Community-led research, public engagement, and open science in Australian archaeology

We all publicise the work and achievements in archaeology in Australia, but one still meets the comment, ‘I don’t suppose there is any archaeology in Australia!’ Ian Crawford (1975:3)

Variations on this comment are probably frustratingly familiar to most readers. The importance of public engagement with archaeological work has been a topic of conversation in Australian archaeology from the start, particularly the need to effectively communicate with both Aboriginal communities and the broader Australian public (see Crawford 1975; Moore 1975). Fifty years of media attention, legislative change recognising and enshrining Indigenous rights, and work to raise the public profile of Australia’s deep archaeological heritage has brought the discipline a long way, yet Moore’s (1975:9) call to action for archaeologists to ‘publicise or pack up’ remains relevant today. The challenge we face now is not just how we publicise Australian archaeology, but also how we improve public trust in our research and methods in a ‘post-truth’ era. What are the opportunities for archaeological communication and engagement with the move towards open and community-driven knowledge production and distribution?

The last 50 years has added more than 35,000 years to the scientific record of Australia’s human history. Australian archaeology has contributed to contemporary societal challenges; it has been used to support Indigenous land rights claims and advocate for the protection of cultural heritage, to shine a light on dark histories, to investigate long-term environmental changes and address climate change and sustainable actions, and to question dominant narratives around past and present Australian identity. Yet there are two worrying narratives that still circulate widely in public discourse around Australia’s cultural heritage. The first is the belief that archaeology is ‘elsewhere’; that the Australian archaeological record is valuable and relevant only in its global context (Colley 2005, 2007; Monks et al. 2023). The second is that archaeological interpretation ‘stretches the truth’ or ‘rewrites history’ inadvertently or wilfully misleading the public to suit a political agenda (Grounds and Ross 2010; Porr and Vivian-Williams 2021 and replies). The former belief is exemplified by media positioning Australian archaeology as ‘older than Stonehenge’ or ‘older than the pyramids’ when arguing for its heritage value. The damage caused by the latter belief can often be seen in the political arena, where archaeological data are frequently selectively misused, often to undermine Indigenous identity and concerns.

Efforts to raise the profile of Australian archaeology have largely focused on communicating research outcomes. There is a clear and sustained appetite for archaeological knowledge and entertainment amongst many Australians, as evidenced by news media coverage and engagement with a rich variety of popular media, long-running outreach programs like National Archaeology Week (held annually since 2003), and live events such as site open days and public talks. The incorporation of archaeological content into Australian primary and secondary school curricula has been a boon for the discipline, although challenges persist in supporting non-archaeologist teachers to bring archaeological information into their classrooms (Beale and Stannard 2023). Interactive online media such as social media and blogs have also underpinned much archaeological outreach in the past two decades, through both institutional and personal accounts (Matthews and Wallis 2015). Research programs involving Indigenous community collaborators now routinely include non-academic outputs tailored to diverse audiences, alongside traditional academic publications that increasingly feature Indigenous communities or Country as co-authors (see Ouzman 2023 and replies).

Certainly, archaeologists in Australia cannot be accused of neglecting their responsibility to publicise their work. But if 50 years has not been long enough to convince the Australian public that archaeology here matters, and that our methods and interpretations are robust in part because of the way we continually revise and integrate new data, what can we hope for in the next 50 years?

Globally, there is a movement towards transparency, accessibility, and accountability in science. There are many ways to engage with this transition, but two underutilised opportunities that may open new pathways for building public trust and engagement with Australian archaeology are community-driven research and open science.

Community archaeological projects have steadily gained traction in Australia since the 1980s (Truscott 2004). Community archaeology is a nebulous and poorly defined concept, ranging from consultative/stakeholder approaches where communities are invited to negotiate over externally developed archaeological agenda to truly ‘community-driven’ projects where communities are intimately involved in directing and co-designing research questions, strategies, and outcomes centred around a place or question of interest to them—so-called ‘archaeology from below’ (Faulkner 2000:28). This latter type of community archaeology is becoming more established in Australia, especially where Aboriginal communities are seeking to direct archaeological attention to problems or questions of particular interest or relevance to them. Engaging communities in the development and implementation of projects that are local to them or linked to community interests invites greater social investment, and has the potential to improve public trust, validate and strengthen—or conversely, challenge—archaeological interpretations, and enhance community benefits of archaeological research. Expansion of similar community led co-design frameworks into non-Indigenous community archaeology programs may provide an opportunity to diversify and enhance projects of relevance to other communities.

Emerging technologies have facilitated calls for openness in science, particularly where research benefits from public funding. While Australia does not yet have a national strategy for open science, many funding bodies are implementing top-down open research practices: open access publication is now mandated for research funded by most large international funding bodies, including the Australian Research Council, and open data sharing is increasingly encouraged by both funders and publishers. Open data practices are guided by FAIR principles, which state that research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (Carroll et al. 2020). Open data publication presents opportunities for archaeologists working with legacy data, but can also create tensions for Indigenous peoples and other communities whose data may not always be suitable for open sharing. The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics) have been designed to help address this issue, working in conjunction with the FAIR principles to strengthen Indigenous data sovereignty and stewardship (Carroll et al. 2020). Open practices benefit research in two ways: by encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration; and by opening up avenues for a wide range of communities to contribute to research of relevance and interest to them.

There is fertile ground for inclusive, accessible archaeology where open science practices and community archaeology meet. This is not to say that such approaches will work for all—or even most—projects, or that they will come without challenges. What will happen, for example, when ‘top down’ funding directives meet ‘bottom up’ research agendas? How can community needs and project outcomes be sustainably managed across unpredictable funding cycles and employment? These are important considerations and are likely to play out differently across a range of contexts. However, if we want to extend our communication reach to new and diverse audiences, and to find new ways to engage existing ones, open and community-driven archaeology provide productive frameworks to extend relevance and social investment in archaeological research, foster a more transparent and trustworthy relationship with the public, and challenge entrenched public opinions about archaeology in Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.