Since the 1960s, public archaeology education—or teaching nonprofessionals about our discipline—has rapidly become an integral part of what public archaeologists do. The earliest efforts produced activities and pamphlets for visitors to archaeological sites (e.g., BLM 1979) and for K–12 teachers (e.g., Smith 1996; Hawkins Reference Hawkins1984), with the goal of combating vandalism of sites on public lands. Since then, public archaeology educators have expanded their efforts to teach multiple audiences about the field and about the knowledge we construct as archaeologists. These efforts have been wide ranging, and they include providing education for K–12 students and their teachers (e.g., Letts and Moe Reference Letts and Moe2009), teaching citizen scientists and life-long learners (e.g, Erdman Reference Erdman and Erdman2019b; Miller and Murray Reference Miller and Murray2018; Smith Reference Smith2014), and collaborating with descendant communities to produce materials for multicultural audiences (e.g., Reetz and Quakenbush Reference Reetz and Quakenbush2016).
Those working as archaeology educators—specialists in educating the public about archaeology—can both cite success stories and pinpoint areas where we can improve. Most of us, however, would agree that challenges remain in teaching the public about archaeology. It seems that no matter how many classrooms we visit or how many discussions we have with visitors at our events, we are still telling people that we have not found any dinosaurs lately and we do not carry a whip and pistol into the field, Indiana Jones style. We suggest that although the problem is multifaceted, there are two primary components that contribute to it. First, archaeology educators with education backgrounds are a small subset of the archaeological community and are not evenly distributed in the profession. A disproportionate number of them are tied to museums and other public-serving institutions, such as state archaeology offices, rather than being commonly embedded in universities and cultural resource management firms. Second, many members of the public value the objects that archaeologists find more highly than the information those objects provide about people. According to the IPSOS poll (SAA 2018), the majority of the public learns about archaeology and the past through textbooks and museums, where images of physical objects and/or the physical objects themselves are often highlighted and on display. Looting of sites for artifacts remains a problem worldwide because it is the objects that are prized for their monetary value—not their context or the data they can contribute about past peoples. With this in mind, we ask, “How can we enlist each archaeological colleague to help us in public archaeology education? How can we help change the public's relationship with artifacts and archaeology?” We propose that one answer to these questions is to turn to archaeological theory, including social memory.
At the 2019 Society for American Archaeology annual meeting, we held a symposium dedicated to exploring how archaeologists across the United States have incorporated artifacts into their public archaeology education programs. The consistent problems we see in these programs are simple: most archaeologists are trained only as archaeologists. In graduate school, we are not taught successful pedagogical methods—such as Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb Reference Kolb2015), Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe Reference Wiggins and McTighe2005), or object-based learning (Paris Reference Paris2002; Shuh Reference Shuh and Hooper-Greenhill1999)—or theories about how people learn (e.g., Kuhn Reference Kuhn1979; Simon Reference Simon and Estes1978). We are taught how to analyze artifacts and apply theoretical concepts to enrich our understanding of past peoples. This is why the specialty of archaeology education exists, which includes archaeologists, educators, and other heritage specialists who can convey the complex information about and from archaeology to multiple publics. We believe, however, that all archaeologists may already have the tools to become more successful educational allies to our archaeology education colleagues, precisely because of our training. Theories taught in graduate school can be used in conjunction with an understanding of the public's desire to see and interact with artifacts to build meaningful programming and interactions. In this introductory article, we identify the disconnect between archaeologists and the nonprofessional publics that make education challenging, and we offer a solution drawn from archaeological theory. We conclude by providing an overview of successful examples in this special section that have taken this message to heart in their educational efforts.
THE CHALLENGE OF TEACHING ARCHAEOLOGY TO THE PUBLIC
Archaeologists have long been concerned with educating nonprofessionals. The earliest efforts can be traced back to the modern academic origins of archaeology, where archaeologists earned a living by teaching college students about the discipline and the way it constructs knowledge about past people (Trigger Reference Trigger2006). This focus began to change in the mid-twentieth century, as archaeologists increasingly interacted with noncollegiate, nonprofessional communities. These communities, in which, if archaeologists are present, they are the minority, include descendant communities, government entities, and avocational archaeologists (McGimsey Reference McGimsey1972). Each of these communities often gets lumped into a single category of “the public”—and it is this definition and tradition that we follow here (McGimsey Reference McGimsey1972; Schadla-Hall Reference Schadla-Hall1999). Although often treated as a monolithic “other” to professional archaeologists, it is important to remember that the public we refer to is composed of multiple communities, each of which has its own histories and experiences with archaeology and heritage (e.g., Pyburn Reference Pyburn, Okamura and Matsuda2011; Roberts and McCarthy Reference Roberts, McCarthy and Grauer1995; Watkins Reference Watkins2000), and that it is important to tailor any public archaeology education efforts to the specific communities we serve.
Given that public schools do not routinely teach archaeology, most people encounter the discipline through museums or media portrayals. The very presence of archaeological artifacts in natural history and art museums demonstrates the importance of material culture to our Western society—many people place significant cultural value on museums (Alberti Reference Alberti, Livingstone and Withers2011; Moore Reference Moore2000). Because archaeologists are often not involved in crafting these narratives about the past, however, museums and the media often highlight only the adventurous and glamorous side of archaeology. Most archaeologists realize that if they leave that narrative exclusively in the hands of such institutions, there will continue to be gaps between what we want to teach the public and what the public will consume. As a result, many archaeologists recognize that archaeology education is an important component of our discipline. Despite this recognition, however, there are few archaeologists who have pursued public archaeology education. The question then becomes “How can we turn every archaeologist into an ally for archaeology education?” We must begin by identifying what we as archaeologists want the public to know about our discipline—and the information it produces—as well as what the public wants to learn.
What Archaeologists Want the Public to Know
Since archaeologists began educating various publics in the 1960s (Ellick Reference Ellick2016a), numerous articles and books have been written that state what archaeology educators think the public should know about archaeology and the information generated by our studies (e.g., Erdman Reference Erdman and Erdman2019a; Okamura and Matsuda Reference Okamura and Matsuda2011; Smardz and Smith Reference Smardz and Smith2000). In summary, we collectively want people to (1) be aware of the deep cultural history of the world around them (Henson Reference Henson, Okamura and Matsuda2011); (2) understand how the information is scientifically generated through data and hypothesis testing; (3) have empathy for others—not only those who lived in the past but also those living today (Kryder-Reid Reference Kryder-Reid, Messenger and Bender2019; Messenger Reference Messenger and Erdman2019); and (4) adopt our preservation ethic, which protects archaeological sites from looting and destruction (Erdman, ed. Reference Erdman2019).
These goals are perhaps best summarized by Jeanne Moe, who wrote that archaeology educators strive
to demonstrate scientific processes; to show how archaeology contributes to scientific and historic knowledge; and to connect people to their own heritage, to name a few [goals]. However, the most important endeavor for much of the emerging field of archaeology education is to teach citizens to value the tangible evidence of the past, sites and artifacts, and to protect them [Reference Moe, Smardz and Smith2000:249].
Critical in this list is the emphasis on “tangible evidence”—not the objects themselves, but the data, evidence, and stories they provide about people in the past. Although the objects are critical to this understanding, they do not occupy our sole focus. They are proxies for gaining an understanding of the past, and they are valued as sources of data and as objects often meaningful to their associated descendant communities. When archaeology educators craft educational events for the public, they do so with these goals in mind.
What the Public Wants to Know from Archaeologists
The public, on the other hand, have other goals they hope to accomplish in their interactions with archaeologists. Although each community has a different history and relationship with archaeology and heritage, many people from different backgrounds know little about archaeology or the information we generate. For example, in 2018 the Society for American Archaeology conducted an updated survey to the 2000 Harris Poll (Ramos and Duganne Reference Ramos and Duganne2000). This survey found that although 93% of the 1,000 randomly polled Americans said our work was important, 54% still associated our studies with dinosaurs, and most agreed that one learns about archaeology primarily via classrooms and textbooks (58%), museums (57%), and television (56%; SAA 2018).
Consequently, it is not surprising that the public's goals in interactions with us do not line up. This is perhaps best exemplified by the most common question we are asked: “What is the coolest thing you have ever found?” As archaeologists, every one of us has been asked this question at least once in our careers, be it at an educational event or whenever anyone learns what we do. Importantly, this innocent question disguises a targeted interest in the objects themselves. As Katherine Erdman laments, “There is a fundamental misunderstanding amongst much of the public about what archaeologists do, how we do it, and why” (Reference Erdman and Erdman2019a:2). Rather than recognizing how archaeologists use artifacts to think about the people who made them in the past, many nonprofessional communities are concerned only with objects themselves.
We are not alone in this observation. In Japan, Katsuyuki Okamura (Reference Okamura, Okamura and Matsuda2011) observed that archaeological heritage management (or cultural resource management) is grounded in culture history. Because this theoretical framework is focused on the objects found in order to construct and recognize culture groups—and this is what is presented to the public that funds the work—the Japanese public is focused solely on objects rather than the information those artifacts provide about the people who made them. In the United States, Stuart Struever (Reference Struever, Smardz and Smith2000), when reflecting on the establishment of Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Colorado, noted that because we are a technology-driven culture, the way many relate to the past is through seeing the technology that past peoples used. As a result, many members of the public are underwhelmed by the comparison, and they do not find past people's lives relevant to their own (Struever Reference Struever, Smardz and Smith2000:305). Even citizen scientists who become involved with the professional community comment that they first were drawn to archaeology because of the “stuff” that archaeologists uncovered—not from a desire to learn about the people who made those artifacts long ago (Cox Reference Cox2015; Rivera-Claudio Reference Rivera-Claudio2016). Regardless of the various motivations and reasons for this disconnect, many members of the public come to archaeological events to see and learn about the artifacts we uncover, and they are often interested in little else.
The Archaeology-Education Response to the Disconnect
As Donald Henson (Reference Henson, Okamura and Matsuda2011:220) observed and as Stefanie Kowalczyk (Reference Kowalczyk2016) and archaeology educators have emphasized, it is up to us to decide how we react to this disconnect and how we choose to educate the public in response. These responses are as diverse as the communities they serve, and, when done best, are co-creative and collaborative efforts that meet the needs of all involved (e.g., Bollwerk et al. Reference Bollwerk, Connolly and McDavid2015; Bria and Carranza Reference Bria and Cruzado Carranza2015; Kuwanwisiwma Reference Kuwanwisiwma, Cowell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson2008; Reetz and Quakenbush Reference Reetz and Quakenbush2016). We have observed, however, that archaeologists who engage with the public have typically responded to this disconnect in one of two ways in their educational methods. They either (1) exclude artifacts from their education efforts to deemphasize the focus on objects or (2) provide what the public wants—the presentation of artifacts, mock excavations, and interactions at professional excavations and archaeological sites. Although there are notable exceptions to this generalization (e.g., Smardz Reference Smardz, Smardz and Smith2000; van der Linde et al. Reference van der Linde, van den Dries and Wait2018), these two reactions have the potential to color either the public's or our experiences as archaeologists when we meet at the archaeology education table.
Some archaeology educators respond by removing physical artifacts from the picture entirely. Without the object to draw attention away from the message, they can more easily teach about and focus on archaeology, its findings, and the scientific processes we use (Hawkins Reference Hawkins, Smardz and Smith2000). Archaeology educators have approached this in a variety of ways. For example, Project Archaeology: Investigating Shelter (Letts and Moe Reference Letts and Moe2009) is a third-to-fifth-grade curriculum guide. Written collaboratively by archaeologists and formal educators, it is designed for teachers to be able to impart the fundamentals of anthropology and archaeology to their students. Because the unit emphasizes anthropological concepts such as cultural relativity and the scientific processes involved in archaeology through data and descendant community perspectives, artifacts only make one appearance as sketched, 2D representations—in the eighth of a total of nine lessons (Letts and Moe Reference Letts and Moe2009:75–130). Doing so keeps the emphasis on the scientific process and the people—current and past—behind the artifacts rather than on the objects themselves.
Other archaeology educators are turning to new technologies to emphasize the stories generated from archaeological data over the artifacts themselves. For example, 3D printing and models have become an increasingly popular way to showcase artifacts, without the physical objects themselves. Scholars, such as Paola Di Franco and colleagues (Reference Di Franco, Carlo Camporesi and Kallmann2015) and Bernard Means (Reference Means2015), note that these types of models allow for members of the public to both interact with representations of artifacts in a tactile fashion and co-create their own experiences and interpretations of the models while simultaneously preserving the original specimens. Other researchers have taken to video games—a subset of archaeogaming—to allow members of the public to engage in the stories that can be generated from archaeological data, de-emphasizing the physical objects (Reinhard Reference Reinhard2018).
When time is short, some archaeologists and museum educators attempt to please members of the public and to win their attention by providing them with the experience they want, which may not meet archaeology educational goals. Carol Ellick (Reference Ellick2016b) notes that site visits, for example, can lack specific narratives and educational messages, and she offers suggestions to make interactions more meaningful. Similarly, Paul Thistle (Reference Thistle2012, Reference Thistle, Rasmussen and Winterrowd2017) has written for museum educators, making the case against so-called sandbox excavations in public archaeology education. These sandbox excavations are often a popular public archaeology activity because they provide an opportunity for people to enact what they perceive as an authentic archaeological experience: moving sediment to find the treasure buried underneath. But as Thistle (Reference Thistle2012, Reference Thistle, Rasmussen and Winterrowd2017) pointed out, although they may be entertaining for the public, these activities do not often educate the public on archaeological process and knowledge production because they lack the scientific rigor and the methodologies critical to professional archaeological excavations. As a result, the public learns little about archaeology, and we as archaeologists fail to communicate the lessons we can learn from the “tangible evidence of the past.”
We ourselves have participated at booth or fair events, intended to reach large audiences, where artifacts and replicated objects are placed on a table with little context, except for whatever we chose to say. We have also seen firsthand that there is frequently initial interest to view the objects, to even handle them, but then disengagement when we discuss science or the role the objects played in people's lives. Although positive interactions have occurred at such events, as discussed by Ben Thomas and Meredith Langlitz (Reference Thomas and Langlitz2016), where quality over quantity in interactions prevails, such events may not always accomplish their intended goal of educating a large audience. Rebekah Schields and colleagues (Reference Schields, Tramel and Malo2017) note that this is often because the events are not cohesively designed and the learning that occurs is frequently unassessed. In a similar way, we have personally felt dissatisfied in being unable to reach our educational goals at such events, and we suggest that this is due to the disconnect between public expectations and our own, along with uncritically designed programming.
TURNING TO THE THEORY TOOLBOX FOR A SOLUTION
Those archaeologists who are not archaeology educators and specialists in this field—whether they be general public archaeologists, CRM professionals, or academics—have the best intentions when teaching the public. Despite these best efforts, most of us are not trained as educators, who possess pedagogical and theoretical training to employ in their classrooms (White Reference White, Smardz and Smith2000). As Lewis Binford (Reference Binford1962) proclaimed, however, archaeology is nothing without anthropology, and many archaeologists practicing in North America are taught to think as anthropologists first in a four-field approach through archaeological theory classes. Many of our theories concern how people learn and remember and, especially, how those processes relate to material culture. We recommend that if we cannot get exposure to educational methods and theories, we should turn to our theoretical toolbox to become better public archaeology educators and allies to our archaeology education colleagues.
There are a number of postmodern anthropological and archaeological theories that might help us, including object biography and itinerary (Gosden and Marshall Reference Gosden and Marshall1999; Hahn and Weiss Reference Hahn, Weiss, Hahn and Weiss2013), object entanglement (Hodder Reference Hodder2012), and phenomenology and practice theory (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1970, Reference Bourdieu1977; Hodder and Cessford Reference Hodder and Cessford2004; Merleau-Ponty Reference Merleau-Ponty and Smith1962). Here, we suggest one such potential avenue: social memory. As defined by Paul Connerton (Reference Connerton1989), social memory refers to the human propensity to develop memories specific to a society and to attach those socially constructed memories to material culture. Through acts of incorporation (practice) or inscription (transferring memory to an object through either practice or writing), social memory allows us to consider how people perceive and remember their pasts (Connerton Reference Connerton1989; Morphy Reference Morphy, Hirsch and O'Hanlon1995; Rowlands Reference Rowlands1993). Unlike history—which is codified and rigidly constructed—memory is a social dialogue, constantly being rewritten and relived onto material culture through incorporation and inscription (Golden Reference Golden2005).
Because of the dynamic nature of social memory, it often becomes intertwined with practice theory, because the act of incorporation and inscription is critical in order to imprint memories onto objects. Through these practices, meanings are embedded in objects that can then be retrieved when people touch and interact with them (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1970, Reference Bourdieu1977). For example, Ian Hodder and Craig Cessford (Reference Hodder and Cessford2004) describe the ways that practices inscribed memories into living spaces at Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey and structured life in the early town. It was through touching objects and moving through those spaces that people inscribed their places with memories, shaping their daily lives. Howard Morphy (Reference Morphy, Hirsch and O'Hanlon1995) also describes how Australian Aboriginal peoples inscribed social memory onto their landscapes in the past through daily movement through places and engagement with objects in their everyday lives. He states that these social memories are still accessible to their descendants today through similar practices of movement. As a result, touching and physically engaging with objects can promote both the creation of new memories and the retrieval of old ones.
Ethnographic examples also demonstrate that objects play a key role in remembering. Susanne Küchler (Reference Küchler and Bender1993) describes how Malangan statues from New Ireland in Papua New Guinea embody a remembered landscape prior to the impacts of colonialism. These statues, as objects, provide a focal point for memories of places because words for parts of the body correspond to landscape terms and concepts, which are made inaccessible in modern times through the long—and ultimately destructive—process of European colonialism (Küchler Reference Küchler and Bender1993:92–95). Similarly, Claire Jacques (Reference Jacques and Pye2007) demonstrates how museum objects can be used with the elderly in the United Kingdom to help them remember their youth so as to accumulate and organize knowledge for museum exhibits. As individuals above age 75 in nursing homes held the objects, such as coins that are no longer used and early twentieth-century laundry equipment, the objects invoked memories of their daily lives when they were young and allowed them to tell stories associated with the artifacts.
Archaeologists have applied this theory to better understand how people engage with their pasts through the manipulation of material culture (Van Dyke and Alcock Reference Van Dyke, Alcock, van Dyke and Alcock2003). Because humans use objects as instruments for memories, archaeologists who work with material culture can analyze artifacts and their contexts to better understand how people selectively remember or forget their past. For example, Lynne Meskell (Reference Meskell, van Dyke and Alcock2003) discussed how the significance of religious objects and places at Deir el-Medina shifted over time, from their context in pharaonic Egypt to those under the Romans centuries later. With the shift in culture came a forgetting of statues’ religious and cultural values, reflecting a change in the ways people engaged with their past. Axel Nielson (Reference Nielson, Mills and Walker2008) also described how South Andean peoples remembered their past and ancestors, despite Incan and Spanish conquest, through engagement with chullpas and ancestor worship. Whether in contemporary New Ireland or in ancient Egypt, people manipulate the material culture around them in their social acts of remembering and forgetting.
We suggest that by considering social memory for those who are do not have an education background, general archaeologists might become better archaeology education allies and create more thoughtful educational interactions with the public—ones that meet both archaeology education desires and the needs of the communities we serve. Even without a background in education, any archaeologist could engage members of the public in an event or activity that is constructed around the social memory process of incorporation and inscription with physical artifacts. Although this approach mimics robust educational theories, such as experiential learning or object-based learning, it is distinct because (1) the physical artifacts themselves are essential to the memory-creation process, and (2) it is a theory many archaeologists have encountered in their own training.
In the following sections, we discuss the ways in which attention to social memory has previously been incorporated for object-based learning in museum settings and through practices in general public archaeology education. We then provide an informal example of how social memory can be used in educational contexts to create programs mindful of their messages to the public. We conclude with an overview of the articles in this special section and the ways they have carefully included physical artifacts in their outreach to the public.
HOW HAVE ARTIFACTS BEEN INCORPORATED IN PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY EDUCATION?
The role that artifacts can play in education through social memory has been slowly recognized over the last two decades by archaeologists and museum experts. The earliest efforts came from museum educators. Joanna Lea (Reference Lea, Smardz and Smith2000) noted that because artifacts usually end up in museums after the excavations and analyses are complete, public archaeology education is critical when designing exhibits and educational programming so that visitors take away the message archaeologists intend for them. Elizabeth Pye (Reference Pye and Pye2007) wrote that because touch is one of our most important senses, allowing people to touch artifacts provides an opportunity and a space for people to connect with artifacts and the memories inscribed on them. Similarly, Sandra Dudley (Reference Dudley and Dudley2010) suggested that artifacts are more than the objects themselves: they are information packages, accessible to those who see them through a variety of educational materials and experiences. Using this idea, Kirsten Wehner and Martha Sear (Reference Wehner, Sear and Dudley2010) apply the theoretical frame of object biographies to interpret objects of Euro-Australian heritage for the public in museum settings.
Most recently, archaeologist Mónica Montenegro and colleagues (Reference Montenegro, Aparicio, Lamberti, Scaro, Otero and Cremonte2017) state explicitly that we can use the artifacts we uncover in our educational efforts for the public. Framing their suggestion within an activist archaeological lens, Montenegro and colleagues (Reference Montenegro, Aparicio, Lamberti, Scaro, Otero and Cremonte2017) suggest that archaeologists generate new knowledge and memories for the communities we work with through the objects themselves. Because practices of incorporation and inscription are critical to imprinting social memory onto material culture, they suggest that engaging people not in handling the objects themselves but in the replication of artifacts—such as making traditional Incan pottery in Argentina—will connect the memories and knowledge gained through practice with the archaeological specimens we recover.
Although scholars outside archaeology have long suggested connecting educational messages to objects, few within archaeology—except for Montenegro and colleagues (Reference Montenegro, Aparicio, Lamberti, Scaro, Otero and Cremonte2017)—have designed an educational event for the public specifically with social memory in mind. And in this instance, they still chose to deemphasize the objects themselves and focused instead on the processes that create the objects in which the memories are incorporated. An anecdotal example of a public archaeology education initiative that rests on the incorporation of memories in objects comes from the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network. In line with Alexandra Jones and Sydney Pickens (Reference Jones and Pickens2020), this article's first author, alongside Paige Ford and Allison Douglas, developed a program to instruct people virtually in the age of COVID-19 that the artifacts archaeologists excavate teach us a story of people in the past while connecting us with each other in the present. Participants were asked to identify an object in their homes that was either a part of or a representation of their heritage and to share a memory or story about that object. After identifying their heritage artifact, participants were asked several questions about their object, such as its age, place of origin, and material composition. Using this object as a learning proxy, members of the public were then invited to both view their object through an archaeological lens of bar graphs that compiled the data of all those who participated in the project and to reflect on how archaeologists often view objects through the same lens of data and statistics. The creators of the program hoped that individual heritage objects would be associated with a new memory and learning outcome—that artifacts are not unlike our own heritage objects or our own artifacts in our homes and that they should be treated as such—through the social memory process of incorporation (Meghan J. Dudley, Paige Ford, Allison Douglas, personal communication 2020).
From museum specialists reminding us of the power of touch to public archaeology educators calling on us to attach memory to practice and replicated objects, it is clear that public archaeology educators both within and outside of archaeology have recognized the potential that physical artifacts have to build an invested, educated public due to their capacity to hold memories. We suggest that it is now time for more of us to put that potential to use as social memory devices so that all archaeologists might better teach the public about archaeology and the knowledge we generate as well as assist our archaeology educator colleagues in meeting our collective educational goals.
TOUCHING THE PAST TO REMEMBER THE PAST
In this special section, we build on efforts of previous scholars (e.g., Dudley Reference Dudley and Dudley2010; Montenegro et al. Reference Montenegro, Aparicio, Lamberti, Scaro, Otero and Cremonte2017; Pye Reference Pye and Pye2007; Smardz Reference Smardz, Smardz and Smith2000; Wehner and Sear Reference Wehner, Sear and Dudley2010) to advocate for broader inclusion and more thoughtful use of artifacts in general public archaeology education. Because artifacts can serve as mnemonic devices in education, we suggest encouraging members of the public to touch the past in order to remember it in guided, carefully designed lessons. In doing so, we can meet the expectations of the nonprofessional public while at the same time connecting new memories and ideas to the tangible evidence of the past on which the public is often fixated. Each archaeologist can solve the problem of an uninvested public by giving people a reason to invest in archaeology at an emotional, intellectual, and even a physical level. Each of the three examples in this section provides a case study and directions for how the authors, working across the nation, are including artifacts in their public archaeology education programs.
In the first article, archaeology education veterans Laurie E. Miroff and Nina M. Versaggi describe the rewards and challenges of maintaining a long-term community archaeology project “on the trowel's edge.” Although fieldwork opportunities do allow the public to incorporate archaeological practices into their own lived experiences and memories, as Montenegro and her colleagues (Reference Montenegro, Aparicio, Lamberti, Scaro, Otero and Cremonte2017) proposed, Miroff and Versaggi build on this foundation through their work at the Castle Gardens site. In an effort to teach the public about the each stage in the archaeological process, participants are given opportunities to witness and participate in lab work, assist in determinations about artifact type and affiliation, and encouraged to stick around after the project to see how collections are prepared, and finally, interpreted. Because many community and volunteer programs end after the fieldwork is done, the volunteers at Castle Rock are able to incorporate their own socially constructed memories about archaeology and the ways in which we construct knowledge of the past by hands-on participation. They learn that “archaeology” extends far beyond the excavation of artifacts, and that the value of artifacts is their connection to past peoples—living their lives, much like people today. In doing so, the public experiences the entire process as a social memory through the process of incorporation, by handling artifacts and engaging at each stage of archaeological research.
Because acts of inscription and incorporation must occur for social memories to be attached to objects, it can be challenging to create spaces where artifacts are accessible to the public in rural settings. In the section’s second article, Marieka Arksey, Marcia Peterson, and Greg Pierce discuss the challenges of conducting hands-on public archaeology education in rural areas. They reflect on previous studies, which have demonstrated the importance of spanning distances in innovative ways for education (Zahn and Buchanan Reference Zahn and Buchanan2002). Inspired by this work, they have created an avocational training program for youth and adults through a series of local partnerships that encourages participants to incorporate the archaeological process and ethics into social memory, through either fieldwork activities, laboratory analysis, or curation. The authors emphasize the importance of demonstrating to the public “how we know what we know,” which they argue leads to a more nuanced appreciation for the responsibility we have in the present to the past as well as even stronger relationships between the public and institutions where we work.
We recognize that building social memories with the public through fieldwork activities is not an option for all archaeologists. However, there are artifacts—appropriate for public archaeology education and the inscription of social memory—that are available in our labs and museums. The final article in this section outlines a method for creating educational materials, including the trunk program, with deaccessioned artifacts and collections. Deaccessioning is sometimes considered one of archaeology’s “dirty words,” but that is because, in large part, it is not fully understood as a preservation and educational tool. In this article, Jenna Domeischel and Tawnya Waggle explain the legal and ethical limitations to deaccessioning, describe how deaccessioned materials can be given new life as teaching objects, and outline the steps they used to create the trunk program they have put in place at Blackwater Draw. Expanding on the work of Jen Thum and Julia Troche (Reference Thum and Julia2016), they assert that deaccessioning is situated to become increasingly important as fieldwork continues unabated and collections continue to increase. The authors argue that, although trunk programs themselves are not new, imbuing them with additional opportunities for experiential engagement framed by social memory can reinvigorate the trunk experience for the public.
Whether the solution to bridging the disconnect between us and the public took the form of engaging people in the archaeological process or engaging with the artifacts themselves, each of the authors here recognized that the key to a successful public archaeology event and to be an archaeology education ally is meeting the goals of both our audience as well as ourselves. We suggest that, as more archaeologists conduct educational initiatives with the public, we keep our archaeological tool kits in mind and consider what archaeological theories we have at our disposal. Social memory is one way that we have advocated using to frame our engagements with the public, but others, such as practice theory (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1977), have potential as well. If we (1) remember our anthropological and archaeological theory background and deploy concepts like social memory into our educational efforts and (2) simultaneously consider the perspective of the public and what they previously know and want from us, we believe that each archaeologist can become an archaeology education advocate and ally, share the discipline with the nonprofessionals around us, and better serve our communities.
Acknowledgments
First, we would like to thank the original contributors to our 2019 Society for American Archaeology symposium, “Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections,” whose thoughts and work inspired this section. We would also like to thank our authors in this special section for their hard work and willingness to share it with others. Additionally, we would like to thank Lupita Valera Mendoza for the Spanish translation of our abstract and keywords. Finally, we owe a debt of gratitude to our three anonymous reviewers. We appreciate the time and care they each put into their comments, which greatly improved this article.
Data Availability Statement
No original data were used in this article.
