Levels of Public Engagement in Vermont Archaeology and Striving to Match Outreach with Outcomes

Summary

A review of the last 15 years of the University of Vermont Consulting Archaeology Program’s public outreach activities suggests that projects with experiential learning components and strong community partnerships have had the greatest impact. Efforts that combine visits by school groups to the field, excavations open to the public and field work opportunities for volunteers generate the greatest participation and public interest and yield the most positive feedback. Handbook style publications in print and online also have been well-received by both general readers and teachers tied to a standards-based curriculum. Due to common issues such as project size and accessibility, however, it is difficult to regularly replicate the grand successes and often challenging to link specific project areas and results to specific outreach efforts. It is even more difficult to measure the long-term, lasting impacts of any efforts, especially for desired outcomes such as engaging an all-inclusive public, promoting archaeological awareness and stewardship, and maintaining support for compliance-related legislation.

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