Public Engagement and Compliance Archaeology in a Museum Setting

Summary

Public engagement in compliance archaeology is inherent in Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act as well as many state historic preservation ordinances. Engagement in publically funded projects allows those who pay for the research to share in the project results but also provide information as stakeholders of the past. Although such regulations provide for public engagement, the process and type of involvement varies by project, geographic area, and archaeological resource. This paper provides an overview of the benefits and challenges of public engagement and the need to diversify engagement strategies to serve the various publics encountered by compliance archaeologists. The importance of including a plan for engagement into scientific research designs is discussed along with the need to consider engagement both during and after the completion of fieldwork. Examples of public engagement from state and federally funded compliance projects in New York are provided.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Creative Public-Centered Approaches to Compliance Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage