Improving Educational Accessibility through Collaborative Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation focuses on Southern Utah University's forays into community-engaged archaeology through public-private partnerships and collaborative work with federal and state agencies and nonprofit groups in the Colorado Plateau region. Southern Utah University is a small, public, regional, undergraduate institution with many first-generation and non-traditional students. Traditional six-to-eight-week, four-to-six credit hour, field schools are out of reach for most of our students due to family obligations and financial constraints. In addition to empowering multiple stakeholders and giving voices to the voiceless, we find that community and collaborative approaches increase the accessibility of archaeology for both underrepresented student groups and local community members. By partnering with local agencies and organizations, we help carry out needed fieldwork while providing short, local, and affordable opportunities for archaeological instruction. Archaeology becomes seen as something possible and doable in the here and now, rather than as an exotic, expensive, and esoteric enterprise. These collaborative projects also help foster friendly cooperation between public stakeholders and academic and government researchers in a region of the country where local distrust of “the government” is not uncommon.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Collaborative and Community Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36900.0