Archaeology must open up to become more diverse

Archaeology classrooms are becoming more representative, but we need practitioners with more varied backgrounds and perspectives

As a British Asian woman, I am one of a small handful of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people to carve out a lengthy career in the archaeology sector. This is a problem.

In 2013, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) published its Profiling the Profession (pdf) report, which included a section on ethnicity. We are 99% white, with a miserly 1% "other" ethnicities. There are about 6,000 people employed in the archaeology sector in the UK. Of the 837 respondents, seven described themselves as non-white - and one of those was me.