Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Federal land management agencies collectively administer approximately 606 million acres of public land within the United States. Archaeologists within these agencies support the maintenance, protection, and preservation of cultural resources for present and future use, efforts that are essential to each agency’s mission. While primary duties include the management of historic and cultural resources via compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), federal archaeologists may also find themselves with the unique opportunity to spearhead public outreach and education efforts, a growing priority within the greater archaeological community. It is the responsibility of the agency archaeologists to engage the interested public—that is, the people for whom they are maintaining, protecting, and preserving these resources—in the archaeological process. Inclusion of the public through partnerships with tribes, schools, and organizations serves to make the work archaeologists do, and the resources they manage, relevant to the greater community. This symposium recognizes and emphasizes efforts in outreach and education, exhibiting a standard to be incorporated in future archaeological work.