Evaluating Community Engagement

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists hold tremendous power and voice through producing knowledge about people who came before. Our interpretations of the past affect societies today and future generations. Involving non-archaeologists in the research process, through community engagement, amplifies this potential. Heritage management and archaeology have long espoused the benefits of community engagement. However, on few occasions have we paused to evaluate our work in a rigorous manner and made the results available to others. When we do conduct evaluations, they are frequently for funders and not the communities involved, other stakeholders, or archaeologists. Without reflection and assessment, we limit ourselves as negative consequences potentially go unnoticed, and errors can be repeated. This presentation will present preliminary findings of my PhD research, which aims to build an effective evaluation tool for community archaeology with input from those who might use it: funders, practitioners, and community members. The goals of this evaluation tool are not to select the best or most successful community archaeology project nor to provide a one-size-fits-all framework. Instead, it is an adaptable tool designed to help projects assess themselves against their own objectives, highlight intended and unintended impacts to all stakeholders, and identify areas for improvement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35679.0