1.4: Public Outreach and Archaeology

Jenna Hendrick, MA, Curtin Archaeological Consulting, Ballston Spa, New York, USA

Learning Objectives

• Describe the importance of public outreach in archaeology
• Identify the major methods of public outreach and indicate situations where specific methods may be better suited for a particular archaeological project
• Create your own research-based public archaeology project

Introduction

When I tell someone that I’m an archaeologist, I’m generally met with one of four different responses:

• “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”
• “A real-life Indiana Jones!”
• “Oh, wow, you must find all sorts of cool treasures!”
• “I always wanted to be an archaeologist, but it just wasn’t feasible. I’d love to start the hobby when I retire, though!”

These four responses tell me that many people confuse archaeologists with paleontologists, an error that leads to awkward laughter and my admission that the only dinosaur I know is the T. rex. They also tell me that most of what people know about archaeology comes from popular media, namely the Indiana Jones franchise, which presents archaeological objects as treasure instead of considering their cultural significance. The search for treasure then becomes more of a hobby rather than an actual profession. People assume that what archaeologists do is dig around in remote areas of the world to find pretty items that will line the shelves of museums and private collections or be sold. Shows like American Digger and movies like those in the Indiana Jones franchise emphasize the monetary benefits of artifacts (Pagán, 2015), which can lead to the destruction and unlawful looting of archaeological sites. It is rare that members of the public know what it is that archaeologists actually do and how they impact our day-to-day lives with the important research they conduct.

Even when people don’t actually know what archaeology is, they still tend to think of it in a vague way as a “cool” profession. However, if someone were interested enough to read the research about archaeological discoveries, they would not likely understand what they read. Research papers use so much jargon that sometimes even archaeologists can’t understand a research article outside their area of interest (Fagan, 2010). Public outreach is a practice of translation. Archaeologists need to communicate with the public in terms they understand because they want to learn. If archaeologists don’t help them, either they will become discouraged and their interest will wane or they will misunderstand the research, which could lead to negative consequences (which I discuss below).

People are interested in understanding their place in the world, and archaeology can provide them with some of that context. The public is particularly interested in evolution because people are searching for the healthiest ways to live or are looking for justification for poor behavior (i.e., violence or sexual aggression; see McCaughey, 2008 or Zuk, 2013). However, once they grab hold of an idea—such as the paleo diet—they tend to run with it, ignoring the fact that scientific discoveries are made every day that change our understanding of what we know. For example, although the paleo diet considers ingesting grain products to be blasphemous, recent evidence shows that hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic were making bread-like products around 14,000 years ago (Zeldovich, 2018).

It is unfortunate that most evolutionary scientists have done nothing to correct popular misconceptions about nutrition. Instead, they respond with disgust and condemnation to public understandings of the paleo diet, despite the fact that some practitioners of that diet have reached out to scientists in an attempt to better understand their food practices and make sure they’re being scientifically up to date (Chang and Nowell, 2016). Robb Wolf, a prominent member of the paleo diet community, laments this response from anthropologists: “What I have sensed from the anthropology community is an almost . . . annoyance that upstarts from outside that Guild have the temerity to talk about this stuff and try to apply it in an actionable way. . . . If I could wave a magic wand, I’d hope for a bit less prickliness on the part of the medical anthropology community on this topic. . . . If we could get them to understand just how important their understanding of the past is, we might have a much better future” (quoted in Chang and Nowell, 2016, p. 230). Like other anthropologists, archaeologists know that their understanding of the past is important, so why aren’t they leaning into that, especially when others see the value of the information in their studies? People are interested in what archaeologists do and study, and they have an obligation to engage them in their work, especially when members of the public reach out to them.

Archaeologist need to engage in rigorous public outreach to correct misinterpretations of their field. How is anyone outside the field supposed to know what archaeologists do if they do not tell them in language a member of the public can understand? In this chapter, I will define public outreach, provide examples of how archaeologists practice public outreach, and explain why it’s important and needs to be done.

Some Considerations

There are many ethical considerations to keep in mind when creating outreach materials—you want to make sure you’re doing things in a good way. Here are two of the most important considerations:

1. Keep sensitive cultural material hidden.
   • You may receive personal anecdotes from community members you work with, and while they add a human touch to the story you’re trying to tell, they may be too personally or culturally sensitive to share with a wider audience. To accurately determine what is or is not appropriate to share, collaborate closely with the local community to get their feedback.
2. Focus on the people who created or used the material culture you’re sharing with the public.
   • A sole focus on the material culture of a site disconnects the artifacts from the community that produced them and conceals the community’s “relationship to their broader environment” (Budwha and Mccreary, 2013, p. 196).
   • Focusing on material culture out of context risks creating a spectacle (Simpson, 2011). Reducing people to their material culture relegates the ancestors to the past instead of acknowledging their active participation in the world today. The material objects become the face of the people who settled in the area you’re discussing. This interpretive practice risks sensationalizing the objects so they become “native-art-as-usual” (Townsend-Gault, 2011). Sensationalized objects become static symbols of the past.

Bottom line: Be respectful in what you say and how you say or portray it, and collaborate with the community whose ancestors created material objects when possible.

For more information, see Archaeological Ethics and World Heritage: Protecting and Preserving Cultural Resources

The Society for American Archaeology does not have a single definition of public outreach. Instead, it recognizes it as a collection of methods archaeologists use to engage the public in archaeological research and to create general public awareness of the field (Society for American Archaeology, n.d.). Public archaeology is a term that means the same thing as public outreach. Public archaeology was once understood to be a means of applying archaeology to the real world via cultural resource management (CRM), contract archaeology, public education, historic preservation, and museology (White et al., 2004). Today, four different approaches to public archaeology have been identified: educational, public relations, pluralist, and critical (Matsuda, 2016).

The educational and public relations approaches are based more on practice, and the pluralist and critical approaches are more theoretical. The educational approach aims to facilitate people’s learning of the past via archaeological thinking and methods. The public relations approach works “to increase the recognition, popularity, and support of archaeology in contemporary society” by forming connections between archaeology and individuals and/or social groups (Matsuda 2016: 41–42). The pluralist and critical approaches are more theoretical.

Figure 1. Elementary school children taking part in excavating “treasure” from bowls of soil through public outreach by students from the Undergraduate Anthropology Organization at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Archaeological education can occur both on and off site. Some organizations, like the Alexandria Archaeology Museum in Virginia, offer public dig days when members of the community can participate in an ongoing excavation (White, 2019, p. 37), thus getting hands-on experience in archaeological thinking and methods. For years, members of the Undergraduate Anthropology Organization at the State University of New York at Binghamton took boxes full of “treasure” strewn in stratified soil, sand, and pebbles to elementary schools and taught students how to excavate and interpret their findings. These physical experiences not only create strong memories, they also “improve concentration, increase student engagement, and make learning (and teaching) fun” (Yezzi-Woodley et al., 2019, p. 50).

The public relations approach aligns with the push for archaeological stewardship. In this approach, the wider community, not just archaeologists, participate in knowledge production and in protecting and showing reverence for a site. (Listen to the podcast Dig This for more information on the importance of archaeological stewardship and how archaeologists can better support it in communities.). This takes the educational approach a step farther by fostering a stronger connection to and sense of responsibility for the site. Uncovering artifacts at a public dig adds to the knowledge we have about the site, but true knowledge production requires us to ask questions about and interpret the evidence.

For example, Science and Social Studies Adventures, an organization that takes archaeology to classrooms as a way of enhancing science and social studies lessons, took physics and social studies students to a field that was about to become a park. The students were taught how to use ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology to map the underground features of the property to determine whether or not an excavation would be necessary (Yezzi-Woodley et al., 2019). The students got not only the hands-on experience of mapping an area with GPR, they also participated in knowledge production by interpreting the map they created and participating in determining the future of the site. They now have a sense of responsibility about something tangible and relevant to their community. Similarly, Nina Simon of the OF/BY/FOR ALL organization encourages participating museums to actively engage their communities in designing projects and exhibits (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer, 2021). These projects foster a sense of responsibility and pride about the community’s past.

The pluralist approach attempts to understand different types of relationships between material culture and different members of the public, which essentially means understanding who your public is and where they’re coming from ideologically (Matsuda, 2016, p. 42). Finally, the critical approach works to unsettle interpretations of the past as told by socially dominant groups, who typically have ulterior motives that socially subjugate another group by distorting narratives about the past (Matsuda, 2016, p. 42). Both the pluralist and critical approaches view the public as a group that has “its own agency and interacts with the past according to its beliefs, interests, and agendas” (Matsuda, 2016, p. 43).

Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer (2021) have taken a pluralist approach to museum visitors. One German study they evaluated revealed that museumgoers tend to be highly educated, satisfied with life, and open to new experiences and to have high cultural capital (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer, 2021). The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) found that only 9% of museum visitors are from minority populations (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer, 2021). The AAM did a demographic study in 2010 that revealed a number of barriers for African American and Latino visitors. Historically, museums have felt intimidating and exclusionary to them. Some members of those two communities feel that museums require specialized knowledge and cultivated aesthetic taste. Sometimes members of these communities did not have the experience of visiting museums in childhood. Finally, social networks in these communities influence whether its members choose visiting museums as a leisure activity (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer, 2021).

With this nuanced understanding of how people relate to museums, cultural institutions can better relate to a broader audience. They can choose communication methods that their target audience is comfortable with, they can offer content that the broader community (especially minority populations) can connect with, they can provide a welcoming atmosphere, and they can ensure that their spaces are comfortable and pleasing both visually and physically (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer, 2021).

Evolutionary anthropology has largely taken a critical approach since the end of World War II, when it finally became clear that scientific support for ideas about race were extremely harmful to people of color. Until then, both scientists and the general public posited that race was a biological fact and that a person’s intelligence, capabilities, and worth were determined by their race. Now we know that the variation in human skin color is nothing more than a reflection of millions of years of adaptation to changing environments (Echo-Hawk and Zimmerman, 2006, p. 471). A study published in 2007 completely unsettled the interpretation of an evolutionary past in which white people first settled Europe. That study found that the gene associated with light skin didn’t evolve until 12,000 to 6,000 years ago (Gibbons, 2007, p. 364). Another study published in 2018 provides information about what the first Britons looked like that unsettles evolutionary assumptions about race (Brace et al. 2018).

The educational and public relations approaches have long been established in archaeology, but the pluralist and critical approaches did not begin to gain traction until after the 1990s (Matsuda, 2016, p. 42). These changes in approaches to archaeology are still new for a field that has been rooted in colonialism for over a century. Archaeologists are still learning how to effectively conduct public archaeology and outreach.

Public archaeology is often viewed as a subfield of archaeology. However, public outreach in some form or another informs and underlies all archaeology, whether it be in terms of where funding comes from, where and how an archaeologist is expected to conduct their fieldwork, how to manage the cultural site, how to treat archaeological finds, or what kinds of impacts archaeological research generates (Matsuda, 2016, p. 41). All of these issues require communication with some sort of outside source, and public outreach thus happens before, during, and after the archaeological research is done. Community members can help inform the objectives of an archaeological research project, assist in the excavation process as early in a project as the survey and as late as cleaning and labeling the artifacts, or be a part of a post-research activity or lecture presented by the researchers. Public outreach does not have to be attached to an archaeological project; it can focus on a general understanding of archaeology through hands-on activities in schools or community events. Public archaeology outreach can occur any time and anywhere in any number of forms.

Community Archaeology

“Community archaeology” is the term we use to describe the active participation of non-archaeologists in the archaeological research process. Ideally, community archaeology includes seven components that involve the community:

• devising research questions or areas of interest
• setting up a project
• field practices
• collecting data
• analyzing data
• storing objects
• presenting research findings to the public (Marshall, 2002, p. 211)

This means that the community has some level of control at each step of a project. Arguably two of the most important aspects of community archaeology are ensuring that the management of the cultural heritage remains with the community and that research findings are presented to the public. Allowing communities to make critical decisions about the direction and implementation of research may seem like a terrifying loss of control to archaeologists, but it actually provides a depth to research that would otherwise be impossible to achieve (Marshall, 2002, pp. 212, 215, 218).

By this point you’re probably wondering who this elusive “community” is. Two types of communities tend to show up for public presentations of archaeological projects: people who live locally and people who trace their descent from the people who once lived at or near the archaeological site.

To see community archaeology in action, let’s take a look at Ozette, a late prehistoric/early historic whaling village at Neah Bay in the state of Washington (Marshall, 2002, pp. 212–13). A mudslide in 1970 exposed substantial house timbers and other organic artifacts. (This was highly unusual because organic artifacts typically decompose). This prompted the Makah Tribal Council to contact an archaeologist, and together they set in motion a huge excavation program that took place from 1970 through 1981. The Makah community provided direction throughout the entire project and opened the site to visitors; up to 60,000 people visited each year. The community stored and displayed excavated materials at the newly created Makah Cultural Research Center and a host of publications about the site were published. The close collaboration between the archaeologists and Makah residents; the control Makah people maintained over the project; the retention of the excavated materials by the Makah community for the purposes of preservation, storage, and display; and the extensive publications about the site exemplify the goals of community archaeology (Marshall, 2002).

Why Is Public Outreach Important?

The fact is, archaeological sites around the world are in danger. This is important because cultural patrimony (the ongoing cultural importance of an artifact) and heritage tell us who we are and where we come from. This knowledge affects our world views and how we act, thus impacting both our present and our future. Read chapter 3 on the social impact of archaeology for more detail on this topic. As natural resources decrease, scientists are increasingly looking toward the ocean for the mining of precious and non-precious metals, extracting aggregates, and producing marine-zone nonrenewable energy. All of these things put underwater archaeological sites at risk of destruction (Flatman, 2009). On coasts, archaeological sites are threatened by rising sea levels, increasingly powerful storms caused by global warming, and anthropogenic transformations such as development, mining, and dredging (Fitzpatrick and Braje, 2019). In war zones, cultural heritage is destroyed through bombing, the intentional destruction of cultural items in an attempt to wipe away an enemy’s culture, and the creation of defensive structures such as trenches. Two of the most prominent examples of destruction of archaeological heritage during war are the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Approximately 2,500 objects and sculptures were destroyed, defaced, or stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan in 1996 to 2001. In Iraq, military bases were established at Babylon and near Ur of the Chaldees. The associated trenches, imported gravel, and fuel spills damaged the archaeological record there. Looting, which was rampant during this period, was another harm to the archaeological record in Iraq (Cunliffe et al., 2011).

While the topic doesn’t get much popular press, national and international cultural sites also face threats due to political decisions. In 2020, President Trump threatened to bomb 52 Iranian cultural sites “very fast and very hard” as retribution for 52 American hostages who had been taken years earlier (Jacobson 2020). In 2017, Trump reversed the protection of massive amounts of land in Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments under the Antiquities Act. This action put at risk 100,000 archaeological and cultural sites in Bears Ears National Monument alone, including Cedar Mesa, which has one of the highest densities of cultural sites in America at several hundred sites per square mile, all to make way for coal mining, irresponsible and damaging motorized recreation, uranium mining, and oil and gas leasing (Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, n.d.). This is devastating for the local Native American tribes, including the Hopi tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Ute Indian Tribe, and the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. Trump regarded the ancestral material culture of these groups, which provides grounding and pride in their ancestors, as “not unique” or “not of significant scientific or historic interest” and thus as disposable (Biber et al., 2017). Unfortunately, there are many more threats and sites at risk.

The loss of archaeological sites can cause irreparable damage to communities around the world and needs to be stopped. Without archaeological sites, oppressed peoples can be separated from their history and culture. History can be rewritten by the victor and groups may never learn the truth of where they came from. Such a loss can negatively impact the way people think about themselves. The loss of archaeological heritage can damage communities in many other ways. To exemplify the importance of archaeology and the need for public outreach, I will provide some examples of how the public communication of archaeology can significantly impact communities. I will discuss how learning from our past, telling stories, and correcting harmful narratives all contribute to the communities where archaeologists conduct their work.

  

Learn from Our Past

  

We can learn a surprising amount of things about past human actions that can help inform how we behave today. In particular, we can look to the past to determine how to create a sustainable future. From 1987 to 1995, archaeologists of the Garbage Project at the University of Arizona systematically excavated 15 landfills across North America. They found that in the 1950s, paper occupied the most landfill space because it biodegraded very slowly, contrary to what people believed. Shortly after the excavation reports came out, governments and individual communities began pushing for curbside recycling (Rathje, 2008, p. 37) and now we have many types of recycled paper products at our disposal.

In August 2020, NPR posted an article entitled “To Manage Wildfire, California Looks to What Tribes Have Known All Along” (Sommer, 2020). This article explains how banning the controlled burning practices of local Native American groups in California has led to increased vegetation that dries out every summer and acts as kindling for the state’s notorious fires. California’s state government has recently come to trust in the oral histories of the local tribes and the archaeological record, which argue that controlled burning was a successful way to manage wildfire risk. According to archaeological finds, controlled burning was used in many places over a long period of time (Bowman, 1998; Heckenberger et al., 2007; Mason, 2000). This archaeological evidence points a way forward in wildfire prevention as a means of reducing global warming.

Sharing Untold Stories

Archaeology has a long history of focusing on the stories of rich, able-bodied white men in their prime. For many decades, the equally important histories of ethnic minorities, other genders, other age groups, and people with disabilities have been left out of the stories we tell about the past. This is problematic, because the exclusion of a group’s past can lead to that group’s subjugation by a dominant group. Today we realize that archaeology can be a useful way to challenge problematic narratives about the past.

Let’s think about the Man the Hunter model of human evolution. You probably envision men running toward a mammoth with their spears held high, ready for another successful kill. But what do you know about women in the Paleolithic? You probably imagine that women just stayed home with their babies and hoped a cave lion wouldn’t come kill them while their big, strong husbands were off catching dinner. Note that I say “imagine,” because women’s roles are often entirely left out of the story. The narrative we have been told is that the first anatomically modern humans focused on subsistence activities that are attributed to men’s behaviors; men are the only actors we really hear about when people talk about the Paleolithic.

Do you know how we can tell it was men who did all of those activities? Well, we actually can’t tell that at all. When archaeological research into the Paleolithic began, archaeologists of the time were just copying and pasting modern-day gender roles onto the past. For many years, archaeological theory all but ignored gender roles in the deep past (Conkey and Spector, 1984). However, recent research suggests that women were hunters, at least in Peru 9,000 years ago (Wei-Haas, 2020). Archaeologists came across a burial in the Andes Mountains in which the skeletal remains were accompanied by 24 tools for hunting big game. The archaeologists at first assumed that the remains were those of an important male hunter. However, further analysis showed that the remains were biologically female. This discovery spurred the reevaluation of a number of similar burials throughout the Americas. It turns out that evidence from grave goods shows that from 30 to 50% of the big-game hunters in those regions were biologically female. When we ignore women’s roles in the past, we risk perpetuating a view of men as the drivers of human evolution and success and women as good only for their birthing capabilities. Sharing the stories this evidence presents is a way to refute the assumption that the gender roles of today are “the way it’s always been.”

Dr. Diane Wallman of the University of South Florida has worked on a public archaeology project at the Gamble Plantation Historic Site for a number of years. Originally established as a sugar plantation by Robert H. Gamble in the mid-19th century, the property was later inhabited by the Judah P. Benjamin, the secretary of state of the confederacy, and later by an attorney. Although there is clear respect for the confederate official, as shown by the large memorial erected to him, Dr. Wallman is interested in exploring the lives of the enslaved laborers who lived and worked on this plantation and whose stories have not been given the recognition or respect they deserve. To share these stories, Dr. Wallman has given public lectures and provided her expertise as a guest on podcasts (such as the Anthro Alert podcast). Excavations at Gamble Plantation are done only during archaeological field schools and members of the public are welcome to participate in the dig. In 2019, one of Dr. Wallman’s master’s degree students used information from archives, remote sensing, and archaeological investigation to construct a detailed narrative about the lives of enslaved peoples on this plantation with the goal of engaging descendant communities in future archaeological research on the site (Litteral, 2019).

Sharing stories that have long been untold can help generate pride in a descendant community. Archaeology that gives underrepresented groups a tangible connection to their ancestors can go a long way toward building pride in those communities. Getting that message to a broader public beyond the descendant community can go even farther toward valuing the importance of the minority heritage.

Correcting Harmful Narratives

Unfortunately, for many decades, archaeology perpetuated harmful narratives about minority groups. Harmful narratives refer to stories that are told and are argued to be based on science, typically about how or why a minority group was subjugated or why people act a certain way. New archaeological research and the reevaluation of archaeological evidence can work to correct these harmful narratives. Getting these corrected stories out to the public can begin to change how people think about themselves and their place in the world.

Based on narratives in popular media and their own life experiences, many people believe that violence is an inherent human trait. Furthermore, many believe that violence was the driving factor of the evolution of our species. This narrative says that if it hadn’t been for our tendency toward violence, anatomically modern humans would not have been able to compete with other groups or animals and would not have been able to outlive the Neanderthals. However, the DNA of most people today is 1–4% Neanderthal (Green et al., 2010), which means that there had to have been a relatively high amount of sexual relations between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. When I was doing research for my master’s thesis, all of my interview participants were extremely confident about stating that we humans would have met Neanderthals with nothing but violence. The belief that violence is an inherent and long-lasting evolutionary human trait provides justification for wars and other harmful acts. However, there is very little evidence of violence in the deep past. People are making assumptions about the deep past based on their lived experience and the archaeological research on the topic is not being adequately shared with the public.

Another example is the psudeoarchaeological claims on shows such as Ancient Aliens and In Search of Aliens (read the chapter on Pseudoarchaeology for more details). These shows “explain” why it was not possible for Indigenous communities to have built monumental structures many centuries ago. To explain the existence of such structures, the storyline is that the cultures surrounding them must have been created by aliens. Whether or not it is the intent of the shows’ creators, these messages work to portray Indigenous communities as technologically and socially inferior. Outreach based on archaeological evidence that tells the public about the ingenious mathematical and engineering skills Indigenous communities used to create monumental architecture could go a long way toward proving that many cultures in the deep past had advanced skills and knowledge systems.

Improving the Quality of Archaeological Research

In order to begin their research, archaeologists need to get funding. Archaeology departments in universities often do not have internal funding, which means that individual researchers need to look elsewhere. If people at fellowship and granting agencies are unfamiliar with an archaeologist’s field or they work, they will be unlikely to support it with funding when there are more pressing projects with more evident real-world impacts. It is necessary to write funding requests in such a way that the reader can understand the project, because they won’t necessarily have an archaeological background. This means that archaeological researchers need to know how to write for a particular audience. In addition to grants and fellowships, funding or volunteer labor may come from community organizations, so it is important for archaeologists to reach out to local communities and get them excited about the project as well. Strong community relations can also lead to input about how the project should be carried out or what research questions are important. Community relations are especially important when project sites are located on the land of the descendant community.

Archaeologists are specialized—they are lithics specialists, pottery specialists, biological archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, and so forth. In this field, researchers must draw on numerous other specialists and fields to get a full picture of what a site tells them. Archaeologists draw on the expertise of chemists, geologists, geneticists, geographers, and botanists, among many others (Yezzi-Woodley et al., 2019). By communicating with an audience that is broader than those who read archaeological journals or attend archaeological conferences, archaeologists build teams of varied researchers who can all learn and benefit from each other.

I have shown how public outreach is important for educating the public because it improves the quality of the archaeological research by making it easier to get funding and because it leads to collaboration with people from other disciplines. The following sections describe the methods archaeologists use to reach the public.

Methods of Public Outreach

Today, the ways archaeologists can engage with the public can be divided into three categories: traditional media (print, audio, and visual forms), online digital content, and interpersonal or interactive learning experiences (Erdman, 2019). Archaeologists must keep in mind what kind of demographic they want to reach when they choose which method of communication is best suited for their project. Furthermore, each of these categories of communication has different levels of accuracy, access, and effectiveness that need to be taken into account when planning public outreach. In this section, I will describe some specific avenues of communication within each broad communication category and discuss some considerations, limitations, and benefits of each method.

Traditional Media

Print media, including books, newspapers, and magazines, have historically been the primary means of conveying scientific information (Harding, 2007, p. 120). These are often viewed as the most credible forms of scientific communication because of the rigorous editing and peer-review process they often go through (Erdman, 2019, p. 5). The survey participants for my master’s thesis research considered books to be their most valued source of scientific information (Hendrick, 2021). However, our understanding of the past is continually changing and the information in these supposedly accurate sources often becomes outdated quite quickly (Erdman, 2019, p. 5). Today, the results of archaeological researchers’ work is often digitized or published in online journals. At this time, because many academic journals are kept behind expensive paywalls, the likelihood that a curious member of the public will read their content is low. Who wants to pay to wade through jargon they might not even understand? To combat this obstacle to public outreach, researchers who are interested in widely disseminating their research use websites that make journal articles more accessible, such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate (Erdman, 2019), However, the resources available on these sites still have the potential obstacle of archaeological jargon.

Each form of print publication provides a different level of insight. For example, “A short newspaper article offers highlights; a magazine…offers a more contextualized account of a site, artifact, or culture; and a book or professional journal may address a specific topic more in-depth” (Erdman, 2019, p. 6). The benefit of print communication is that there is a type of print source that will fit everyone’s pace and depth of interest.

Examples of archaeology in print media

• Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Psuedoscience in Archaeology, by Kenneth Feder
• Sapiens, by Noah Yuval Harari (an example of a popular book about archaeology that uses poor science)
• Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live, by Marlene Zuk

Television shapes many people’s perceptions of the world (Pagán, 2015, p. 16), which means that it is an effective format for educational purposes. That is because visual representations offer a physical point of reference for the audience that makes it easier for them to understand and connect with the material instead of having to parse written texts that are abstract and full of jargon (Erdman, 2019, p. 7). Research has shown that audiovisual materials (such as film or television clips and song or speech clips) are effective learning devices and that students are increasingly becoming visual learners (Hoover, 2006).

Well-constructed and appealing educational television shows can reach a far larger audience than most archaeological books do (Pagán, 2015). Online streaming services, such as Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, have made television more widely accessible than ever before (so long as you have internet access and another $10 or so to spend each month). The downside to this is that many more shows are available now that compete with educational television. Viewers have to actively seek archaeology programs.

Audio and visual media such as radio, podcasts, film, and television have a varying level of accuracy. Some of this content promotes a fantastical, sensationalized account that uses archaeology only as a starting point for their fantasy (Erdman, 2019, p. 6). Although television used to be a popular platform for communicating science, television producers today consider lecture series and educational television to be too dry for their audiences (Harding, 2007, p. 120). Archaeologists often communicate information about archaeological finds and sites in dry and unexciting ways, and news editors and television producers tend to insist on packaging hard archaeological facts using sensationalism and catchy headlines (Harding, 2007, p. 124). However, sensationalism can produce misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the data or contribute to common tropes. The stories that get picked up on the radio, in podcasts, on film, and on television tend to center on “sexy” topics such as sex and drugs. This is not to say that good educational television does not exist; indeed, shows like PBS’s documentary series NOVA typically feature engaging stories about recent archaeological discoveries. However, people tend to be more familiar with Ancient Aliens than with NOVA.

Recently there has been an increase in archaeological podcasts hosted by archaeologists who are turning dry and unexciting information into funny and thought-provoking conversations that cater to both novices and professionals (check out the Archaeology Podcast Network for a wide variety of archaeological podcasts). Although the consumer has to look for podcasts with archaeological content, it is encouraging to see archaeologists in all stages of their careers using this increasingly popular medium.

Examples of podcasts

• The Dirt (method, theory, and thematic episodes with humor; appropriate for non-archaeologists and archaeologists alike)
• Ologies (this covers all sorts of science, but there are a number of episodes related to archaeology and anthropology; the premise is “asking smart people stupid questions,” so no previous knowledge is needed)
• Dig This (how archaeologists can decolonize their work; more appropriate for professional archaeologists)

Hard Archaeological Fiction

The primary drawbacks of traditional media are the difficult technical language archaeologists use and dry presentation of the material. To counteract these difficulties, some archaeologists have argued for an increase in hard archaeological fiction (Hendrick, 2016, 2021; Terrell, 1990; Spector, 1991, 1993; Fagan, 2010; Holtorf, 2010; Mickel, 2012; Messenger, 2019). One of the most popular examples of hard archaeological fiction is Jean Auel’s account of human life in the Paleolithic. The Earth’s Children series sold over 15 million copies worldwide by 2010 (Penguin Random House, 2010). You may recognize Clan of the Cave Bear, the first title in the series. Auel did an incredible amount of research on life in the Paleolithic and based two of her main characters, Iza and Creb, on Neanderthal remains found in the archaeological cave site known as Shanidar (Penguin Random House, 2010). While Auel’s portrayal of gender relations fed into negative stereotypes (see Hendrick, 2021), she imagined what no other scholar was willing to consider at the time: that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans procreated together. Eventually it came to light that yes, these two groups of Homo sapiens had indeed mated. Auel’s creative imagination was able to conjure up images of the past that people had not yet begun to think of. This skill is especially important for archaeologists to hone if they are to portray the past accurately. By that I mean that we actually have very little idea about what exactly the past—especially the long-ago past—looked like in terms of social organization, but we can be sure that it wasn’t necessarily a mirror image of our own society. Thus, we must use our imaginations to envision worlds that are vastly different from our own.

Fiction is a way to escape our biases. According to Wiley (1981), as Conkey and Spector (1984, p. 21) noted, what hinders our knowledge of the past is not the fragmentary and often “invisible” nature of archaeological data but rather our knowledge systems. Therefore, the use of imagination or fiction is a valuable methodological skill for archaeologists to practice and is a much more interesting and accessible way to disseminate archaeological data than traditional archaeological writing. Additionally, fiction communicates to the reader that archaeological interpretations are fluid, that they change based on emerging discoveries, theories, and interpretations that change the story. One of the main difficulties in disseminating scientific knowledge is that public broadcasts typically ignore the fact that scientific knowledge includes “ifs” and “buts.” Content creators who aren’t archaeologists tend to be uncomfortable with this uncertainty. They tend to misrepresent research by making the data sound definitive. This leads to mistrust of scientists when research findings change (Harding, 2007). The presence of diverse hard archaeological fiction will emulate the varying archaeological interpretations and “ifs” and “buts” that permeate archaeological literature. Hard archaeological fiction also promotes cross-cultural empathy and an appreciation for the work archaeologists do (Messenger 2019).

Examples of hard evolutionary fiction (different stories = different archaeological interpretations)

• Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel
• Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
• The Inheritors by William Golding
• Dance of the Tiger by Björn Kurtén

Online Digital Content

Digital content refers to content designed specifically for the internet. Because this content uses elements of traditional media, it has the same benefits and drawbacks. One of the biggest benefits of online digital content is that it “bring[s] the world of higher education to people who could not otherwise access it” (Harding, 2007, p. 121). This includes both the level of information on the internet and the fact that it is possible to learn about people and places all over the world instead of being limited by the local contexts that are often taught in schools and museums. In addition, the research and ideas are up to date because digital information can easily be edited and answers to questions in online forums and webinars can be provided quickly (Erdman, 2019). This opens up much more opportunity for direct engagement with a larger audience than archaeological books and articles do.

Social media is an excellent way to educate people by sharing the process of a research project in real time and providing information about upcoming outreach events or exciting sites to visit. The X platform facilitates public engagement with the topic of archaeology because hashtags make it easy to follow a general topic and the platform is widely used to get up-to-date news by following a variety of users. Facebook is more oriented toward groups, so a user has to be a member of an archaeology-related group to get current information about archaeological research. In addition, posts about archaeology are featured on a user’s newsfeed only if they are a member of one of those groups or are friends with someone who is (Huvila, 2013). Because of these limitations, engagement with archaeology on Facebook is relatively limited.

Two major problems with digital content are seemingly unlimited sources of content and unequal access to the internet. Because there are so many blogs, websites, articles, and social media platforms, a user has to actively search for information on a particular subject and then put the effort into doing a credibility check. Additionally, there are still many people who cannot access digital content due to the lack of a computer or reliable access to the internet. This problem became particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became apparent that many families did not have the internet access required for students to participate in distance learning.

Examples of online digital content

• Sapiens: an online anthropology magazine
• Information about Human Evolution from the Smithsonian National Museum of History: provides content about archaeology at many levels, from the basics of human evolution to lesson plans for teachers
• Bones, Stones, and Books: a blog by Stefanie Halmhofer that provides information about pseudoarchaeology, the reality of practicing archaeology, and advice for archaeology students

Interpersonal and Interactive Learning

One of the best ways to engage the public is through community involvement in archaeological projects because it provides a tangible link to the past (Erdman, 2019) and gives participants a role in the knowledge-production process. This generates a sense of ownership of that knowledge that can arouse further interest in the topic and foster interest in historical preservation (Harding, 2007). It also makes the field more “real”; most people don’t know what archaeology is, much less know an archaeologist. People who engage with an archaeologist become more interested in the field. In essence, community involvement is any kind of direct interaction archaeologists have with nonspecialists, such as through community archaeology projects, museum and outreach programs, public lectures, and getting involved with a school (Erdman, 2019).

An example of interactive public outreach is the Passport in Time program of the USDA Forest Service, which enlists the help of nonspecialist volunteers to do cultural heritage management activities at sites on public land across the country, including survey and excavation, restoration, archival research, and gathering oral histories (USDA Forest Service n.d.). Professional archaeologists, historians, and preservationists are the hosts, guides, and coworkers of the volunteers during their experience. This form of active learning ensures that accurate and contemporary information is being shared.

A limitation of interpersonal and interactive learning is that it involves being somewhere in person, which means that this type of outreach primarily occurs in contexts close to museums or universities, and traveling to participate in programs in other towns or cities isn’t possible for everyone (Erdman, 2019). So while these programs have an amazing impact on people who are lucky enough to participate, the archaeological information that is conveyed reaches a limited number of people.

The Bottom Line

No matter what format an archaeologist chooses, they need to create a story. People become more engaged in archaeological information if it is relatable and easy to follow. Making the information relatable is by far the most important part of public outreach. People find it easier to connect when archaeologists share human case studies (Pobiner, 2021). That is why it is important to bring the human element into any discussion of material culture. This can be accomplished in a vignette based on archaeological evidence (Spector, 1991) or by making the archaeologist the main character—taking nonspecialists on the journey of discovery and interpretation with the archaeologist. Each method—traditional media, online digital content, and interpersonal/interactive learning—has pros and cons and each needs to be tailored to a particular audience. Regardless of which method the archaeologist chooses, using a story format is a great way to engage nonspecialists.

How Do I Know Which Method to Use?

Archaeologists ask the following questions to figure out where they should begin with an outreach project. Once they decide whether they want to write a book, star in a television show, start a social media account, or invite the local third graders to come dig at their archaeological site, they begin the process of figuring out the information they want to convey to the public audience they will reach.

What’s My Goal?

To answer this questions, archaeologists consider why they do public archaeology and identify the reason that aligns best with their site. They consider what the data tells them (Does it contradict a long-held belief? Does it tell us something about sustainability?) and what the descendant community wants (Do they want this knowledge to be shared widely or do they want to keep it within their community?). Another consideration when considering goals is how many people the archaeologist wants to reach with their project.

What Are My Strengths?

Archaeologists doing public outreach can incorporate whatever skills they are good at into their project. An archaeologist who is a computer geek could start a website or build a video game. Someone who is good at creative writing could write hard archaeological fiction. Someone who is good at public speaking could do a lecture series. An archaeologist can also learn how to use a new technology or gain a new skill if time permits.

Whom Do I Know?

For interpersonal or interactive learning, an archaeologist will likely have to team up with another individual or organization. Connecting at the individual level is often more efficient (White, 2019; Yezzi-Woodley et al., 2019; Reetz et al., 2019). For example, they could ask a teacher if they want to participate in an archaeology-related activity because most teachers don’t have a background in archaeology and may feel too overwhelmed or have too little free time to learn enough to be confident about teaching it. It’s essential to find someone who is enthusiastic about this fun learning experience.

Who Is Your Audience?

The audience affects the level of language archaeologists use in public outreach. It is important to avoid jargon unless it is explained properly and in a way that is easy to understand. It is also important to keep language age appropriate. The Gunning Fog Index is a useful tool for calibrating language to a particular grade level; it determines how many years of education someone would need to understand a text. The size of your audience will also affect your outreach project, as explained above.

What if I Want to Learn, Not Create?

Maybe you’re more interested in learning about archaeology than in communicating archaeological findings to the public. That’s okay! Knowing about the pros and cons of the various formats of public communication will help you find what method will be most engaging for you as well as what drawbacks they may have.

It is important to assess the validity of what you’ve learned about archaeology in the public sphere. Did you hear about it from news articles, on television, in movies, or on podcasts? Did those sources of information use evidence-based language or did they use sensationalist language? How much evidence did they provide for each claim? Did they confirm your biases or did they make you think about issues in new ways?

Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Psuedoscience in Archaeology provides a “Quick Start Guide” to assessing the validity of a claim (Feder, 2011, pp. xviii–xix). Here are some of the main points that guide makes:

• Where is the claim presented? Is it in a peer-reviewed journal, a science-based magazine, an anonymous website, or a chat group? The objectivity of a claim varies based on where it is presented and finding an accurate source of information about archaeology is important.
• Who is making the claim? Is it a trained archaeologist, a trained scientist in a different field, or a news broadcaster? Each of these people will have different levels of understanding of the material and may or may not relay the information properly.
• How does the person making the claim know the information they are presenting? Most important, did they follow the scientific method? The claim must be based on observation and it must tested. Intuition, beliefs, and prejudices are not archaeological evidence.
• Were other experts consulted and if so, how did they evaluate the claim? If most other scientists in the field are skeptical or no other scientific support is given, then the claim probably isn’t based on evidence.
• Is enough information given for you to make an informed decision about the legitimacy of the claim or are you left with questions?

These questions will help you evaluate all sources and claims, not just archaeological ones. They are also great guiding questions to help you craft your own valid arguments in whatever field you pursue.

Case Study

The following case study breaks down a public outreach project I did into specific steps. I’ll take you through the guiding questions to show how I arrived at my project idea, but you’ll notice that I had to ask myself a lot of additional questions as well. Each archaeological site is different, so in addition to the four guiding questions above (What is my goal?, What are my strengths?, Who do I know?, and Who is my audience?), it is important to listen to what the site and the research participants are telling you they need.

Context/Goal

During a land development project in Duncan, British Columbia, an archaeological site now known as Ye’yumnuts was discovered. Ye’yumnuts is a habitation site that was populated by the ancestors of the Cowichan tribe over three occupation periods. At the time of excavation, many amazing artifacts and features were found, including the imprint of a structure, a pile of fire-cracked rocks 10 cm deep and 5 m wide, and a jade adze that originated hundreds of kilometers away in the Fraser Canyon.

It took two decades of legal battles to protect this ancestral site, and now that it once again belongs to the Cowichan, they wanted to share the site as a source of inspiration for their youth and a source of education for the broader community of Duncan. In particular, the Cowichan tribe wanted school curriculum about the site so that local schools could study local ancient history as opposed to the history of faraway, out-of-context places, such as Egypt. A key element of this goal involved getting children excited about the archaeological findings, thus stimulating an appreciation for their peoples’ deep history. Whatever project I created would be featured on the website Commemorating Ye’yumnuts.

As I began considering my public outreach strategy, I could answer a few guiding questions:

• What is my goal? Inspire Cowichan youth, educate the broader community of Duncan, British Columbia, and get people excited about archaeology.
• Whom do I know? Cowichan tribal members, administrators of a local school district, and my professor, who had been involved in the archaeology of the site.
• Who is my audience? Settler and Cowichan community members of all ages, with special attention to students.
• What has already been done/what topics have already been covered? When I looked at the website about the archaeological site, I saw that there were activities related to artifacts, the history of the site since the beginning of time, legal battles, and analysis of news coverage, among other topics.

Figure 2. Image from the virtual reality tour for the website Commemorating Ye’yumnuts. This image shows an artist’s depiction of Feature B1 (a structure) in the area where the feature was located.

One of the gaps I found in the topics in the curricular material that was already available was lack of information about the features on the site. No one had talked about any of the features yet, which was incredible because there were so many and they pose a lot of questions about how the site functioned. The problem with getting people excited about the archaeology of this site, especially the features, is that you can no longer see the archaeology on the land. Once excavations were completed, the site was filled in. Now it is a grassy area surrounded by a protective fence with interpretive signage. How could I get people excited about something abstract, something they couldn’t even see? The issue of invisibility told me I had to do something visual regarding the site’s features; I had to bring the site alive for my audience.

• What are my strengths? Unfortunately, nothing visual—my main strengths lie in creative writing. However, I’m a quick learner and I was determined to produce something unique and exciting for my student viewers. So I decided to create a tool for students to use before their field trip to introduce them to the site. I sat down at my laptop to start learning how to use Google Tour Creator. It was time to make a virtual reality tour.

Knowledge Production

This outreach project was being done in collaboration with a local Indigenous group, so it was essential that I include their knowledge and interpretations of the site’s archaeological features in my virtual reality tour. Considerable research has been done about the benefits of a landed methodology, which means actually being on the land when doing archaeological work instead of being an armchair anthropologist because it gives a deeper, more embodied understanding. For example, at one of our visits to Ye’yumnuts, our professor brought some of the artifacts back to the site, and as I stood there holding a jade adze in my hand I was overwhelmed by how connected I felt to the site and to the people who had occupied it. That experience increased my drive to produce a quality outreach tool to get people as emotionally invested as I was.

I decided to use Severin Fowles’s (2010) “comparative or cross-cultural phenomenological methodology” of collaboration. In this method, the anthropologist walks the land with Indigenous community members. The Cowichan elder I was working with, Luschiim, was physically unable to walk the land with me, so in lieu of the physical experience I showed him photos of the archaeological features and recorded his interpretations and related stories. However, I was able to walk the site with the lead archaeologist, Eric McLay, who provided rich archaeological data for me.

Figure 3. Page from the virtual reality teacher pamphlet Commemorating Ye’yumnuts, showing an archaeological feature in Ye’yumnuts’ land and how archaeologists interpret it.

Google Tour Creator allows you to include one minute of audio, one photo, and up to 300 characters of text for each point of interest (in this case, each archaeological feature). The photos were either of an actual archaeological feature or an archaeological reconstruction of what it might have looked like in use, and I used the audio and the text to blend local conceptions of history with the archaeological evidence I gathered from my interviews. When possible, I included commentary from both Luschiim and Eric in the same audio clip. When there was just too much good information from both of them to fit it into one minute, I tended to privilege audio clips of Luschiim and present the archaeological data in the text portion. I made this decision because I was conducting this project on behalf of the Cowichan tribe and this was their story to tell. Because the amount of information you can include in the virtual reality tour is so limited, I also made an informational booklet for schoolteachers so they would have more background information to inform their lessons and help them answer the questions of curious students.

Benefits of Virtual Reality

Virtual reality can be a powerful tool. It is perfect for making the invisible visible—in this case, hidden archaeological features. It also mimics place-based learning, since the whole concept is about making you feel like you’re somewhere you’re not. This makes it a great tool for familiarizing students with the site before they arrive. It also makes the site accessible to everyone everywhere, and it fosters a deeper emotional connection with the site. Virtual reality is also accessible in terms of cost; all you need is a smartphone and a cardboard virtual reality viewer. The cardboard virtual reality viewers from Google cost less than $10. That price point makes virtual reality a feasible classroom activity. Finally, virtual reality is very interactive; it is an engaging and effective method of learning.

Discussion Questions

1. Consider the reasons listed above about why archaeologists do public archaeology. Which one do you feel is particularly important? Why?
2. This chapter lists many ways to conduct public outreach in archaeology. What are two or three ways that stand out to you? Think of a way that you could use them to reach out to the public. What talents or skills could you bring to a public archaeology project about the archaeological past?
3. Can you think of a way that public archaeologists have helped you understand the archaeological past? What were some of the ways they did this? Did they use interactive exhibits at a site or museum? Did they use virtual reality, blogs, or videos?

Additional Exercises

Activity: Create Your Own Public Outreach Materials

1. Choose one archaeological site from the following list
   • Çatalhöyük, Turkey
   • Stonehenge, Britain
   • Sutton Hoo, Britain
   • Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, Xi’an
   • Peyre Blanque, France
   • Ye’yumnuts, British Columbia
   • Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia
2. After gathering background research on the site, consider how public outreach may come into play. What about this site is so important that the public needs to know about it? What has already been said or done? Identify your reason for pursuing public outreach.
3. Once you’ve identified your reason, consider your method. Think through the guiding questions provided in the Methods section of this chapter to help answer these questions.
4. Use peer-reviewed papers and/or the archaeological assessment reports for your site to supplement your outreach materials with factual information.

Get creating!

About the Author

Jenna Hendrick received her BA in anthropology and English from SUNY Binghamton and her MA in anthropology from the University of Victoria. Currently, Jenna is both the producer of The Dirt—a podcast about archaeology, anthropology, and our shared human past—and the assistant archaeologist for Curtin Archaeological Consulting. Before working in cultural resource management, Jenna excavated at Peyre Blanque, a Magdalenian open-air site in France, and dabbled in archaeological conservation. Her research interests include human evolution/human life in the Paleolithic, people’s perceptions of the deep past and the “nature” of people of the past, and communicating archaeology.

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