<p>Archaeology may not be as big of a subfield as psychology or English, but as far as I know it’s not quite as small as Egyptology either. Even, though, if you wanted to be an Egyptologist and all of the academic Egyptologists came from Chicago and Penn…that’s still two schools to apply to. A quick look at the faculty of the top-ranked archaeology program, though (UCLA’s) shows that 100% of the archaeologists don’t come from the same program. The same programs do come up frequently, though - and some of them are international (Leiden University’s program comes up quite often, which is interesting). I of course defer to the archaeologists on the board in the case of which are the best in the field, as the NRC rankings are out of date obviously.</p>
<p>I agree with the rest of your comment too - I said the same thing in my own - that applying to more than one program is usually advisable, but if you think you’ll be unhappy at all but one place, then I see no reason to waste time and money applying to others. </p>