But isn't all archaeology ‘public’ archaeology?

Abstract

This paper focuses on two trends in the debate over the scope and nature of public archaeology. The first is a growing concern to define and codify its disciplinary boundaries. The second trend, arguably in tension with the first, is the ever-widening exploration of how people engage with their past, and the ramifications for the way archaeology, in its widest sense, is practised. It is argued that an excessive preoccupation with demarcating the disciplinary boundaries of public archaeology may risk obscuring a far more important objective, tied to the second trend referred to above. Debates on the relationship between the public, the past, and archaeological practice have resulted in a sea-change in attitudes to the responsibilities of the archaeologist, in the relationship between scientific knowledge and popular and indigenous knowledge, and in ideas about the relevance and usability of the past. Public archaeology is concerned with all these issues. It is argued that, to fulfil this wider vision, public archaeology cannot afford the strictures of a specialized discipline within archaeology, but must remain a persistent, essential, and foundational ingredient in the competencies and sensibilities of every archaeologist and co-worker in the field.