I would call and see if they have a docent program. It really depends on your area and the need of the museum in regard to what you are going to have to do.

Anyway, I know a railway museum that lets you do about anything but to drive the trains–you got to put your time in.

Call the museum where you’re interested in volunteering. You will probably have to start out small – helping with mailings, cleaning up, doing some “grunt” work, but if you do a good job, you’re professional and work hard and prove that you can handle additional responsibility, then you can work your way up. Excavations are painstaking, deliberate processes, and the education and historical value of the site will be irretreviably lost if an inexperienced person does the wrong thing – even with the best of intentions. It’s imperative that a museum can trust the people who are doing the excavation work for them, and that trust can only be earned with time and effort on your part.

Otherwise, you will need to get into an archaeology program at a college or university, and get into a museum’s research that way.