Know your place? Evaluating the therapeutic benefits of engagement with historic landscapes

Abstract

This paper emphasises the restorative power of engagement with natural/cultural environments by exploring a body of work that identifies the positive impact of the historic environment on the health and well-being of community archaeology participants. Increasing importance has been ascribed to the role of landscape in public health research and to the environmental factors, which contribute to enhanced quality of life. In reviewing the ways that community archaeology projects are evaluated, and in summarising current practice, we observe that the evidence produced is often anecdotal. However, it is possible to increase robust therapeutic evaluation in ways that might be expected from other disciplinary perspectives and to draw on recent work in the role of the arts in health. This paper highlights that many of those currently engaged in community archaeology are self-selecting, and represent only a small subset of society. The narrow scope of engagement is borne out by Heritage Lottery Fundcommissioned research which found that, whilst volunteering has a significant positive impact on participants, they tend to be white, well-educated and live in the most affluent areas. If historic environment practitioners are to claim therapeutic benefits from their work, then the issue of inequity of access to health benefits is a significant concern for the profession. It is not just a matter of social justice but a concern for the arts and humanities sector, which is currently required to justify its public value [Bate, J. (2011). Public value of the humanities. London: Bloomsbury Academic].

Dialogues with Early Medieval ‘Warriors’

“…More specifically, it links to broader arguments that digging and handling artefacts is physically and mentally beneficial and facilitates social inclusion (e.g. Kiddey 2017;Neal 2015;Sayer 2015). For some of the military personnel, the prospect of archaeology as a career was a tangible aspiration (Winterton 2014).…”

“…Summing up this brief review of OpN to date, it can be regarded as a multi-staged, multi-site, distinctive and pioneering strategy of community engagement, providing the model for potential future community archaeology projects in offering bespoke and tailored engagements with specific groups who might otherwise not experience archaeology. Specifically, it is one of a series of projects which have attempted to target specific needs within the groups: those subjected to social exclusion and/or suffering from particular mental and physical conditions (Finnegan 2016; see also Kiddey 2017;Lack 2014;McMillan 2013;Neal 2015). Rather than community archaeology defined by locality and place, and tending to have an appeal gravitating to relatively affluent individuals (see Neal 2015), OpN instead explores a richly qualitative, rather than quantitative, criteria of non-specialist engagement.…”

“…Specifically, it is one of a series of projects which have attempted to target specific needs within the groups: those subjected to social exclusion and/or suffering from particular mental and physical conditions (Finnegan 2016; see also Kiddey 2017;Lack 2014;McMillan 2013;Neal 2015). Rather than community archaeology defined by locality and place, and tending to have an appeal gravitating to relatively affluent individuals (see Neal 2015), OpN instead explores a richly qualitative, rather than quantitative, criteria of non-specialist engagement. This mode of transferable and sustainable community engagement has allowed OpN to operate beyond a single locality, incorporating it into projects involving students, professional archaeologists and other community archaeology dimensions.…”

Historic Landscapes and Mental Well-being

“…Although there has been much research in recent years on heritage as a process to wellbeing, it is still not entirely clear how heritage assets in themselves directly impact well-being (Ecorys 2016;Neal 2015;). This may be due in part to the neglect of site and artefact materiality that Siân Jones (2010) has identified in recent constructivist approaches to the study of heritage experience.…”