Well I may be a cretin and I probably am to bother about replying to you. Following your line of (un) reasoning about piles of mud - it seems that you believe that archaeology is unimportant compared with African famine. Therefore, if archaeologists retrained as charity workers, drivers, medics and such - then Oxfam might employ them and they just might be doing something useful instead. You could even be a P.A. to a latrine digger.