Using Ethnographic Skills while Excavating: Exploring the Longevity of a Community Archaeology Project in Western Ireland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Making Historical Archaeology Matter: Rethinking an Engaged Archaeology of Nineteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Rural Communities of Western Ireland and Southern Italy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Community archaeology brings people from different backgrounds together to investigate the past, and each group contributes to the project in unique ways. While many articles discuss best practices, generic, formulaic approaches do not work in the field. This poster explores the techniques that help archaeologists create community interactions that benefit communities and archaeology, as community-based research is intended to do. Since 2007, the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast (CLIC) project used various methods to build relationships with communities to create long-term partnerships to ensure archaeology benefitted multiple interested communities, not just scholars. Through a community-based research project case study on Inishark and Inishbofin, County Galway Ireland, islands about five miles into the Atlantic Ocean, we explore the different approaches used to interact with all the interested groups in community-based research and how to apply methods to other locations and projects.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Making Historical Archaeology Matter: Rethinking an Engaged Archaeology of Nineteenth- to Twenty-First-Century Rural Communities of Western Ireland and Southern Italy   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40052.0