Signposts to public participation
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-08-20

The ICAHM draft Guidelines recognise that archaeological sites are under the rightful control of stakeholders residing in the country and region in which they are located and that the Guidelines are explicitly not intended to be transformed into regulations or standards. Nevertheless, although many cultural heritage conventions recognise the importance of stakeholder participation and engagement, most of these instruments focus mainly on management and professional standards in an administrative environment that is more regulatory than participative, and that, in the context of building public awareness, is essentially a one-way process from the ‘expert’ to the public, with the ‘public’ a more-or-less passive recipient of expert values.
Truly sustainable management of archaeological sites open to the public requires proper consideration of the significance of all the values related to that site – including the non-material and non-expert values held by different ‘public’ communities (including, but not limited to stewards, local communities, and visitors). A combination of the Valletta Convention and the ICAHM draft Guidelines provides a sound basis for updating management approaches for archaeological sites in the 21st century, especially in a more global context in relation to regions where existing archaeological management infrastructure is limited. The challenge will be to develop a meaningful way of articulating or wrapping more conventional heritage management approaches, however well formulated, with the open, iterative, multi-disciplinary, people-oriented and essentially social concepts ofcultural heritage (encapsulated in e.g. the Florence and Faro Conventions of the Council of Europe, the UNESCO Conventions on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions, and for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage, and the Council of Europe’s recent Cultural Heritage Strategy for the 21ST century), and then operationalising this approach effectively so that it is embedded at all levels in management and decision-making.

Author: Dr Olivier, Adrian - University College London (Presenting author)