ARCHEOLOGIST

Summary

This position is located on the Resource Inventory and Assessment Staff in a state, area, or field office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The mission of NRCS is to provide leadership in a partnership effort to help people conserve, maintain and improve their natural resources and environment.

Duties

• This position includes a direct supervisory component. Responsible for supervision of federal employees under the cultural resources and archeology discipline.
• Ensures quality and quantity of work, reviews work of subordinate and accepts, revises or reject work
• Carries out field investigations and produces professional quality cultural resources investigation and assessment reports.
• Identifies necessary cultural resources studies, develops specifications for scopes of work, determines cultural and scientific significance of identified resources in accordance with the guidelines and national Register of Historic Places criteria.
• Prepares technical cultural resource sections of contracts, environmental documents, agreement documents and other instruments of agency intent.
• Prepares and maintains all technical guides and information dealing with cultural resources.
• Keeps abreast of developments and research in Archeological methods and procedures.

Qualifications

Applicants must meet all qualifications and eligibility requirements by the closing date of the announcement including time-in-grade restrictions, specialized experience and/or education, as defined below. You must possess the Basic Requirements indicated below, plus additional specialized experience and/or education to be considered eligible for this position. Your application or resume must clearly show that you possess the appropriate specialized experience requirements. The following link provides more information on the qualifications for these positions: Professional and Scientific Positions. Basic Requirements: A. Education Degree: Successful completion of a full 4-year course of study in an accredited college or university leading to a bachelor's or higher degree that included a major field of study that included 3 semester hours each in the following course areas: -History of archeology -Archeology of a major geographical area such as North America or Africa -Regional archeology, archeological cultures, or sites in a specific part or portion of a major geographical area to acquire or develop a foundation for regional specialization for professional development -Theory and methods of archeology. Methods include, but are not limited to, typology, classification, sampling, cultural evolution, diffusion, dating, and analytical techniques -Archeological field school, to provide a basic understanding of theoretical and practical approaches to research design implementation, field preservation techniques, and report preparation by participation in actual field work. AND Six semester hours of related course work in: - geography, geology, or cultural geography - history, historiography, or historical archeology - environmental studies - scientific writing (nonfiction English composition); and/or - surveying; AND Archeological field school. 2. Related Curriculum -- Degree in anthropology (with emphasis on ethnology, physical anthropology, or scientific linguistics), history, American studies, or a related discipline may be accepted as satisfying in full the educational requirements, provided the curriculum supplied academic course work sufficiently similar to the requirements in A.1 (including archeological field school). OR B. Combination of Education and Experience: College-level education or training that provided knowledge equivalent to that described above, plus appropriate technical experience or additional education. OR C. Experience: Four years of archeological work experience that demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles and theories of professional archeology. The work experience must have included archeology field experience, which may include that gained in an archeological field school. Field experience should have included a combination of professional experience in archeological survey, excavation, laboratory analysis, and preparation of written materials. Applicants with such field experience should, after additional experience under the direction of a higher-grade archeologist, be able to demonstrate the ability to be a crew chief, directing the work of others at a single location as a part of a larger archeological project. In addition to the requirements described above, the following additional experience is required: Specialized experience GS-12: You must have at least one (1) year of specialized experience, equivalent to GS-11 level in the Federal Service or comparable experience not gained through Federal Service. One or more years of specialized experience is defined as performing administrative duties in support of conservation planning. Specialized experience is defined as experience assisting in conducting background studies and document reviews pertaining to archeological project development. This experience must include: 1. planning and carrying out cultural resources management programs; 2. archeological field experience with a combination of archeological survey, excavation, laboratory analysis, and preparation of written materials; 3. Applying knowledge of historic preservation legislation; 4. utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) to capture, store, manipulate and present spatial or geographic data; and 5. utilizing GPS software for mapping. Note: There is no education substitution for the GS-12 level. For more information on the qualifications for this position, click here: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/#url=GS-PROF Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Requirements

You must be a US Citizen or US National. Males born after 12/31/1959 must be Selective Service registered or exempt. Subject to satisfactory adjudication of background investigation and/or fingerprint check. Direct Deposit - Per Public Law 104-134 all Federal employees are required to have federal payments made by direct deposit to their financial institution. Successfully pass the E-Verify employment verification check. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, visit https://www.e-verify.gov/. As a condition of employment for accepting this position, you will be required to serve a 1-year probationary period unless previous federal service is creditable. During this time your employment will be evaluated, and we may consider: your performance and conduct, the needs and interests of the agency, whether your continued employment would advance organizational goals of the agency or the Government, and whether your continued employment would advance the efficiency of the Federal service. Upon completion of your probationary period your employment will be terminated unless you receive certification, in writing, that your continued employment advances the public interest. Subject to one year supervisory/managerial probationary period unless prior service is creditable. New USDA supervisors must successfully complete all components of the required training program before the end of their probationary period. Must possess and maintain a valid state motor vehicle operator's license for the type of vehicle(s) operated to perform the duties of this position.

Education

If you are relying on your education to meet qualification requirements:You must submit a copy of your transcripts to include course number, title, completion and grade. Education must be accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education in order for it to be credited towards qualifications. Therefore, provide only the attendance and/or degrees from schools accredited by accrediting institutions recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. If a relevant course is not clearly qualifying (e.g. special topic, seminar, research, thesis, obscure or misleading course title, etc.), please submit an official course syllabi and/or detailed course description from the university/college for that particular course to ensure you are properly evaluated. Please note that qualifications determinations are based solely on the information submitted for each particular vacancy announcement. Important: If you are using foreign education to meet qualification requirements, you must send a Certificate of Foreign Equivalency with your transcript in order to receive credit for that education. Click on this link for more information. Failure to provide all of the required documents/information as stated in this vacancy announcement may result in an ineligible rating or may affect the overall rating.

How to apply

Please read the entire announcement and all the instructions before you begin an application. To apply and be considered for this position, you must complete all required questionnaires, assessments and submit all required documentation as specified in the How to Apply and Required Documents section. The complete application package must be submitted by 11:59 PM (ET) on the closing date of the announcement to receive consideration. Resumes cannot exceed two pages. The application process is as follows: Click the Apply Online button. Answer the questions presented in the application and attach all necessary supporting documentation. Click the Submit Application button prior to 11:59 PM (ET) on the announcement closing date. If you are required to complete any USA Hire Assessments, you will be notified after submitting your application. The notification will be provided in your application submission screen and via email. The notification will include your unique assessment access link to the USA Hire system and the completion deadline. Additionally, in USAJOBS you can click "Track this application" to return to your assessment completion notice. Access USA Hire using your unique assessment link. Access is granted through your USAJOBS login credentials. Review all instructions prior to beginning your assessments. You will have the opportunity to request a testing accommodation before beginning the assessments should you have a disability covered under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended. Set aside about 1-2 hours to take the USA Hire Assessments; however, most applicants complete the assessments in less time. If you need to stop the assessments and continue later, you can re-use your unique assessment link. Your responses to the USA Hire Assessments will be reused for one year (in most cases) from the date you complete an assessment. If future applications you submit require completion of the same assessments, your responses will be automatically reused. Visit the USA Hire Applicant Resource Center for practice assessments and assessment preparation resources at https://support-usahire.opm.gov/hc/en-us. To update your application, including supporting documentation: During the announcement open period, return to your USAJOBS account, find your application record, and click Edit my application. This option will no longer be available once the announcement has closed. To view the announcement status or your application status: Visit https://www.usajobs.gov/Help/howto/application/status/. Your application status page is where you can view your application status, USA Hire assessment completion status, and review your notifications sent by the hiring agency regarding your application. Please verify that documents you are uploading from USAJOBs transfer into the Agency's staffing system as there is a limitation to the number of documents that can be transferred. However, once in the Agency's staffing system, you will have the opportunity to upload additional documents. Uploaded documents must be less than 5MB and in one of the following document formats: GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, PDF, TXT or Word (DOC or DOCX). Do not upload Adobe Portfolio documents because they are not viewable. Encrypted documents will not be accepted. Failure to submit required, legible documents may result in loss of consideration. Please ensure your resume does not exceed two pages. Applicants who submit a resume that exceeds two pages will be removed from consideration. Our office cannot be responsible for incompatible software, your system failure, etc.