The Public Face of Archaeology in Britain (Part 1)

How public is archaeology? The general public are hugely interested in archaeology as evidenced by the popularity of Time Team, but whose responsibility is it to make archaeology accessible? Even with this kind of media coverage, archaeology is still regarded as elitist and exclusive. With proscriptive language and site hierarchy archaeology is not truly being communicated to the public. Engaging public interest in, and support for, archaeology could be critical to our future as a profession. It seems however, that only a few enlightened individuals consider this a necessity when conducting excavations, and even fewer when placed in the position of communication, either verbal or written. We need to keep in mind that archaeology is about building pictures of people in the past. The people whose past it is should be made to feel it is their archaeology and their past. The papers in this session will examine what we, as a profession, are doing to communicate archaeology to the public, and how this may be improved upon.

Public Archaeology and the Public Interest

This paper looks at the revolution in archaeology over the last 25 years. Campaigns of the 1970s for investigation of archaeological sites being destroyed had broad-based public support, and led to archaeologically sensitive government planning guidance and increased funding from those perpetrating the destruction. But in the 1990s we also have an archaeological industry which largely excludes the general public whose interest provides the professionals' raison d'etre.

Against a shaky legislative framework and in a culture of intense competition, the professionals' organisation - the IFA - is codifying and promoting best practice. Late 20th-century free market ideology dictates that the growing professional demand for regulation can only be satisfied lawfully if public interest arguments are won. Public interest? The paper will discuss how professional archaeologists must re-involve the public in the process and products of discovery - to protect the mechanisms for protecting our heritage, and to permit the evolution of effective self-regulation. Commercial and public archaeology are not incompatible: they are interdependent for their future well-being.

What the Papers Say

The CBA keeps oversight of archaeology's press coverage throughout Britain. This lecture will examine ways in which stories do, or do not acquire a public face, the face itself, and some trends in press attitudes.

Archaeology and the Middle Market

The market for archaeology needs to be segmented and analysed like any other market. Attention today is focused almost entirely at the lower end, the general public and schoolchildren. This paper will analyse the reasons for this, and will suggest that we should concentrate more on the middle market, where archaeology is losing out badly to its competitors, the treasure hunters and the lunatic fringe.

Lifelong Learning: Adult Education as Mediator Between the Profession and the Public

Archaeology classes have always been successful in liberal adult education, and spin-offs like local radio series reach many more of the general public than actually enrol on classes, as shown by some unusual work in the Southampton region. The formal structuring of such courses into accredited awards has in many ways enhanced the nature of this public participation: more people are willing to engage with new and challenging ideas when they are presented as part of the attraction of the discipline, by tutors encouraged to develop innovative approaches to their interaction with this section of the public. Participants in turn act as mediators of these ideas, reaching a wider public audience of family, friends and colleagues. This paper shows ways in which new approaches in archaeology, from post-modernism to an appreciation of the changing political and social context of the discipline, can be disseminated to an eager public, and how the presentation of archaeologists as lifelong learners themselves can help modify the image of an elitist profession.

Lotteries, Devolution and Education

The relationship between archaeology and formal education has never been a straightforward one. Professionals and practitioners from both disciplines have commonly failed to communicate with each other and, where they have collaborated, have frequently misunderstood each others aims and objectives. Both disciplines have also been played as political - and nationalistic - pawns. Partly as a result of the above, the position of archaeology, and especially prehistory, within the various school national curricula of counties in the UK is strikingly different. At the same time, official encouragement for archaeologists to take education seriously is sadly lacking, as is the scope for funding long term educational work with respect to heritage and archaeology through the National Lottery. Yet, Lottery guidelines are under review as are the national curricula. Do we stand on the edge of a real opportunity?

The Past in Many Voices: Local Authority Archaeologists as 'Resource Managers' or as Cultural Animators

The social constituency of archaeology in Britain cannot be assumed to be other than multi-vocal, even in the setting of shire counties. In cities, the range of voices is so great that it is easy to form the view that we cannot hope to comprehend the diversity, let alone respond to it. We have tended to adopt therefore the stance of a quasi-scientific neutrality, as if our judgements about historic and archaeological resources are value free. In attempting to break out from this position, however, we face a number of dilemmas: not least among which is the question of how we gauge the validity of competing claims.

In this brief contribution, I shall look at this question in reference to some specific instances in the city of Plymouth, not all of whose 250,000 inhabitants are aware that an archaeological service they pay for exists. This is told from the perspective of 'Plymouth's archaeology officer'. The instances are themselves diverse, including national myths, local traditions and the burgeoning impact of the Heritage Lottery Fund.