Working with communities: Public participation from the archaeologists’ perspective

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Public participation
• professional archaeologists’ attitudes
• Italy
• Germany
• UK

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 DSchG BW is the official shorthand for the Gesetz zum Schutz der Kulturdenkmale (Denkmalschutzgesetz - DSchG) in der Fassung vom 6. Dezember 1983, the current version of the heritage law of Baden-Württemberg.

2 An overview of archaeological legislation in England and Wales, though a bit outdated, in Cookson (2000); for archaeology in the planning system see Belford (2020). An overview of legislation in Scotland can be found on the webpage https://www.historicenvironment.scot/advice-and-support/planning-and-guidance/legislation-and-guidance/historic-environment-legislation-in-scotland/ [last accessed 21/02/2021]. For Northern Ireland, see Hamlin (1993) and Brannon (2002).

3 The surveys were carried out as part of the authors’ PhD research and thus were conducted in the countries that were the focus of these studies.

4 Italy: 26/5/2018–14/6/2018; UK: 13/12/2018-6/1/2019; Germany: 1-29/7/2019.

5 Answers were considered valid according to the following criteria: respondents’ professional status (students’ responses were not included in the analysis of this paper); completeness of the answer; respondents’ agreement to process their data. Respondents were free to skip questions in the survey, meaning that for some questions the number of answers is lower than the total number of valid responses.

6 In September 2019 (a year after the end of our survey) MIC started a procedure for listing Italian archaeologists, but the application to the list is not compulsory. The requirements for the application (training qualifications and work experience) are listed in the Ministerial Decree 244 issued on 20 May 2019. In the UK and Germany there is no legislative definition and the professional associations (e.g. Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) in the UK, CIfA Deutschland, Deutscher Archäologen-Verband in Germany) have their own means for defining an ‘archaeologist’ for the purpose of characterizing their membership.

7 Within the paper, ‘n =’ will be used to indicate the sample used for the analysis of each question (i.e. the total number of respondents to a certain question, or a specific sub-sample chosen), while ‘n.’ means the number of respondents who gave a particular answer under examination.

8 While the German 2012–2014 DISCO study uses different categories, most German universities offering archaeology would fall under ‘State Institutions’. Data from only eight organizations of this type was collected and only six of those listed teaching as one of their tasks (see Bentz and Wachter 2014, 16, Table 2 and 22, Table 7), even though there were at least 28 German universities offering archaeology in 2019 and it is unlikely that this figure was much lower in 2013 when the DISCO data were collected. Furthermore, based on archaeology being split into different subjects at German universities (e.g. classical archaeology, prehistory, egyptology, etc.), which often are organized as separate departments, responses would have likely come from departments rather than universities as a whole, increasing the number even more. In comparison, there were at least 44 offices of the German state heritage agencies in 2015 and 44 responses were collected in the respective category (‘Public Administrations’). Of these, 29 listed ‘Heritage [protection] and Preservation’ as a relevant task (see Bentz and Wachter 2014, 16, Table 2 and 22, Table 7). This is typically the responsibility of the heritage agencies in Germany.

9 A closer look at the data shows that professionals working in commercial archaeology from all three countries (UK: n. 88; Italy: n. 40; Germany: n. 26) are more resistant to public participation on excavations than those from most of the other professional categories (such as those working in academia or in non-profit organizations), a topic which would be worth exploring more in future research. In the UK the percentage of professionals working in commercial archaeology who do not consider public participation applicable in this field is 18.18%, while in Germany it is 42.31% and in Italy 42.50%.

10 Open-ended responses were categorized according to the following categories. Benefits: health (physical/mental) / happiness /enjoyment, improvement of social / personal skills, sense of community / sense of place / identity building, gain support for archaeologists / archaeology, include outside views / knowledge / skills, increased capacity / help / person-hours, sense of ownership, building relationship with communities, social responsibility /ethical duty, improvement/ sensitization to heritage protection, educational purpose / helps dissemination, understand the public, social cohesion / inclusion, tourism, inform decision making, inform Cultural Heritage Management, none, awareness of the job of the archaeologist, increase interest in / visibility of archaeology / history, other. Disadvantages and risks: none, theft / nighthawking, health and safety issues, threat to the profession, threat to archaeology/heritage, lowering standards / misinterpretation of research / low quality, higher costs / time / logistic issues, oversimplification of the archaeological information, respect policies / manage people/conflicts/expectations on site, exclusiveness, training that needs to be given, utilization in pseudo-scientific context/nationalist propaganda / misuse, complicates planning / decision-making, difficult to build sustainability / continuation (e.g. post-ex), pressure to excavate / ‘treasure hunting’, exploitation of the participants, manage sensitive data, resistance from other professionals, funding, uncontrolled dissemination, instrumental use of archaeology to stop development, participants’ attitude.

11 Unlike Italy and the UK, in Germany, all those who selected this response were individuals who have experience with public participation in archaeology.

12 Unless the research is carried out on a scheduled monument, where Scheduled Monument Consent (SMC) is required (Historic England 2020a), or it is conducted in Northern Ireland where an archaeological excavation licence is required for all archaeological excavations and the search for archaeological objects (Department for Communities 2020a).

13 In the Italian survey this question was split in two: ‘educational activities for children’ and ‘educational activities for adults’. The responses were summed up for this analysis in order to make the datasets comparable.

14 Anecdotal evidence shows that Italian archaeologists often think this activity is forbidden by law. However, according to the law metal detecting is not forbidden, as long as the finder reports every archaeological find to the responsible authorities within 24 h and leaves it exactly where it was found (unless threatened) (article 90 of the D.Lgs. 42/2004).

15 This could be confirmed by the fact that only recently some journals were born in Italy with a focus on these subjects: Il Capitale Culturale (born in 2010, but focused on a variety of subjects, including economic issues related to cultural heritage management) Ex Novo Journal of Archaeology (born in 2016), and Archeostorie. Journal of Public Archaeology (born in 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This research was carried out as part of the PhD research projects of the authors, funded by scholarships of the University of Padova (F. Benetti), the PEGASO scholarship of the Tuscany Region (F. Ripanti) and a fee waiver scholarship from the College of Arts, Humanities and Business at Bangor University (K. Möller). The research was also partially funded by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo in the framework of the Visiting Programme project ‘The past in the present’.

Notes on contributors

Francesca Benetti

Francesca Benetti is Historic Environment Forum Manager (The Heritage Alliance, UK). She earned her PhD at the University of Padova (Italy), with a research project focused on the legal and juridical aspects of public participation in archaeology in Italy and the UK. Since 2018 she co-chairs the Public Archaeology Community within the European Association of Archaeologists.

Katharina Möller

Katharina Möller, after graduating from the University of Göttingen (Germany) in 2013, moved to Wales where she joined Bangor University. Her interest in topics such as community archaeology and heritage management, led her to research public participation in Germany and the UK for her PhD. Besides her studies, she also holds a position as Archaeological Excavation Officer at Bangor.

Francesco Ripanti

Francesco Ripanti earned a PhD from the University of Pisa, Italy. His research covers several themes related to public archaeology, heritage and museum studies. These topics have been developed under a research perspective mainly in three experiences: managing and evaluating activities with different publics at the Roman site of Vignale (Italy), authoring short stories for audio guides about 25 objects exhibited at Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche (Ancona, Italy) and working to a digital storytelling prototype at the Ancient Agora of Athens (Greece).