Does community archaeology work? In the UK over the last decade, there has been a boom in projects utilising the popular phrase 'community archaeology'. These projects can take many different forms and have ranged from the public face of research and developer-funded programmes to projects run by museums, archaeological units, universities, and archaeological societies. Community archaeology also encapsulates those projects run by communities themselves or in dialogue between 'professional' and 'amateur' groups and individuals. Many of these projects are driven by a desire for archaeology to meet a range of perceived educational and social values in bringing about knowledge and awareness of the past in the present. These are often claimed as successful outputs of community projects. This paper argues that appropriate criteria and methodologies for evaluating the effi cacy of these projects have yet to be designed. What is community archaeology for? Who is it for? And is it effectively meeting its targets? Focusing on the authors' experiences of directing community archaeology projects, together with the ongoing research assessing the effi cacy of community archaeology projects in the UK, this paper aims to set out two possible methodologies: one of self-refl exivity, and one of ethnoarchaeological analysis for evaluating what community archaeology actually does for communities themselves. Introduction'Community archaeology' has become a widespread label, refl ecting the increasing number of archaeological projects explicitly designed for, or incorporating, substantial community involvement and participation. Community archaeology has also been extensively theorised, most recently as an element in a new paradigm conceptualising FAYE SIMPSON AND HOWARD WILLIAMSthe relationship between the past and the present and the relationship between archaeology and 'the public' (Holtorf, 2006). However, to date there has been a lack of research into whether community archaeology projects are currently effective at achieving the desired and perceived benefi ts of community dialogue and participation in archaeology, and whether this translates into real effects on people's knowledge and perception of the past and subsequently their sense of identity. It remains unclear whether, beyond theoretical rhetoric and manifestos, many community archaeology projects currently taking place in the UK are fulfi lling the values espoused by archaeologists when they were initially designed. It is particularly questionable whether the social outputs of community archaeology have any lasting impact beyond the duration of the projects themselves. In short, is community archaeology working?Previous discussions of whether community archaeology works effectively have generally been based on general and proscriptive theoretical discourses supported by choice case studies (Marshall, 2002). In other words, they are based on ideal expectations of what community archaeology should achieve in terms of either educating and engaging the community or const...
Community archaeology claims to offer the public an opportunity to become engaged with and involved in the interpretation and understanding of the past. It has been claimed that this interactive approach, one of participation in the archaeological process, develops both intangible and tangible values from the past for individuals and communities in the present. Such values range from educational to economic and from political to social; however, these supposed results of community archaeology have yet to be critically analyzed.This paper focuses on assessing the values of community archaeology excavations from a range of contexts in both the UK and USA. Case studies include Shoreditch Park (London), Grosvenor Park (Chester), Hungate (York), and Brayford (Devon) in the UK, and Mitchell (South Dakota) and Muncy (Pennsylvania) in the USA. It sets out a self-refl exive, ethnological methodology for evaluating what community archaeology really does. Furthermore, this paper assesses whether the theoretical values claimed by community archaeology projects were successful in practice. These case studies offer insights into how a multi-disciplinary approach to the practice of community archaeology can contribute to building a comprehensive understanding of the archaeological sites, and enable a more culturally relevant interpretation of the past to be espoused to the public, placing past sites fi rmly in the present. The potential of community archaeology to have a lasting impact on society's values, understanding and the future preservation and management of heritage, needs to be more broadly recognized.
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