who never go outdoors. Many motorists don’t seem to understand this danger, which makes the roads more hazardous for the rest of us.

Heavy Machinery

Though most archaeologists don’t operate heavy machinery themselves, we often have to monitor construction projects where backhoes and bulldozers are present. In Texas, many archaeologists use backhoes to test alluvial soils for deeply buried sites; if we aren't operating the machinery ourselves, we generally have to stand near the trench to keep an eye on the soil. This puts us at risk of injury if we’re not careful around the machines. As a general rule, wear a hardhat around these machines, and make sure the operator can see you at all times.

We also survey a lot of agricultural fields, and farmers harvest these fields with combines. It is extremely dangerous to be in a field while a farmer is driving a combine harvester through it, especially if the crops are so high that the farmer can’t see you. In my home state of Illinois, corn usually grows much taller than human height before it is harvested, and anybody walking around in the corn is virtually invisible. If a farmer accidentally runs into you with a combine, the demise you will meet is far more gruesome than I want to think about. If you have to survey a field, but the farmer is harvesting that day, the solution is simple: don’t survey it that day. It can wait, and any employer who says otherwise is not worth working for.

Utilities

We spend a lot of time digging holes, and that means we risk hitting buried utilities. Some utilities are more dangerous than others. If you break a buried water line with your shovel, that’s a problem, but it won’t kill you. If you strike a buried electric line with your shovel, the current could electrocute you.

Figure 1. Junction box connected to buried electric cable. The buried cable provides the power feed to an irrigation control system. The buried cable is not marked, and a misplaced shovel test could come into contact with it.

Gas pipelines can react explosively if broken, but fortunately for field archaeologists, it’s very difficult to penetrate a gas line with a shovel. The pipes are typically made of metal or very thick plastic. This means that you probably won’t blow yourself up by digging a shovel test over a buried gas line, but you shouldn’t do that anyway.

However, sometimes we monitor heavy machinery, and backhoes can easily damage gas lines or other utilities. If a backhoe breaks a gas line, that could be fatal for everyone in the vicinity. If a backhoe comes into contact with an overhead power line or buried electric cable, the result will probably not be immediately fatal, but it could quickly become fatal if people make bad decisions. If this happens, the operator should stay in the cab. Nobody in the vicinity should walk within about 30 feet of the machine, because the ground all around the machine will be energized. Simply walking towards the backhoe could cause you to be electrocuted.

Pesticides and Fertilizers

You should not be walking in an agricultural field while the farmer is having fertilizer sprayed. Many farmers in the United States use anhydrous ammonia fertilizer to replenish the soil with nitrogen. Ammonia fertilizer can severely irritate or burn skin upon contact. Inhalation of ammonia can make it difficult to breathe. If you are sprayed with fertilizer, this will probably be a medical emergency.

Farmers also treat their fields with chemical pesticides. One of the most commonly used pesticides is Roundup, the main ingredient of which is glyphosate. Roundup can irritate skin upon contact, but that isn’t the real danger. Glyphosate is now known to be a carcinogen that can lead to lymphoma or leukemia.

Fencing

We often have to climb over fences as we move from one parcel to the next within our survey areas. On many farms and ranches, the preferred form of fencing is the barbed wire fence. These are not difficult to cross, but a mishap can leave you with an open wound or twisted ankle. The sharp barbs on a barbed wire fence can puncture your skin or even tear large gashes in your flesh. Recently, I was climbing a fence as I’ve done many times before, but this time, my foot got caught as I tried to swing my leg over the top of the fence. As a result, I twisted my ankle and body slammed myself onto the ground.

Some farmers also use electric fences. These can be uncomfortable to touch, but are not life-threatening, because farmers do not put enough amperage through the current to kill someone.

Hunting

Many farmers and ranchers hunt on their property (and many poachers hunt on the property of others). Hunters don’t always pay attention to where their bullets will land if they miss their quarry. If you are surveying during hunting season, the best advice is to wear an orange vest.

The Healthcare and Insurance Industries

It’s no secret that healthcare in the United States is a mess. The cost of healthcare is absurdly high, but employers are required by law to provide workmen’s compensation for injuries incurred at work. Many employers would find it difficult to pay these medical costs out of pocket, so they need insurance. To get insurance, they have to enact the policies that the insurance companies want.

The problem is that insurance agents have no idea what archaeologists actually do, and they tend to lump us in with whatever industry our clients belong to. That means, if you are conducting an archaeological survey for a gas pipeline, the insurance company (and your employer) will want you to follow the same safety rules you would expect for a pipeline welder, even though the work we do is completely different. We don’t face the same dangers that pipeline welders or construction workers face. The dangers we face are just as real, but they are very different. This is irrelevant to most insurance companies, which expect us to wear hardhats all the time, even in wide open fields where there is nothing that can fall on our heads. I once had a client that expected me to wear fire-retardant clothing in the field all day, which actually made my job more dangerous. Since I was not doing any "hot work" (cutting or welding metal), there really wasn't any need for FR clothing, but it did make it a lot more likely that I would overheat while trekking through the mountains all summer.

This is the comical reality of corporate “safety.” Corporate safety rules require us to take measures that are completely unnecessary for the work we do, while overlooking the very real threats we face. Such as angry bulls—no hardhat will protect you from belligerent rough stock. There have been times when I have had to deliberately disobey inane corporate safety rules because I knew that compliance would, at best, make my life much more difficult without making me more safe, or, at worst, actually make my situation more dangerous. I won't name the corporations that made these absurd demands, at least not in this blog post, but I will make it clear that I won't work for them again.

This is all the more reason to know how to handle yourself in the back country. All too often, the people in charge of your “safety” at the corporate level have no idea what you actually do for a living, so you need to be able to trust yourself and your own judgment when the mountains are getting steep and rugged, and lightning starts to flash across the sky. You are responsible for taking care of yourself and looking out for your colleagues.

Closing Thoughts

If you are injured, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad archaeologist, or that you don’t belong in the field. It happens to everyone who does difficult fieldwork. Even if you’re not physically able to perform the duties of a field technician, that doesn’t mean you can’t be an archaeologist. If you’re wheelchair-bound, for example, you can’t realistically participate in an archaeological survey, which comprises most of the paid work in CRM archaeology. But there are other jobs you can do. There are lab technicians who analyze and curate the artifacts found in the field, and GIS technicians who work with the geospatial data. There are even jobs in academia, but to be honest, these are scarce and highly competitive (deciding to become an archaeology professor is probably about as realistic as deciding to be a successful rockstar). If you have the brains to understand the subject matter well, I hope I can welcome you into the world of archaeology, regardless of whatever physical disability you might have. I think every profession could use a little more gray matter.

I don't want to undermine the role that physical prowess plays in CRM fieldwork, but I still wish field techs were valued more for their thinking skills than their digging prowess. This is partially because I was valued more for my physical strength than my cognitive skills for most of my career (at risk of sounding arrogant, I am arguably stronger then most people, and I have personally dug thousands of shovel tests in addition to performing other physically demanding tasks, which made me an asset to my employers during my long career as a field tech—but I would like to think that I had more to offer than just physical strength). We are supposed to be scientists, first and foremost. Crew chiefs are supposed to cultivate knowledge and understanding within their field techs. But the sad truth is that many field techs and crew chiefs barely know the basics, and when they do try to impart information to the younger generation, it is often completely wrong (The man who taught me how to shovel test at my first CRM job had a PhD, and still managed to spread more misinformation than legitimate knowledge).

Safety, fitness, and knowledge are all closely linked. You can't be safe in the field without a certain level of fitness, nor can you be safe in the field without a certain level of knowledge about the dangers you face, and how to react appropriately to those dangers. The job is not worth your life, and your safety should be a higher priority than doing "good archaeology." But at the same time, the whole point of archaeology is knowledge, so if you're not going to do it well—with a solid understanding of the subject matter and the science behind it—it sort of defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place.

Updated April 11, 2024