The Public Communication of Science and Non-Formal Education Within the Framework of Public Argentine Archaeology: The Case of Archaeology Workshops

Abstract

This article presents and analyses a method of public communication in archaeology carried out by a group of researchers within a non-formal educational framework, as a contribution to public archaeology in Argentina. This project included diverse activities, such as archaeology workshops for children and teenagers, which took place in museums in four cities located in three regions: Paraná (North-east), Tres Arroyos and Lobería (Pampas), and Lamarque (Patagonia). A conceptual evaluation is presented based on the application of a non-participational observation methodology, that includes the analysis of posters made by those attending the workshop and surveys conducted by the archaeologists at the culmination of the activity. This study suggests that workshops can be one of the most effective strategies employed by researchers to publicly communicate archaeology, and therefore can be of use to other research teams that have as their objective the democratization of knowledge generated in scienti?c-academic spheres.     

Trading Shovels for Controllers: A Brief Exploration of the Portrayal of Archaeology in Video Games

Archaeology has been a persistent theme for video games, from the long-running Indiana Jones and Lara Croft franchises to more recent uses of archaeology in games like Destiny and World of Warcraft. In these games, archaeology is often portrayed as a search for treasure among lost worlds that leads to looting and the destruction of cultural heritage. In this article, we review the current state of archaeological video games, including mainstream and educational games. While this is not an exhaustive discussion, it provides an introduction and overview to the current landscape. We propose that an understanding of current popular archaeological video games is important to archaeologists for three reasons: (1) it is a source of potentially dangerous misconceptions about the discipline that must be addressed; (2) it can be a source of inspiration for funding and a means to recruit new students to the discipline; and (3) games can be leveraged as teaching moments in classrooms and public discussions. It is important that archaeologists recognize the ways the discipline is being portrayed in such public contexts, in order to maximize the potential benefit for archaeology and to prevent further misconceptions about the subject.     

Visualising Values in the Caribbean: A Creative Approach to Value Assessment

In this article, a creative heritage value assessment that was developed on the island of St Christopher (St Kitts), West Indies is discussed and evaluated. A synergetic approach emerged out of a collaboration between local heritage managers and policy officials with foreign heritage researchers and archaeologists. Together, they developed a transdisciplinary and practice-oriented approach based upon capturing values with audiovisual methods, which effectively integrated archaeological-historical research as well as outreach and dissemination activities in the value-assessment process. This effectively brought valorisation as well as the contested and multivocal nature of heritage to the heart of a transparent heritage management process. The practicalities and rationale of this approach are discussed, as well as its potential benefits for the combined three fields of local heritage management, archaeological-historical research, and public outreach.     

Eating Archaeology: Experimenting with Food in Public Outreach

Public engagement is becoming increasingly common practice in archaeological projects, capitalizing on the interactions of field archaeologists with local communities as well as with the descendants of the people under study, in a variety of ways: from the use of social media to engaging the local public with onsite presentations and exhibitions. However, public engagement efforts are often less robust when archaeologists return to their home institutions, with most of the researchers’ time and energies spent fulfilling their academic duties. Interactions between archaeologists and their local communities — those closer to their home institutions — are often minimal, creating insular university departments. To secure a future as a vibrant, relevant field of research, archaeology must develop greater interest and skill in engaging with its neighbours both within and outside the academy. The study of past meals and foodways provides an exceptional avenue for public outreach, which in turn is further enhanced through fruitful collaboration among various university departments and museums. Here we present the results of the multidisciplinary outreach project ‘Eating Archaeology’, designed with the intention of building collaborations across disciplines and a new narrative with which to engage the public.     

From the Ground,Up: The Looting of Vưườn Chuối within the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian Antiquities Trade

The exact nature of the illicit antiquities trade from ground to market in Southeast Asia remains poorly known outside of Thailand and Cambodia, where most research has been focused. This paper helps to address this imbalance by documenting and contextualizing looting activities at the Bronze and Iron Age site of V???n Chu?i, located within urban Hanoi. A brief excavation history is provided so as to place recent looting into archaeological context. The methods used to document the recent and on-going looting observed are then discussed, followed by the nature of the current threat to V???n Chu?i and a summation of what little is known about the Vietnamese antiquities trade in general and its relationship to regional antiquities trafficking. Finally, we discuss the current regulatory landscape in terms of constitutional, ownership, penal and international law, difficulties with enforcement and prosecution, and what course of action is needed not only to protect V???n Chu?i and similar sites in and around Hanoi, but also to continue to raise public awareness of the archaeological repercussions of the trade itself.     

Bridging the Gap: Classification,Theory and Practice in Public Archaeology

Models and classifications have been a part of thinking about public archaeology since at least the early 2000s, but how are these ideas translated into practice? By looking into the development of such classifications and models and by examining archaeologists’ attitudes to an archaeological education outreach project for schoolchildren in Oslo, Norway, this paper looks at the relationship between classification, theory, and practice in public archaeology.     

昆明对周边城市外联经济量与地缘经济关系匹配研究

由于昆明市特殊的地理位置,对其与周边城市经济关联研究具有独特的意义。本文应用修正后的外联经济量与地缘经济关系模型,对昆明与国内外周边主要城市之间的经济进行匹配分析,划分出"经济联系-地缘经济关系"类型。结果表明,该市与曲靖、玉溪等滇中城市为强联系;从地缘经济关系上看,昆明与其他城市的明显互补型和竞争型关系存在较多的不确定性;对东南亚国家来说,和泰国、越南的联系强度大于老挝和缅甸。因此,依据匹配关系,昆明市经济发展应充分利用本地优势资源和未来巨大的可塑的城市合作空间,加强区域沟通,助力我国全方位开放新格局的形成。