Archaeologist_1_2_3

Yup, once you get to a program nobody knows or cares if you came in off the waitlist. Thinking otherwise is stupid as hell.

Rubbish, this is terrible advice. Do what is right for *you* and nobody else.

It depends entirely on what you are interested in. Basing a decision on prestige is a mistake - you need to find the right advisor and the right field of interest. What questions do you want to ask in your work, who would be good to work with. Look at the faculty, look at what they work on, read some of their work. Think about what you want to work on and go from there.

Your reading of the situation is essentially correct. Generally Cincinnati is regarded as the leading center for Bronze Age Archaeology in North America,and has been pretty dominant in the field for most of the last century. If you were committed to pursuing Bronze Age Studies for the PhD you'd probably want to apply to Cincinnati, Penn AAMW, Berkeley AHMA/Classics, MIchigan and UNC - these are probably the leading department for Bronze Age stuff. Places like Brown or ISAW (NYU) would probably also appear on the list, but would allow less specialisation. It is hard for Bronze Age people to get jobs period, but Cincinnati and Michigan in particular have decent placement rates, although the pandemic will clearly screw things up even more.