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Let your fingers do the digging, so to speak. . . . Next time you need an archaeologist to, say, dig for artifacts as you begin to break ground for that new swimming pool, check the Yellow Pages. That's where they'll be listed, for the first time. Turns out that the profession has doubled in size during the last seven years to about 6,500. Part of the reason for this growth stems from the fact that archaeologists are in greater demand by federal, state, and local governments and by contractors working for the government. In the early 1970s, Congress passed a law that required archaeological surveys of any federal land affected by development.

The emphasis has paid off in Texas. State highway department archaeologists recently uncovered the remains of a woman at least 9,400 years old. The ''dig'' was along the path of a proposed highway.m