North Dakota oil boom even provides jobs for archaeologists

The job-creating machine known as the Bakken Shale oil fields is far-reaching. Even archaeologists are benefiting.

From AP:

Drilling crews are eager to plunge their equipment into the ground. Road builders are ready to start highway projects, and construction workers need to dig.

But across the hyperactive oil fields of North Dakota, these and other groups often must wait for another team known for slow, meticulous study — archaeologists, whose job is to survey the land before a single spade of dirt can be turned.

The routine surveys have produced a rare jobs bonanza in American archaeology, a field in which many highly educated professionals hop from project to project around the world and still struggle to make a living. The positions also come with a constant tension: The archaeologists are trained to find evidence of the past, but the companies that pay them would prefer not to turn up anything that gets in the way of profits.

Without the oil boom, a lot of young archaeologists might "never get the experience," said Tim Dodson, who endured a long job search before finding work overseas and later coming to North Dakota.

And the diggers are finding stuff, including Native American sites and forgotten pioneer cemeteries. Since 2009, the number of historic sites in the Peace Garden State has nearly tripled.

Oil means jobs.

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