Working with communities

When

31st July 2021

What

“Working with communities: Public participation from the archaeologists’ perspective” is a paper co-authored with Francesca Benetti and Katharina Möller. Initially, the paper has been presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Bern, in September 2019, within the session entitled “Community Archaeology in Europe”.

The paper presents the results of a survey run in Italy, Germany and England to investigate professional archaeologists’ attitudes towards public participation and see whether different laws and policies have shaped them.

Where

Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage

Why

Despite engagement with archaeology is a topical subject, archaeologists’ attitudes towards public participation are still underexplored.

Specifics

Opinions and practices in regard to public participation in archaeology vary widely in different countries. While so-called ‘community digs’ and other forms of participation are very common in the UK and volunteering opportunities can be easily found on the internet, the situation in Germany and Italy is different. Although public participation does exist in the two continental countries, it is not as widespread as in the UK, because of various different obstacles, e.g. permit systems. To identify the challenges that archaeologists have to face when working with the public as well as to better understand professional archaeologists’ attitudes towards public participation and see whether different laws and policies have shaped them, a survey was conducted amongst British, German and Italian archaeologists.