Critical scholarship on the state of archaeological labor has boomed and bloomed in recent years, demonstrating systemic harms, inequities, and patterns of exclusion in archaeological work. This body of historical and contemporary analysis has documented low wages, poor working conditions, and efforts to separate the intellectual work from the physical work of archaeology, resulting in diminished recognition and compensation for those performing supposedly “unskilled” labor. Research and reflections on archaeological labor have also demonstrated that such exploitation and marginalization especially affect archaeological workers of marked, nondominant, intersectional identities. With the problems of archaeological labor increasingly clear, this themed issue turns our attention to what can be done to improve working conditions for archaeologists in various sectors and geographic contexts. Recognizing the hierarchies and power structures in the field that position some individuals, groups, and institutions to take effective action to ensure more decent work for all who labor in archaeology, the authors in this issue articulate particular interventions that might be made by the people and institutions most ideally positioned to make change that leads to better labor conditions for all archaeologists and therefore to better archaeology. Here, I outline the robust global scholarship on archaeological labor to situate this themed issue and provide a trail map through the articles gathered here, which aim to ignite sparks for advancing labor management in archaeology.

Cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology is a multimillion-dollar industry in Canada and the lead employer for archaeology graduates. Yet, the growth of and the challenges facing the Canadian CRM industry remain poorly documented. We therefore designed and distributed a job satisfaction and labor market survey to Canadian CRM practitioners with the goal of understanding how industry professionals feel about their positions and the health of the industry as well as what they believe are the most pressing challenges facing the Canadian CRM industry. These data indicate that the sector has grown faster than the supply of labor, that owner-operators are faced with difficult challenges related to the staffing required for the scale and volume of work, and that employees in the CRM sector are experiencing frustration with working conditions, compensation, and the preparation that postsecondary training offers. In this article, we attempt to determine the size of the Canadian CRM industry and highlight the challenges faced within the industry that must be addressed for CRM in Canada to attract and retain professional archaeologists.