Public Archaeology Research Articles

History and Approaches to Heritage Studies, Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies

History and Approaches to Heritage Studies, Pedagogy and Practice in Heritage Studies

Excavation Programmes for the Public: A Comparative Study of Mock Excavation Programmes in South Korea and Amateur and Community Archaeology in the UK

The concept and practice of ‘Public Archaeology’, in the broadest sense, were conceived and developed in the West and then introduced to and applied by other parts of the world. Among its various facets are excavation programmes for the public. This article focuses on and compares South Korea’s and the UK’s excavation systems for the public to examine cases of similar and different public archaeology practices around the world. In South Korea, excavations are strictly governmental, professional, and academic, and thus ‘mock excavation’ programmes were developed to enable children to experience replicated excavation sites. In the UK, excavations have been led by interest groups since the nineteenth century. Today, participants in these interest groups are commonly referred to as amateur or community archaeologists and they participate in real archaeological excavations. This study compares the two countries’ approaches and systems with motivations to underpin how and why public archaeology practices can fundamentally differ according to internal circumstances and contexts. The aim is to point out how public archaeology practices inevitably become shaped by national and practical scopes and limitations.

Using Public Archaeology towards protecting and managing the archaeological sites in Dakhla Oasis

Using Public Archaeology towards protecting and managing the archaeological sites in Dakhla Oasis

Battle or ballet? Metaphors archaeological Facebook administrators live by

ABSTRACT The emergence of online social networks such as Facebook provide new opportunities for communication between archaeologists, and between archaeologists and communities. While many studies, analyse the potential, advocate best practices, present relevant initiatives, and address the ethical challenges posed by social network sites for public archaeology, the motivations and ideas of those involved in setting up and managing such sites have been relatively underexplored to date. In this study, we present a qualitative text analysis and conceptual metaphor analysis of a focus group conversation and scoping interviews with eleven European archaeological Facebook site administrators, aimed to investigate their profiles, motivations and ideas.

Analysis of Archaeology General Courses in Colleges and Universities

In the present era, archaeology is facing the change of "from closed to open, from ivory tower to public popularization". To attach importance to public archaeology, to carry out education courses on public archaeology, and to let educational archaeology play an important role as a component of public archaeology is not only necessary for the development of archaeology itself, but also to undertake the important historical mission of carrying forward the fine traditional Chinese culture and enhancing cultural confidence. General education is the main body of practical general education. General Archaeology education refers to non-major archaeological education, namely general archaeology courses for undergraduates majoring in non-archaeology and culture. It is hoped that through the form of general education, non-major students can understand the basic knowledge of archaeology, have a preliminary understanding of Chinese archaeology, and give play to the social role of archaeology: We will carry forward fine traditional Chinese culture and enhance our cultural confidence.

:World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture

:<i>World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture</i>

Digitizing Los Millares (Santa Fe de Mondujar, Almería, Spain) through 3-D and geospatial technologies: preserving and disseminating the archaeological heritage

Geospatial and 3D technologies have been successfully employed in archaeological research. Generally used for generating new digital data, they can also serve for preserving the heritage. Drawing on ideas from Public Archaeology, our paper aims to focus on the latter aspect, centered in the site of Los Millares. Los Millares, located in southeast of Spain, is one of the most important archaeological sites of Iberian Chalcolithic and was the object of intensive archaeological surveys and excavations during the 20th Century. Notwithstanding the usefulness and importance of these researches and later analyses on materials, their results and knowledge remain in grey format. In line with current ethical standards, we aim to reinvigorate Los Millares through digital technologies which can preserve its heritage while outreaching interested audiences. This has taken shape by following a threefold-scale strategy: This strategy has proved to be of great aid for reaching our aims. In sum, this research brings the utility of digital technologies for recording and preserving archaeological heritage, not least for disseminating knowledge. • Ethical digital research reinvigorates heritage preservation. • Digital technologies are powerful tools for making more open our research. • Digitisation of databases and information from excavations that have been inaccessible until now. • These data are now fully accessible to use by other researchers (hacker ethic). • Presents new ways on heritage curation for this site.

Introduction to Special issue

Introduction to Special issue

The Power of Collaborative Public Scholarship

Work conducted by the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project and Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission offers a longitudinal example of the power of collaborative public scholarship. After defining collaborative public archaeology, the article discusses issues around identifying descendant communities and other stakeholders, building and maintaining relationships, and the political nature of public archaeology and stewardship. While the collaborative experiences described here were unique, the lessons are widely applicable. The goal in sharing these lessons is to illustrate the importance of maintaining relationships with descendant communities after the completion of a project and exemplify the wide impact of well-designed collaborative public archaeology.

The Hunt for Bincknoll Chapel and the Public Archaeology Twitter Conference 3

A journal for exploring creative engagement with the past, especially through digital means. It publishes primarily what might be thought of as ‘paradata’ or artist’s statements that accompany playful and unfamiliar forms of singing the past into existence.

Terrestrial laser scanning for 3D archaeological documentation. The prehistoric Cave of Sa Miniera de Santu Josi (Sardinia, Italy)

Abstract Caves have a great archaeological importance: they were used as a dwelling, as a shelter of animals, as an occasional refuge both for funerary and religious purposes. A cave survey is the first step towards their exploration. This study describes the San Giorgio cave’s survey that is the object of an archaeological research that concerns both the area above it and the underground environments. The cave, located in the north-west of Sardinia, has an extension of about 140 meters and has a maximum depth (surveyed) of -15 meters. Sixty-two TLS scans were carried out producing 1.5 milliard points. The Poisson surface reconstruction algorithm [3] is used to produce the 3D Model. A 3D model in low resolution can be adopted for aims of public archaeology; however archaeologists should take advantage of all the information available in the original point cloud.

Instagram as a tool for archaeological science communication

With the accelerated growth the social media platform Instagram has seen over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic its potential as a tool for communicating archaeological science is becoming ever more apparent. The platforms’ focus on images and video makes it specifically suited for visually rich fields like archaeology. Here we present the results of a three-year effort in archaeological science communication on the platform, analyzing audiences, impacts, and issues arising. The amount of archaeological content on the platform is growing rapidly, but reaching a broad audience effectively needs to be tied to well-defined communication strategies. We argue that Instagram can be turned into a powerful educational tool for public archaeology, including providing guidance for new students, mitigating pervasive conspiracy theories, elucidating the issues with collecting and trading artifacts, and adding nuance to the public image of archaeology.

Public Archaeology in Greece: A Review of the Current State of the Field

As far as archaeology deals with the past in the present, it is already a public endeavour; especially so in southern Europe, where contemporary identities are drawn from ancient cultures, such as the Greek and Roman. In Greece, the political role of the discipline marked antiquities as goods of the people and archaeology as a highly popular discourse. This led to the creation of a state mechanism to manage antiquities for the benefit, but ironically at the exclusion, of the people, in an authoritative top-down approach. In defiance, various actors participate in the public discourse about the past, cultural heritage and its roles today.&#x0D; This paper will review the state of the field by bringing together research in public archaeology in Greece but also non-academic initiatives, such as NGOs and citizen movements. It is argued that public engagement, primarily through museum exhibitions - the most formal and controlled interface between archaeology and non-archaeologists – and cultural events in archaeological sites, is the primary aspect of public archaeology. While public archaeological discourse is overabundant and expansive though, critical research and analysis are lagging and conventional narratives remain broadly unchallenged.

An Attempt to Shift Commodified Archaeological Practices in Taiwan through Community Engagement

Archaeological practice in Taiwan, an island located in East-Asia, is deeply influenced by Han Chinese culture and by the implementation of capitalistic approaches to dealing with archaeology that developed thanks to the ideological influence of the United States or the United Kingdom. This article aims to introduce a case study of an experimental approach to public archaeology carried out in Taiwan, which invested substantial effort to being self-reflexive. Since the 1980s, archaeological practice and the preservation of archaeological heritage in Taiwan has been practiced within the framework of contract archaeology. However, although the number of instances of commercial archaeology increased exponentially, the number of trained archaeologists remains scarce. In this context, archaeologists were trapped within an extractivist economic system that only served the interests of developers. Overwhelmed by massive amounts of work, the quality of the archaeological practice inevitably decreased. In reaction, some archaeologists are now seeking an alternative by adopting more reflexive approaches, which include public archaeology and community engagement. This article presents a brief introduction to the development of cultural heritage, archaeology, and public archaeology in Taiwan, followed by a case study from the site of the Old City of Zuoying (zuoying jiucheng, 左營舊城) (Southern Taiwan). By sharing our experiences, we aim to emphasise the significant positive aspects that emerged from a community-based and experimental approach, but at the same time to highlight the difficulties and failures we faced with this approach.

Foreword

Making Archaeology Public. A View from the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and Beyond&#x0D; The concept of Public Archaeology has profoundly changed since Mc Grimsey’s first formulation in the early 1970s, as it developed a solid conceptual and practical framework along the years that makes it now an independent branch of archaeology. However, in English-speaking and Northern European countries, the perception of archaeology as a common good was widely spread even before the actual formalization of Public Archaeology as a specific curriculum offered by several universities. Not surprisingly, such an earlier interest led to the development of a markedly North Europe-centric perspective on the topic, which keeps steering much of the current reflection on Public Archaeology despite the emergence of multiple and alternative standpoints on the matter, further deepening the great divide between the archaeologies of Northern and Southern European countries.

Paper, Perception and…Facts? Exploring Archaeological Heritage Management in the Mediterranean and the Weight of Public Archaeology

#pubarchMED is a project aiming to define the dynamics of archaeological heritage management in the Mediterranean from the perspective of public archaeology. Its ethnographic approach draws on three main sources: legal and academic literature, observation and the perception of professionals. This paper aims to delve into the development of public archaeology and how it impacts practice across the Mediterranean. While the importance of contemporary society for archaeologists seems to be high in the interviews conducted, it will be discussed to what level current practice actually deals with these issues in a critique of a traditional approach to archaeology that does not recognize the transversality of public archaeology or its importance for the future of the discipline itself.

Public Archaeology in Romania: a Review

The present paper aims to highlight the Public Archaeology endeavors that were conducted in Romania. Although, at the first glance we cannot identify many papers or platforms that promote Public Archaeology, we will focus our attention towards the archaeological research that was conducted by the public or by the specialists, but with the help of the community. The typology elaborated by Moshenska &amp; Bonacchi in 2015 represents the backbone on which our study will be built upon, as it provides a clear distinction between all the categories that the vast domain of Public Archaeology reaches.

Editorial: 2021, a new decade starts

We have just celebrated ten years of open access public archaeology, and now we carry on with our venture. Volume 11 brings with it a new layout and format, as well as a new timing for publication. Since our inclusion in Scopus, improving quality goes in hand with the improvement of publication time. This is why, from now on (although this year is still a transitional period), volumes will open in January and close in October, with articles being published when they are ready. We are also starting a new section for shorter articles, aimed at the reporting of projects or ideas with a more formal format than our section Points of You, which will continue to retain its op-ed style. Of course, the philosophy does not change. We want to continue to be an opportunity of wider accessibility for authors and readers, and to continue exploring the physical and thematic frontiers of the discipline.

Is it possible to reconstruct a prehistoric religion? Latvian archaeology versus the believers

AbstractToday there is a revival of groups who claim to practice ancient Latvian religion. They often accuse archaeologists of lying and concealing the evidence of Latvian past superiority. On the one hand, this might be considered a misuse of archaeological data in order to support religious or nationalistic beliefs. On the other hand, hypothetical reconstructions of prehistoric religious beliefs are related to public archaeology and the relationship between science and the wider society. The aim of this paper is to investigate attempts to reconstruct ancient Latvian prehistoric religion through the lens of the archaeology of religion, and at the same time to broaden the discussion into the problematic relationship between nationalism and public archaeology.

Public Archaeology in Poland: State of the Art and Future Directions

This article aims to conceptualize the present state of public archaeology in Poland, which has recently become topical in archaeological practice. The author defines public archaeology and discusses the historical background of such activities in the context of the specific traditions of Polish archaeology. He then describes the main forms of outreach activities undertaken by archaeologists in Poland and presents community-oriented initiatives that go beyond the education of the general public about the past and strive to engage local communities in activities focused on archaeology and archaeological heritage. He concludes by outlining some directions that this sub-discipline may adopt in future.