A brief examination of public outreach currently undertaken by commercial archaeology
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2015-06-18

Alice O’Mahony, University of Bradford

This paper will focus on preliminary research evaluating the current public outreach undertaken by commercial archaeology. Developer funded archaeology is promoted as being for public benefit, yet how effective it is in terms of public engagement has not been extensively evaluated. Current academic literature discusses community outreach schemes; however, these are usually concerned with already established heritage areas. This paper is a foundation for a larger project focused on two areas of developer funded archaeology: firstly, the current level of interaction between commercial archaeological units and the public during developer funded excavation; secondly, the amount of collected data that is communicated to the public after the completion of these excavations. The objective of the research is to inform the ways in which developer-community interaction with local heritage issues could benefit the public perception of archaeology as a whole, with the scope of using community led projects as examples, to generate policies of ‘best practice’. This paper looks to open discussions concerning methods that render public involvement with commercial archaeology financially feasible, whilst maintaining the ethical principles of inclusive local participation in heritage.