First of all I’m writing in English since I’m Norwegian and I think you will understand me better this way. Please feel free to answer in Swedish if you want to. I’ve been living there for some time, so that’s no problem for me.
I am not an archeologist myself, so I maybe there will be some “stupid” questions, and also some can be hard to answer, but assumptions is perfect to as long as you have something that supports what you are stating!
I'm writing a paper about archeology and am going to write about the use of surface examination (in my case air photo from both satellites and cameras attached to planes/helicopters etc). In this case there are some things I need to know.
* First of all I am going to try and find out how many archeologists there are worldwide. I know it is “impossible” to know exact, but if someone has some assumptions I would appreciate those. Wikipedia “tells” that there are 600 archeologists in Sweden. Do you have any other numbers? If not worldwide, maybe different countries, etc. Or maybe you know any web-pages which can tell me this?
* Second, the growth of archeologists. Again Wikipedia tells that there is a growing interest within this field. Anyone who can understate this assumption with some numbers or anything? How much is it growing? Or is this wrong, please tell me?
* Third, in which countries are the most active archeologists? Are there any countries which is known as the “archeology country (-s)”? I’m thinking if there are 600 archeologists in Sweden, which is just 0.00000667% of the Swedish population.(9mill/600) Maybe some other countries has closer to 1%? I have NO idea, I’m just curious.
* Fourth, who is using air photos? I know that “Sametinget” orders satellite photos when they are going to examine the surface. Others? Example: If I had a camera which could help you to examine the surface, who would buy this product? Because of the price (1mill SEK) I’m thinking universities and bigger companies/consultants working with archeology and which is ordering a lot of pictures. If they own a camera they are not dependant on the wheatear and they could save money in the long run. I’ve heard that a single satellite picture costs like 80.000SEK. So 13-15pictures and you have “saved” the cost of the product!
Hope this was understandable and that you can help me! If you can’t help me on all four things, I appreciate that you answer one or two - everything is helpful!
If something is hard to understand- please ask me for further explanation.
I will appreciate all help I can get!!!
Andreas