The Public's Archaeology: Utilizing Ethnographic Methods to Link Public Education with Accountability in Archaeological Practice (original) (raw)
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Make History: Public Archaeology as a Way of Life
2017
Archaeologists, historians, and other scholars in the heritage sector share a responsibility to public interpretation, education, and the dissemination of our current understandings of the past often while challenging myths and dominant histories that clash with those interpretations. Use of dense academic jargon in archaeological publications represent a significant barrier to public engagement with our work, and narrow specializations prevent us from deploying our investigative tools to illuminate the past in our own local regions and communities. This presentation highlights ways to engage the public in our own communities through heritage tourism, school outreach, adult education programs, plant identification walks, and neighborhood archaeology projects. By literally digging in our own backyards and leveraging peer-reviewed journals, student papers, and the "grey literature" generated by local cultural resource management projects, we can educate our friends and neighbors about the value of archaeological research methods, interpret the histories and prehistories of the landscapes we inhabit, and counter the erasure of indigenous people from local historical narratives.
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 26(2): 59-70, 2011
It is important sometimes to break away from traditional methods of scientific and archaeological writing to consider the broader social implications of our research activities. This paper is an attempt to do so by considering not the ancient subjects of our investigations, but rather the living participants of communities in which we labour. In so doing, many of the details of usual concern—site names, dates and periods, precise locations, artefacts, footnotes, and scholarly references—are not particularly important. Rather, what is of significance in considering the ethics (and beyond) of doing fieldwork are the relationships that we forge within the contexts of our scientific teams, local communities, and the broader public. This paper will focus on the second of these three contexts, namely the local community in which we work. In order to protect the identities of all involved, many of the details of our work have been edited; in any case they were secondary to our main thesis: that archaeological ethics are flexible rules, negotiated as part of daily practice, and largely dependent upon the context in which conflict and resolution reside.
We will do two things in this introductory essay. First, we describe the framework and methods that we used to select the papers for this reader. Second, using this same framework we review how public archaeology, as a subfield of archaeological practice, has evolved over the past few decades. This review focuses on the development of public archaeology within the publications of the Society for Historical Archaeology, in particular, the journal Historical Archaeology and the quarterly SHA Historical Archaeology and the quarterly SHA Historical Archaeology Newsletter. It is outside our scope here to examine the trends, approaches, theories, research questions, and debates in public archaeology that have emerged in other discourses (for example, Americanist prehistoric archaeology or global heritage movements). However, we will do so to the extent that they have either appeared (or not) in the context of historical archaeology scholarship (see Little 2009b for a useful review).
In The Public Interest: Creating A More Activist, Civically Engaged Archaeology
In The Public Interest: Creating A More Activist, Civically Engaged Archaeology barbara j. little and larry j. zimmerman [W]e have responsibilities towards the communities, individuals, and institutions directly implicated by archaeological work into the recent past in helping them come to terms with the obscured and often painful circumstances of contemporary life. Under these circumstances, archaeology should be socially relevant. It must earn its keep [Victor Buchli 2007].
ON THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE PUBLIC
Public archaeology offers an opportunity for the archaeologist to be culturally holistic in the interpretation of archaeological sites. The archaeologist can look not just at the artifacts, but can delve deeper into such things as values, beliefs, cultural practices, land use, etc. that an archaeological site represents. However, while this opportunity is present, it is little, if ever, implemented. Instead, what exists is a disconnect between cultural groups and public archaeology with respect to values, beliefs, and other elements considered an integral part of history and culture to one and an impedance to the other. Re-evaluating this disconnect through a number of theoretical frameworks offered by cultural anthropology including functionalism, interpretive anthropology, power relationships, and political-economic perspective provides an opportunity to identify and address these issues. In order to do this the archaeologist must remove himself from his niche and look at both the cultural group and public archaeology from the standpoint of a participant observer. It is my hope that by looking at this disconnect through the theoretical frameworks offered by cultural anthropology, public archaeology may embrace the unique opportunity that it stands to offer.
Over the past two decades, publications in public history, museum studies, oral history, historic preservation, and historical archaeology have often followed similar trajectories in seeking to serve a diversity of stakeholders connected to historic sites by promoting discussion of poorly documented and marginalized communities. This paper traces these parallel theoretical concepts and ethical considerations and examines how public archaeologies of the recent past may benefit from closer adherence to the principles and pedagogies of related fields. It also considers how and why public outreach in an archaeological context necessarily diverges in practice in significant ways from that of other fields commonly included under the broad umbrella of public history. How should those distinctions be communicated effectively across disciplines? Finally, this paper reflects upon strategies for disseminating project results to interdisciplinary professional audiences in the aim of wider public impact.
Public Issues Anthropology as a Framework for Teaching Archaeology and Heritage Resource Management
For humans, heritage is the nexus which connects the past with the future. A key component in the construction of identity—both individual and cultural—heritage is constantly being created and interpreted from information about the past. Archaeological anthropologists have traditionally focused on what the archaeological record can tell us about the people who originally created it and how we can use this knowledge to contribute to our social science. We have paid much less attention to how this information may affect living descendants of those ancient cultures. Increasingly, however, particularly where indigenous peoples are involved, we find ourselves confronted by descendant communities which view the archaeological record as an important part of their cultural patrimony and not the exclusive domain of professional archaeologists. This paper explores how the developing field of public interest/issues anthropology is being used at the University of Waterloo as a framework for teaching an expanding variety of professionals how to approach archaeology and heritage in ways that are holistic, transdisciplinary, respectful, and socially engaged.
Public Education and Archaeology: Disciplining Through Education
In 1994 Brian Molyneaux suggested that one of the most obvious, yet critical, functions of archaeology for society was education (Molyneaux 1994: 3; see also . Since then, the pairing of archaeology with education has gained considerable ground; so much so that while the term "public education" may not necessarily come to mind for all scholars and practitioners working within the field, most will hold an implicit familiarity with its central tenets via their connections to outreach, community archaeology, social inclusion, or public participation. This is because all of these conceptsand the practices they reflectemerged out of a broader social movement that prompted archaeologists to start thinking about, reflecting upon, and dealing with the complex relationships between "the discipline" and "the public." As with other attempts to engender public participation and support, education operates as a powerful point of connection between scholars, practitioners, politicians, and a vast variety of stakeholders and interest groups. A useful consequence of this arrangement has been the burgeoning of a range of learning tools, public presentations, "archaeology weeks," festivals, and volunteering opportunities. Yet, despite the proactive language often used to describe this area of development, it is important to remember that it can play out in a number of ways, not all of which are positive.
Voices in American Archaeology, 2010
In The Public Interest: Creating A More Activist, Civically Engaged Archaeology barbara j. little and larry j. zimmerman [W]e have responsibilities towards the communities, individuals, and institutions directly implicated by archaeological work into the recent past in helping them come to terms with the obscured and often painful circumstances of contemporary life. Under these circumstances, archaeology should be socially relevant. It must earn its keep .