Today's research fail

Engineers like to say that anyone can use the books and charts. The skill lies in knowing what you need to look for.

Well, okay. There was something that only barely occurred to me to ask. Can an American archaeologist work in the UK?

Well, um. Turns out the answer, for this particular character -- for the protagonist of the second "Athena Fox" novel -- is "no."

I spent a delightful hour or two reading up on Tier 2 and Tier 5 work permits in the UK, pre-BREXIT. Tier 2 is a bit of a Catch-22 for diggers (as they call shovel bums in the UK). Among the many onerous requirements for a Tier 2 is a starting salary in excess of what is customarily paid to archaeological field hands.

(To put it in perspective, I've made more hanging lights than an archaeologist with a degree and five years of field experience does doing their job. And theatre is not exactly known for high salaries.)

You also have to have a job offer already, from an employer accredited to give that offer, and there is only one CRM firm in all of the UK who is. Plus the competition is ridiculous for that visa.

Tier 5 would only apply if my protagonist were Canadian. Or Thai (there's a limited number of countries that are part of the special opening for student-types under thirty years of age). At which point you might as well be an EU member, which (pre-BREXIT of course) gets you an easy in.

So what about citizenship in an EU nation? Not that tough to become a citizen if one of your parents is. Pity her bio was already made clear in the last book and both sides of the family are multi-generational American.

Last option is a student visa. I'm not sure the way this plays out. It is a tempting career path for her to student-visa into a second degree that's a little more suited to archaeology. I'm going to read a bit more about this but I'm not so willing to commit to having the next book take place two years later, with her completely acculturated into England and half way towards a degree. It just feels like too much commit in any case, both from her and from me.

So, really, the best option is she doesn't get paid. This at least lets me fix the weird jump between Field School and what I'm calling the Rescue Dig. There's some legal problems here anyhow as I'd originally envisioned this as a CRM type gig taken as part of the rail expansion project. But for the purposes of the book, I can just wave hands that it is "unusual" for foreign volunteers to be on it.

At some point I really want to take apart CRM, and also get into NAGPRA or similar. For the purpose of this book, though, what I want to show is how underpaid (yet highly educated) field hands are, yet give a little glimpse into that world, where some people have masters in the field and some have never gone to college.

And even the good ones are making less than a theatrical lighting tech.