Equity (Issues) for All, Historical Archaeology as a Profession in the 21st Century
By Lewis Jones and Ashley MortonHave you ever encountered workplace climate so chilly you thought…
This has become clear over the past ten years as conference sessions on the topic have become common. The PEIC-sponsored session at this year’s SHA meeting, “Motivations and Community in Public Archaeology Evaluation” (organized by Kate Ellenberger & Kevin Gidusko) is the latest in a long line of conference sessions and activities devoted to public archaeology evaluation starting in 2008. In this session alone there were authors from academia, CRM, non-profits, and the federal government setting and evaluating their progress toward outreach goals. Though the published literature on the topic may be thin, there is much support for pursuing evidence-based public archaeology (see the infographic below).
Evaluation can be done for little cost, in a short time, for a narrow use, or they can be scaled up for larger, more extensive applications. At any size, implementing evaluation or self-assessment seems to have a positive impact on public archaeology projects.
Evidence-based public archaeology is good for archaeologists and the publics they are interacting with. Even though public engagement projects have a wide variety of goals, clearly articulating and following up on those goals is good research practice. Being able to demonstrate that we have made some progress in public perceptions of archaeology is important if we expect to be able to continue outreach work. It helps to see patterns of successes and failures across within our work so we may better adjust our future engagements.
This post written by: Kate Ellenberger