It is often said that cultural resource managment (CRM) comprises the vast majority of archaeology done in North America today. Yet, for all the academic articles, books, and conferences that publicize archaeological projects, there is comparatively little written about CRM archaeology. This is particularly true concerning the "business" side of this practice. For example, how many CRM archaeologists are there? How many CRM firms? How many CRM projects are undertaken each year, and by whom? How much money is involved? Ultimately, what is the "business" of archaeology and how big is it? After failing to find clear answers to these questions in published material, we went digging around for information ourselves, and herein present a snapshot of what commercial archaeology in B.C. looks like.
Salle et al. (Mon,) studied this question.