Introduction

Every time I tell someone new that I’m an archaeologist, I’m generally met with four different responses:

• “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”
• “A real-life Indiana Jones!”
• “Oh wow, you must find all sorts of cool treasures!”
• “I always wanted to be an archaeologist, but it just wasn’t feasible. I’d love to start the hobby when I retire though!”

These four responses tell me firstly that many people conflate archaeologists and paleontologists—leading to awkward laughing and my admitting that the only dinosaur I know of is the T-Rex. They also tell me that most of what people know about archaeology comes from popular media, namely the Indiana Jones franchise, which harps on this idea of “treasure” rather than cultural significance. This search for treasure then becomes more of a hobby rather than an actual profession, with people assuming archaeologists just dig around in remote areas of the world to find pretty items to line the shelves of museums and private collections with, or to sell. Indeed, shows like American Digger and Indiana Jones do much to emphasize the monetary benefits of artifacts (Pagán 2015), which can lead to the destruction and unlawful looting of archaeological sites. To summarize, it is rare that anyone knows what it is we as archaeologists actually do and how we impact their day-to-day lives with the important research we conduct.

The thing about archaeology is that, even if people don’t totally know what it is, they still tend to associate it as a “cool” profession—so cool, in fact, that it could be a hobby! That said, even if someone were interested enough to try to do their own research on archaeological discoveries, they would not be likely to understand what’s going on. Research papers use so much jargon that sometimes archaeologists with different specialties can’t understand a research article outside of their area of interest (Fagan 2010) so how could a lay person understand what’s going on? Public outreach in this regard becomes a means of translation; we need to communicate with the public in terms they understand because they want to learn, and if we don’t help them, then they either become discouraged and their interest wanes, or they misunderstand the research, which could lead to negative consequences (discussed in detail below).

Furthermore, people are interested in understanding their place in the world, and archaeology can provide them with some of that context. Evolution in particular gains much attraction from the public because people are in search of the healthiest ways to live their lives or are looking for excuses for poor behavior (i.e. violence, sexual aggression and promiscuity; see McCaughey 2008 or Zuk 2013). However, once they grab hold of something—like the Paleo-diet—they tend to run with it, ignoring the fact that science is fluid and discoveries are made every day. For example, although the Paleo-diet considers the ingestion of grain products blasphemous, there’s actually been recent evidence saying that hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic had been making bread-like products around 14,000 years ago (Zeldovich 2018). Unfortunately for me, the discovery came after I received my Paleo-cookbook for Christmas.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that most evolutionary scientists have done nothing to correct the misconceptions that are so vehemently being passed along; instead, they respond with disgust and condemnation, despite the fact that some practitioners actively reach out to scientists in an attempt to better understand their food practices and make sure they’re being scientifically up-to-date (Chang and Nowell: 2016). Robb Wolf, a prominent member of the Paleo-diet community, has lamented on this very response from anthropologists: “What I have sensed from the anthropology community is an almost… annoyance that upstarts from outside that Guild have the temerity to talk about this stuff and try to apply it in an actionable way… If I could wave a magic wand I’d hope for a bit less prickliness on the part of the medical anthropology community on this topic… If we could get them to understand just how important their understanding of the past is, we might have a much better future’” (Chang and Nowell: 2016: 230).

The thing is, anthropologists know their understanding of the past is important—so why aren’t we leaning into that, especially when others see our studies’ worth? People are interested in what we as archaeologists do and study and it is our obligation to engage them in our work, especially when they reach out to us.

While misconceptions about the field of archaeology and archaeological discoveries themselves are primarily fueled by the media, archaeologists aren’t helping matters. How is anyone outside of the field supposed to know what we do if we do not tell them, much less in language they can understand? It’s necessary that archaeologists begin rigorous public outreach to correct these misinterpretations of our field. In this chapter, I will define public outreach, provide examples of how archaeologists practice public outreach, and explain why it’s important and needs to be done.

The Society for American Archaeology does not have any one definition for public outreach, but rather recognizes it as a collection of methods archaeologists use to engage the public in archaeological research as well as general public awareness (“What Is Public Archaeology?”). Public archaeology can be used synonymously with public outreach.

Public archaeology is often viewed as a subfield of archaeology. However, public outreach in some form or another informs and underlies all archaeology, whether it be in terms of where one’s funding resources come from, where and how one is expected to conduct their fieldwork, how to manage the cultural site, how to treat the archaeological finds, or what kinds of impacts the archaeological research generates (Matsuda 2016:41). All of these instances require communication with some sort of outside source. This means that public outreach can take place before, during, and after the archaeological research is done. Community members can help inform the objectives of an archaeological research project, assist in the actual excavation process beginning as soon as the survey and as late as cleaning and labeling the artifacts, or can be a part of a post-research activity or lecture presented by the researchers. Public outreach can also take place outside of the confines of a particular research project and instead focus on the general understanding of archaeology through hands-on activities in schools or community events. In essence, archaeological public outreach can occur anytime and anywhere in any number of formats.

Public archaeology was once understood to be a means of applying archaeology to the real world via cultural resource management (CRM), contract archaeology, public education, historic preservation, and museology (White et al. 2004). Now there are four different approaches to public archaeology that have been identified:

• educational approach
• public relations approach
• pluralist approach
• critical approach

The educational and public relations approaches are more practice-based, whereas the pluralist and critical approaches are more theoretical.

In particular, the educational approach aims to facilitate people’s learning of the past via archaeological thinking and methods. Archaeological education can occur both on and off-site. Some organizations, like the City of Alexandria’s Archaeology Museum, offer public dig days, in which members of the community can come and participate in an ongoing excavation (White 2019: 37), thus getting hands-on experience in archaeological thinking and methods. For years, the State University of New York at Binghamton’s Undergraduate Anthropology Organization would visit a local elementary school with boxes full of “treasure” strewn in stratified soil, sand, and pebbles, and teach them how to excavate and interpret their findings. These physical experiences not only create strong memories, but also “improves concentration, increases student engagement, and makes learning (and teaching) fun” (Yezzi-Woodley et al. 2019: 50).

The public relations approach works “to increase the recognition, popularity, and support of archaeology in contemporary society” by forming connections between archaeology and individuals and/or social groups (Matsuda 2016: 41-42). This approach parallels the push for archaeological stewardship where the wider community participates in the knowledge production, protection, and reverence of a site, not just archaeologists. Public relations foster stronger connections and responsibility towards sites and knowledge of the past. True knowledge production requires one to ask questions and interpret the evidence beyond uncovering artifacts at a public dig. For example, Science and Social Studies Adventures (SASSA), an organization that “bring[s] archaeology to the classrooms… in order to enhance science and social studies lessons…” took both physics and social studies students to a field that was planned to become a park. The students were taught how to use ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology to map out the underground features of the property to determine whether or not an excavation would be necessary (Yezzi-Woodley et al. 2019). In this instance, they not only got the hands-on experience of mapping an area with GPR, but also participated in the knowledge production by interpreting that map and determining the future of the site; they now have a sense of responsibility over something tangible and relevant to their community. Similarly, though off-site, Nina Simon of the OF/BY/FOR ALL project encourages participating museums to actively engage their communities in project and exhibit designs to better cater and connect to the wider community (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer 2021), while at the same time fostering a sense of responsibility and pride of the past.

The educational and public relations approaches have long been established in archaeology; however, the focus on the pluralist and critical approaches only began to gain traction after the 1990s (Matsuda 2016:42).

The pluralist approach attempts to understand different types of relationships between material culture and different members of the public, which essentially means understanding who your public is and where they’re ideologically coming from (Matsuda 2016:42). Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer (2021) have taken a pluralist approach to museum visitors. One German study revealed that museum-goers tend to be highly educated, possess high cultural capital, are satisfied with life, and are open to new experiences (Kluge and Pinsker 2021). Closer to home, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) found that only 9% of museum visitors are from minority populations (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer 2021). Furthermore, the AAM’s 2010 demographic study revealed a number of barriers for African American and Latino visitors: historically, museums feel intimidating and exclusionary; the feeling that museums require specialized knowledge and cultivated esthetic taste; a lack of museum-going in one’s childhood; and social networks influence whether or not one chooses museums as a leisure activity (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer 2021). With this understanding of how people relate to the past in this particular setting (i.e., museums), cultural institutions can better cater to a wider audience. Specifically, they can choose communication methods more often used by their target audience, offer content that the wider community (especially minority populations) can connect with, provide a welcoming atmosphere, and ensure visually and physically comfortable and pleasing spaces (Kluge-Pinsker and Stauffer 2021).

Finally, the critical approach works to unsettle the interpretation of the past as told by socially dominant groups, who typically have ulterior motives that socially subjugate another group by distorting the telling of the past (Matsuda 2016:42). Evolutionary anthropology has largely taken a critical approach since the end of World War II, when it finally became clear that the scientific support of the social construction of race was detrimental to millions of lives. Until then, it was posited by scientists and laypeople alike that race was a biological fact, and one’s intelligence, capabilities, and worth were determined by their race. Now we know that the variation in human skin color is nothing more than a reflection of millions of years adaptation to changing environments (Echo-Hawk and Zimmerman 2006:471). To totally unsettle the interpretation of an evolutionary past in which it was white people who first settled Europe, a study published in 2007 found that the gene associated with light skin didn’t evolve until 12,000-6,000 years ago (Gibbons 2007: 364; see also Brace et al. 2018 for information on what the first Britons looked like according to “white-hating lefties” [Admin 2018] and Hendrick 2021 for more information on unsettling people’s evolutionary assumptions on race).Both the pluralist and critical approaches view “the public as a subject, which has its own agency and interacts with the past according to its beliefs, interests, and agendas” (Matsuda 2016: 43). These changes are still new for a field rooted in colonialism, so we’re still learning how to effectively conduct public archaeology and outreach.

Why Is Public Outreach Important?

The fact is, archaeological sites around the world are in danger. This is important because cultural patrimony (the ongoing cultural importance of an artifact) and heritage tell us who we are and where we come from, which consequently affects our world views and how we act, thus impacting both our present and future.

With a decrease in natural resources, scientists are increasingly looking towards the ocean for the mining of precious and non-precious metals, aggregates extraction, marine engineering, and the production of marine-zone nonrenewable energy, all putting underwater archaeological sites at risk of destruction (Flatman 2009). On the coasts, archaeological sites are threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms caused by global warming, among other anthropogenic transformations such as development, mining, and dredging (Fitzpatrick and Braje 2019). War zones see particularly copious amounts of destruction to cultural heritage, either through the creation of defense mechanisms such as trenches, through bombing, or through the intentional destruction of cultural items in an attempt to wipe away one’s nascent culture. Two of the most prominent examples are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Approximately 2500 objects and sculptures were destroyed, defaced, or stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan between the years of 1996 and 2001. In Iraq, military bases were established at Babylon and near Ur of the Chaldees, leading to the damage of the archaeological record by way of trench digging, imported gravel, and fuel spills. There was also rampant looting in Iraq (Cunliffe and Curtis 2011).

While it doesn’t get much popular press, national and international cultural sites also face threats due to political decisions. President Trump, recognizing the importance of cultural sites, threatened to bomb 52 Iranian cultural sites “VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” as retribution for 52 American hostages that were taken years prior (Jacobson 2020). In 2017, Trump repealed massive amounts of land in Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments that had previously been protected by the Antiquities Act (Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance). This action puts at risk 100,000 archaeological and cultural sites in Bears Ears National Monument alone, including Cedar Mesa which has one of the highest densities of cultural sites in America at several hundred sites per square mile, all to make way for coal mining, irresponsible and damaging motorized recreation, uranium mining, and oil and gas leasing (Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance). This is devastating for the local Native American tribes—including the Hopi tribe, Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Indian Tribe, and Ute Mountain Ute tribe—whose ancestral material culture, that provides grounding and pride in their ancestors, is deemed “not unique” or “not of significant scientific or historic interest” and thus disposable by the president (Biber et al 2017). On October 8. 2021, President Biden restored the original boundaries for Bears Ears and interagency planning with tribal input is underway to manage and protect that important landscape.

Unfortunately, there are many more threats and sites at risk than here mentioned.

The loss of archaeological sites can cause irreparable damage to communities around the world and thus needs to be stopped. Without archaeological sites, oppressed peoples can be disenfranchised of their history and culture; history can be rewritten by the victor with no one the wiser; and we may never know the truth of where we come from, which could negatively impact the way we think about ourselves (i.e., we may feel we were predestined to live this way, when what evolutionary archaeology shows us so far is that there is no one way to be human). There are many other reasons why archaeology—or the loss thereof—can damage communities. To exemplify the importance of archaeology generally and thus the need for public outreach, I will provide some instances in which (the public communication of) archaeology can widely impact different communities. I discuss how learning from our past, telling stories, and correcting harmful narratives all contribute to the communities where archaeologists conduct their work.

Learn from Our Past

We can learn a surprising amount about humans’ past actions that can help inform how we behave today. In particular, we can look to the past to determine how to create a sustainable future. Between 1987 and 1995 archaeologists of the Garbage Project at the University of Arizona systematically excavated fifteen landfills across North America, in which they found that dating as far back as the 1950s, paper occupied the most landfill space because it was biodegrading very slowly, contrary to what people had once believed (Rathje 2008: 37). Shortly after the excavation reports came out, governments and individual communities began pushing for the curbside recycling that we have come to know and love (Rathje 2008: 37), and now we have any number of recycled paper products at our disposal.

In August 2020, NPR posted an article entitled, “To Manage Wildfire, California Looks to What Tribes Have Known All Along” (Sommer 2020). This article explains how the banning of local Native Americans’ controlled burning practices has led to increased vegetation, which dries out every summer and acts as the kindling for the state’s notorious fires. The state government has recently come to trust in the oral histories of the local tribes and the archaeological record, which argue that the controlled burning of the past had actually been a successful mode of wildfire risk management. According to archaeological finds, controlled burning has been occurring over a vast amount of time and space (Bowman 1998; Heckenberger et al. 2007; Mason 2000). The extent of this evidence provides us with a feasible path forward as we try to reconcile the damage we have since caused through global warming.

Share Untold Stories

Archaeology has a long history of focusing on the stories of rich, able-bodied white men in their prime. This means that the long and equally important histories of ethnic, gendered, and aged minorities are being left out of the stories we tell about the past. This is problematic, because the exclusion of one’s past can lead to subjugation by a dominant group, who often touts their successful past. However, archaeology can also be useful at challenging these problematic assumptions.

Let’s think about the Man the Hunter model of human evolution—you probably envision men running toward a mammoth with their spears held high, ready for another successful kill, but what do you know about women in the Paleolithic? Probably not much. You probably imagine that women just stayed home with their babies and hoped a cave lion wouldn’t come kill them while their big and strong husbands were off catching dinner. Note that I say imagine, because women’s roles are often entirely left out of the story.

Instead, the first anatomically modern humans are often spoken about in the context of their subsistence activities, which are all attributed to men’s behaviors; thus men are the only actors we really hear about in the Paleolithic. Do you know how we can tell it was men who did all of those activities? Well, we actually can’t tell that at all. In the advent of Paleolithic research, archaeologists of the time were just copy-and-pasting our modern-day gender roles to the past. As of yet there is little theory to actually determine the extent of the gender roles in the deep past (Conkey and Spector 1984).

However, recent research suggests that women were actively hunting, at least in Peru 9,000 years ago (Wei-Haas 2020). Archaeologists came across a burial in the Andes mountains in which the skeletal remains were accompanied by an extensive kit of 24 tools for big game hunting. The archaeologists at the time assumed that the remains were those of an important male hunter. However, upon further analysis, the remains were shown to be biologically female. This spurred the reevaluation of a number of similar burials throughout the Americas and it turns out that between 30% and 50% of the big game hunters—as interpreted by grave goods—were biologically female. By ignoring women’s roles in the past, we risk perpetuating an imagining of men as the drivers of human evolution and success and women as only good for their birthing capabilities. Sharing the stories of this oft-forgotten sect of society could do much to waylay some of the poor excuses people make today in regards to sexism and gender roles.

Dr. Diane Wallman of the University of South Florida has worked on a public archaeology project at the Gamble Plantation Historic Site. Originally established as a sugar plantation by Robert H. Gamble in the mid-19^th century, the property was later inhabited by the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin, and later an attorney. Although there is clear reverence for the confederate officer, as shown by the large memorial erected in his name, Dr. Wallman is actually interested in exploring the lives of the enslaved laborers who lived and worked on this plantation, and whose stories have not been given the recognition or reverence they deserve. To share these stories, Dr. Wallman has given public lectures (e.g., AIA Event Listings 2019) and provided her expertise as a guest on podcasts (e.g., Anthro Alert 2017). Additionally, the excavations are exclusively during archaeological field schools, and the site is open to the public to participate in the dig. One of Dr. Wallman’s Master’s students in 2019 collected information from archives, remote sensing, and archaeological investigation to understand the lives of enslaved peoples on this plantation with the goal of engaging descendant communities in particular in future archaeological research on the site (Litteral 2019).

In this sense, the portrayal of stories often left untold can help generate pride in one’s people. If your peoples’ life stories are continually being ignored and at times discredited, then archaeology that gives those underrepresented groups a tangible connection with their ancestors can go a long way toward building pride in one’s community. Getting that message outside of the descendant community can go even further in making others recognize and value the importance of the minority heritage as well.

Correct Harmful Narratives

Archaeology has unfortunately perpetuated many negative narratives on its own. However, the public also communicates harmful narratives of our pasts. Harmful narratives refer to stories that are told and are argued to be based on science, typically about a minority and how/why they are subjugated or why people act a certain way. Luckily, new archaeological research or the reevaluation of current archaeological research, can work to correct these harmful narratives. Getting these corrected stories out to the public can then begin to make real change in the way people conceptualize themselves and their place in the world.

Based on my research, people have gathered from popular media and their own life experiences that violence is an inherent human trait. Furthermore, violence is seen as the driving factor of our species’ evolution: if it hadn’t been for our penchant for violence we would not have been able to compete with other groups or animals, nor would we have been able to outlive the Neanderthals. Despite the fact that most people now have 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA (Green et al. 2010), which means there had to be a relatively high amount of Neanderthal/anatomically Modern Human sexual relations that far back, all of my interview participants were extremely confident in stating that we humans would have met Neanderthals with nothing but violence. The inherent and long-lasting evolutionary trait of violence provides justification for wars and senseless acts. However, there is very little evidence of violence in the deep past, which means people are making assumptions about the deep past based on their lived experience and the research on the topic is not being adequately shared with the public.

Another example includes the multitude of pseudoarchaeological claims that now exist, namely shows such as Ancient Aliens and In Search of Aliens. These shows primarily explain why it was in no way possible for Indigenous communities to have built such incredible structures so far back in time, and conclude that these structures and the cultures surrounding them must have been created by aliens. Whether or not it is the hosts’ intent, these messages work to portray indigenous communities as technologically and socially inferior. Public outreach on how incredible these Indigenous communities really are by means of the archaeological evidence we have for their agency—as opposed to alien interference—could go a long way to prove that not only aliens and white Europeans have intelligence and civilization.

Improve Quality of Archaeological Research

In order to even begin conducting research, archaeologists need to get funding. In my experience, archaeology departments are often bereft of their own internal funding, meaning individual researchers need to look elsewhere. If the funding sources and the public are unfamiliar with your field or your work, they are unlikely to deem it important enough to give funds to when there are more pressing projects with more evident real-world impacts. It is necessary to write funding requests in such a way that the reader can understand your project, because they won’t necessarily have an archaeological background. That being said, it’s all about knowing how to write for a particular audience. In addition to grants, funding or volunteer labor may come from community organizations, so it is important to reach out to local communities and get them excited about your project as well. In addition to funding, strong community relations can provide one’s project with input on how the project should be carried out or what research questions may be important to explore. Community relations are especially important for projects occurring on the land of the descendant community for this reason.

Archaeologists are by nature specialized—you have lithics specialists, pottery specialists, biological archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, etc. We are a field that inherently has to draw on numerous other specialists and fields to get a full picture of what a site is telling us. For example, we draw on the expertise of chemists, geologists, geneticists, geographers, and botanists, among many others (Yezzi-Woodley et al 2019). By communicating with an audience wider than those who read archaeological journals or attend archaeological conferences, we begin to build teams of varied researchers who can all learn and benefit from each other.

I have showed how public outreach isn’t only important for educating the public, but also for how it improves the quality of the archaeological research itself, by making it easier to get funding and collaborate with people from other disciplines. The following sections describe the methods used by archaeologists to reach the public.

Methods of Public Outreach

In today’s world, there are an infinite number of ways archaeologists can engage with the public. These methods can be divided into three different categories: traditional media (print, audio, and visual forms), online digital content, and interpersonal or interactive learning experiences (Erdman 2019). While the options for communication may be endless, it’s important to keep in mind what kind of demographic you’re attempting to reach when you’re choosing which method of communication is best suited to your project. Furthermore, each of these broad categories of communication have different levels of accuracy, access, and effectiveness that need to be taken into account when planning your public outreach. In this section, I will explain some of the particular communicative avenues one could take within each broad communication method, as well as provide some considerations, limitations, and benefits.

Traditional Media

Print media, including books, newspapers, and magazines, have historically been the primary means of scientific communication (Harding 2007: 120) and are often viewed as the most credible forms of scientific communication because of the rigorous editing and peer-review process that they often go through (Erdman 2019: 5). Indeed, my own ethnographic research on this topic has shown that my survey participants considered books to be their most valued source of scientific information (Hendrick 2021). However, our understanding of the past is continually changing, thus outdating these supposedly accurate sources (Erdman 2019: 5). More and more researchers’ work is being digitized or published in online journals. At this time, many of the journals are kept behind steep paywalls, making the likelihood of a merely curious lay-person reading it less realistic—who wants to pay to wade through jargon that they might not even understand? There seems to be an uptick in researchers who are interested in widely disseminating their research and there are now websites such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate that make journal articles much more accessible (Erdman 2019); however, there is still the issue of archaeological jargon.

Each form of print publication serves a different level of insight. For example, “A short newspaper article offers highlights; a magazine…offers a more contextualized account of a site, artifact, or culture; and a book or professional journal may address a specific topic more in-depth” (Erdman 2019: 6). The benefit of this is that there is a means of print communication that will fit everyone’s pace and depth of interest and they will likely provide additional resources for the especially curious reader to pursue if they so desire.

Television has been argued to represent a depiction of “the truth” and thus works to mold people’s perceptions of the world (Pagán 2015: 16), making it an effective format for educational purposes. Part of the audio/visual success in regards to perception molding is because seeing is believing: visual representations offer a physical point of reference for the audience, which makes it easier to understand and connect with the material rather than having to parse through abstract written word (Erdman 2019: 7). Indeed, it’s been shown that audio-visual materials (such as film/television clips and song or speech clips) are effective learning devices and that students are increasingly becoming visual learners (Hoover 2006).

Television shows get much higher viewership than do print materials, so educational television shows would reach a far larger audience than any one book may (Pagán 2015). With an abundance of streaming services online—such as Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime—television is more widely accessible than ever before (so long as you have Internet access and another $10 or so to spend each month). The downside to this is that there are many other shows available as well, which means someone would likely have to be actively seeking out educational television to happen upon an archaeology program.

Audio and visual media—such as radio, podcasts, film, and television—have a varying level of accuracy, and one is equally likely to encounter an educational show as they are a fantastical, sensationalized account that only uses archeology as a starting point for their fantasy (Erdman 2019:6). Although television used to be a popular location for widespread science communication, television producers today consider lecture series and more educational television to be too dry for their audiences (Harding 2007: 120). Among archaeologists, the typical treatments of archaeological finds and sites are arguably dry and unexciting, which leads news editors and television producers to insist on packaging the hard archaeological facts in sensationalism, catchy headlines, and “halo[s] of soft focus images [and] music” (Harding 2007: 124). However, this type of sensationalism can result in misunderstandings, misrepresentations of the data, or contribute to common tropes, as the stories that get picked up by these mediums tend to revolve around “sexy” topics like sex and drugs. This is not to say that good educational television does not exist; indeed, shows like PBS’ NOVA typically feature engaging stories on recent archaeological discoveries, yet people tend to be more familiar with Ancient Aliens than NOVA. This makes the explosion of archaeological podcasts by archaeologists that much more important; archaeologists are turning dry and unexciting information into funny and/or thought-provoking conversations that cater to both novices and professionals alike. Although these podcasts face the same caveat as television shows, in that one likely has to seek out this kind of educational topic, it is encouraging to see archaeologists in all stages of their careers utilizing this increasingly popular medium.

Hard Archaeological Fiction

The primary setbacks of traditional media revolve around the difficult language and dry presentation. For this reason, I (Hendrick 2016, 2021) and many other scholars (e.g., Terrell 1990; Spector 1991, 1993; Fagan 2010; Holtorf 2010; Mickel 2012; ) have argued for an increase in “hard” archaeological fiction (Messenger 2019), which is fiction based on archaeological data. With over 45 million copies sold worldwide by 2010 (Auel 2010), perhaps one of the most popular examples of hard archaeological fiction is Jean Auel’s account of human life in the Paleolithic: The Earth’s Children series, the first novel of which is Clan of the Cave Bear. Auel did an incredible amount of research on life in the Paleolithic and based two of her main characters, Iza and Creb, on Neanderthal remains found in the archaeological cave site known as Shanidar (Auel 2010). While Auel may have overstepped her creative boundaries in terms of gender relations, which have resulted in negative stereotypes (see Hendrick 2021), she imagined what no other scholar was willing to consider at the time: that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans procreated. Eventually it came to light that yes, the two groups of Homo sapiens had indeed mated. Auel’s creative imagination was able to conjure up images of the past which we had not yet begun to think of, a skill that is especially important for archaeologists to hone if they are to accurately portray the past. By that I mean, we actually have very little idea about what exactly the past—especially that long ago—looked like in terms of social organization, but we can be sure that it wasn’t necessarily a mirror image of our own society. Thus, we must use our imaginations to envision worlds that are vastly different from our own.

In essence, fiction is a method of escaping our biases. According to Wiley (1981) as cited by Conkey and Spector (1984:21), it is not the fragmentary and often “invisible” nature of archaeological data that hinders our knowledge of the past, but rather our epistemologies. Therefore, the use of imagination or fiction is not only a valuable methodological skill for archaeologists to practice, but it is a much more interesting and accessible format of archaeological data dissemination than traditional archaeological writing. Additionally, fiction communicates to the reader that archaeological interpretations are fluid, by which I mean they change based on emerging discoveries, theories, and interpretations, which subsequently changes the story. One of the main difficulties in disseminating scientific knowledge is that public broadcasts typically ignore the fact that science is wrapped up in “ifs” and “buts,” either imparting a misrepresentation of the research by making the data sound definitive and/or leaving the public to mistrust scientists when their findings end up changing down the road (Harding 2007). The presence of diverse hard archaeological fiction will emulate the varying archaeological interpretations and “ifs” and “buts” that permeate archaeological literature. Hard archaeological fiction also works to promote cross-cultural empathy and an appreciation for the work archaeologists do (Messenger 2019).

Online Digital Content

Digital content refers to content designed specifically for the Internet. However, it uses elements of traditional media, and thus has the same benefits/drawbacks. One of the biggest benefits of online digital content in particular is that it “bring[s] the world of higher education to people who could not otherwise access it” (Harding 2007: 121). This does not only include the level of information one can find on the Internet, but also the fact that you can learn about people and places all over the world as opposed to the local contexts that one is often taught in school and in museums. Even better, it’s up-to-date research and ideas, because the information in the digital content can easily be fixed or asked and answered immediately in online forums and webinars (Erdman 2019). This opens up a lot more opportunity for direct engagement with a larger audience.

Social media is an excellent tool to educate people by sharing the process of a research project in real time as well as to spread the word about upcoming in-person outreach events or exciting sites to visit. Twitter provides much public engagement with the topic of archaeology because hashtags make it easy to follow a general topic and it’s widely used to get up-to-date news by following a variety of users (Huvila 2013). Facebook is more oriented towards a social group, so you have to be friends with someone to get updates on what they post, and archaeological-related posts are only featured on someone’s newsfeed if they’re a part of one of those groups or pages or are friends with someone who is (Huvila 2013). This means engagement with archaeology on Facebook is relatively limited.

Two major problems of digital content are the unlimited resources and access to the Internet. With so many different blogs, websites, articles, and social media platforms, you have to actively search for information on a particular subject and then put the effort into doing a credibility check. Additionally, there are still many who cannot access digital content due to the lack of a computer or reliable Internet, a problem that many schools and families had to cope with when schools went online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interpersonal/Interactive Learning

One of the best ways to engage the public in archaeological discourse is via community involvement, because it provides a tangible link to the past (Erdman 2019) and a place in the knowledge production process; the subsequent claim of ownership over that knowledge can arouse further interest in the topic as well as foster a reverence for historical preservation (Harding 2007). It also makes the field more “real;” most people don’t know what archaeology is, much less know an archaeologist. By getting to physically engage with an archaeologist, the field becomes legitimized because it can coincide with personal experience. In essence, community involvement is any kind of direct interaction with non-specialists, such as through community archaeology projects, museum and outreach programs, public lectures, and getting involved with a school (Erdman 2019). An example of interactive learning was the Passport in Time program, in which the US Forest Service enlists the help of non-specialist volunteers to do a number of cultural heritage management activities at sites on public land across the country, including survey and excavation, restoration, archival research, oral history gathering, and more (Clearinghouse). Professional archaeologists, historians, and preservationists act as the volunteers’ hosts, guides, and coworkers during the experience. This form of active learning ensures that accurate and contemporary information is being shared. Unfortunately, it was discontinued in 2024 after a 20 year run.

Many interpersonal/interactive learning opportunities involve being somewhere in-person, which means they’re primarily in local contexts. That is to say, not everywhere has an archaeologist, museum, or university to conduct these programs, and traveling to attend them in other towns or cities isn’t accessible to everyone (Erdman 2019). So while these programs have an amazing impact on those lucky enough to participate, your information reaches a limited number of people.

The Bottom Line

No matter the format, you need to create a story. People are more engaged in archaeological information if it is easy to follow and is relatable. Making the information relatable is by far the biggest tip I can give you. People do better when human case studies are used (Pobiner 2021), which means you need to bring the human into any discussion of material culture. This can be accomplished in a hard-archaeological vignette (Spector 1991) or by bringing the human of archaeology to the forefront of the science by making the archaeologist the main character—take non-specialists on the discovery and interpretation process with you. Each method—traditional media, online digital content, and interpersonal/interactive learning—has its pros and cons and each needs to be tailored to a particular audience, however the benefits of using a story format to engage non-specialists is a skill that benefits each of these approaches.

Creating an Outreach Project

Ask yourself the following questions to figure out where you should even begin with an outreach project. Once you decide whether you want to write a book, star in a television show, start a Twitter account, or invite the local third graders to come dig at your archaeological site, take the creative reins and figure out what exactly that book will say, show will look like, or lessons will be taught.

What’s the Goal?

Refer back to the reasons why we do (public) archaeology in the first place and find the one that identifies best with your site. Your site includes not only the physical place, but what the data tells you (does it contradict a long-held belief? Does it tell us something about sustainability?) and what the descendant community wants (do they want this knowledge shared widely or do they want it within the community?). You also need to consider how many people you want to reach with your project.

What Are My Strengths?

Are you a computer geek? Start a website or build a videogame! Are you good at creative writing? Write hard archaeological fiction! Are you good at public speaking? Do a lecture series! Whatever it is you’re good at, incorporate it into your project. That’s not to say that you can’t learn how to use a new technology or gain a new skill, it just depends on your willingness to learn those things and what your timeline looks like.

Who Do I Know?

For interpersonal/interactive learning, you’ll likely have to team up with another organization, however it’s much easier to get a project off the ground if you reach out to an individual rather than the organization as a whole (White 2019; Yezzi-Woodley et al 2019; Reetz, Haury-Artz, and Gorsch 2019). For example, ask a teacher if they want to participate in an archaeology-related activity rather than the principal because most teachers don’t have a background in archaeology and may feel too overwhelmed or have too little free time to learn enough to be confident in teaching it. It’s essential to find someone who’s as jazzed about this fun learning experience as you are.

Who Is Your Audience?

This first affects your language. Never involve jargon, unless explained properly and in an easy-to-understand manner. You also want to make sure to keep your language age-appropriate. Check out the Gunning Fog Index for more information on how to check the readability of your work (this means how many years of education someone would need to know what you’re saying). The size of your audience will also affect your outreach project, as explained above.

What if I Want to Learn, Not Create?

Maybe communicating archaeology isn’t your jam; maybe you’re interested in learning about it, but don’t like it enough to make it your job to teach others. That’s okay! Knowing about the various formats of public communication and their associated pros and cons will help you find what method is most engaging for you as well as what drawbacks to your understanding they may have. Before you explore some of the examples of successful archaeological public outreach listed above for a more engaging and creative means of learning about the past, I encourage you to think about where you have previously heard about archaeology: news articles, television, movies, podcasts? Did they use definitive language, sexy titles, or simply confirm your biases? How much evidence did they provide for each claim? In essence, I’m asking you to assess the validity of what you’ve experienced about archaeology in the public sphere. Whereas the bulk of this chapter is focused on how to get archaeological information out into the world, it’s equally important to know how to evaluate information that’s already out there.

In Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, Feder (2011: xviii-xix) provides a “Quick Start Guide” to assessing the validity of a claim:

• Where is the claim presented? A peer-reviewed journal, a science-based magazine, an anonymous website or a chat group? The objectivity of a claim varies based on where it’s presented, so finding a proper source is important.
• Who is making the claim? A trained archaeologist, a trained scientist in a different field, a news broadcaster? Each of these people will have different levels of understanding of the material and may or may not relay the information properly.
• How does this person making the claim know and/or what evidence is presented? Most importantly, is the scientific method followed? The important takeaway here is that the claim must be based on observation and tested, not based on intuition or anything equally as intangible.
• Are other experts consulted and if so, how do they evaluate the claim? If most other scientists in the field are skeptical, or no other scientific support is given, it probably isn’t a strong claim.
• Is enough information given for you to make an informed decision on the claim’s legitimacy, or are you left with questions?

These questions will help you evaluate all sources and claims, not just archaeological ones. At the same time, they’re great guiding questions for how to craft your own valid arguments in whatever field you pursue.

Case Study

Up to this point, I’ve explained what public outreach and archaeology are, why they’re important, all the different ways you can go about it, and how to figure out which method is best. The following case study will show you how, in a real-life context, you might go about creating a public outreach project by breaking it down by these various elements. I’ll take you through the guiding questions to show how I arrived at my project idea, but you’ll notice that I had to ask myself a lot of additional questions as well. Each archaeological site is different, so outside of the four I’ve given you here you’ll have to listen to what the site and its participants are telling you they need.

Context/Goal

During a land development project in Duncan, BC, an archaeological site now known as Ye’yumnuts was discovered. Ye’yumnuts is a habitation site that was populated by the ancestors of the Cowichan tribe over three separate occupation periods. At the time of excavation, a multitude of amazing artifacts and features were found, including a jade adze sourced from hundreds of kilometers away in the Fraser Canyon, the imprint of a structure, and a pile of fire cracked rocks 10cm deep and 5m wide.

It took two decades of legal battles to protect this ancestral site, and now that it once again belongs to the Cowichan, they wanted to share the site as a source of inspiration for their youth and education for the broader community of Duncan. In particular, the Cowichan tribe wanted school curriculum developed about the site so that local schools could study local ancient history as opposed to that of far away, out of context places, like Egypt. A key element of this goal involved getting children excited in the archaeological findings, thus stimulating an appreciation for their peoples’ deep history. Whatever project that I created would be featured on the website Commemorating Ye’yumnuts.

At this point, I can answer a few guiding questions:

• What is my goal? Inspire Cowichan youth, educate the broader community of Duncan, BC, and get people excited about archaeology
• Whom do I know? Cowichan tribal members, administrators of a local school district, my professor who had been involved in the archaeology of the site
• Who is my audience? Settler and Cowichan community members of all ages, with special attention to students.
• What has already been done/what topics have already been covered? After taking a look at the site’s website, I saw that there were activities on artifacts, the history of the site since the beginning of time, legal battles, media analysis of news coverage, etc.

Because my passion in life is making archaeology fun, I decided to focus in on this particular goal to start my brainstorming. One of the gaps I found in the topics for which curricular material was already available was in the features; no one had talked about any of the features on the site yet, which was incredible because there were so many and they pose a lot of questions in terms of site functionality. The problem with this site and getting people excited about the archaeology of it, especially the features, is that you can no longer see the archaeology on the land. Once excavations were completed, the site was filled in. Now, it is a grassy area surrounded by a protective fence with interpretive signage looping around the site. So how do you get people excited about something abstract, something they can’t even see? The issue of invisibility told me I had to do something visual regarding the site’s features; I had to bring the site alive for my audience.

• What are my strengths? Unfortunately, nothing visual—my main strengths lie in my creative writing. However, I’m a quick learner and was determined to produce something unique and exciting for my student viewers. So, I decided to create a pre-fieldtrip tool to introduce students to the site and sat down at my laptop to start learning how to use Google Tour Creator.

It was time to make a virtual reality tour.

Knowledge Production

This outreach project was being done in collaboration with a local Indigenous group, so it was obvious I would be including their knowledge and interpretations of these archaeological features in my VR tour. There is much research circulating about the benefits of a landed methodology, which just means actually being in the land when you’re doing your work instead of being an armchair anthropologist because it provides you with a deeper, more embodied understanding. For example, at one of our visits to Ye’yumnuts our professor brought some of the artifacts back to the site and as I stood there holding the jade adze in my hand I was overwhelmed by how connected I felt to the site and to these past peoples to the extent that I began to tear up. Needless to say, this enhanced my drive to produce a quality outreach tool to get people as emotionally invested as I.

I decided to use Severin Fowles’ (2010) “comparative or cross-cultural phenomenological methodology” of collaboration in which the anthropologist walks the land with indigenous community members. The Cowichan elder I was working with, Luschiim, was unable to physically walk the land with me, so in lieu of the physical experience I showed him photos of the archaeological features and recorded his interpretations and related stories. However, I was able to walk the site with the lead archaeologist, Eric McLay, who provided rich archaeological data for me.

Google Tour Creator allows you to include one minute of audio, one photo, and up to 300 characters of text for each point of interest (in this case, each archaeological feature). While the photos were either photos of the archaeological feature itself or an archaeological reconstruction of what it may have looked like in use, I used the audio and text to blend the local conceptions of history with the archaeological evidence I gathered from my interviews. When possible I included commentary from both Luschiim and Eric in the same audio clip. When there was just too much good information from them both to fit it into one measly minute I tended to privilege audio clips of Luschiim and included the archaeological data in the text portion. I made this decision because I was conducting this project on behalf of the Cowichan tribe and this was their story to tell. Because the amount of information you can include in the VR tour is so limited, I also made an associated informational booklet for schoolteachers so they would have more background information to inform their lessons or answer the questions of curious students.

Benefits of VR

I just want to take a moment to really home in on what a powerful tool VR can be. As I’ve already mentioned, it’s perfect for making the invisible visible—in this case the hidden archaeological features. It also mimics place-based learning, since the whole concept is about making you feel like you’re somewhere you’re not. This makes it a great tool for students to get familiar with the site before arriving, it makes the site accessible to everyone everywhere, and it fosters a deeper emotional connection with the site. It’s also accessible in terms of cost; all you need is a smartphone and a cardboard VR viewer. The cardboard VR viewers from Google cost less than $10, which makes it a feasible classroom activity. Finally, VR is incredibly interactive, making it an engaging and effective method of learning.

Note: This chapter was adapted from a beta version of Traces.

Jenna Hendrick received her B.A. in Anthropology and English from SUNY Binghamton and her MA in Anthropology from the University of Victoria. Currently, Jenna is both the producer of The Dirt—a podcast about archaeology, anthropology, and our shared human past—and the assistant archaeologist for Curtin Archaeological Consulting. Before working in CRM, Jenna excavated at Peyre Blanque, a Magdalenian open-air site in France, as well as dabbled in archaeological conservation. Her research interests include human evolution/human life in the Paleolithic, peoples’ perceptions of the deep past/their “nature,” and communicating archaeology.

Part of this chapter is from Traces by Whatcom Community College and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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