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‘Look what we've found’ – a case study in public archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Francis Pryor
Francis Pryor*
Affiliation:
Fenland Archaeological Trust, Flag Fen Excavations, Fourth Drove, Fengate Peterborough PE1 5UR
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Extract

Two generations ago, Sir Mortimer Wheeler made himself the master of public relations in archaeology. He found some of the funds for digging Maiden Castle from opening the site to the visitors, who were able to buy souvenirs for a few pennies. After a period when the public have seemed a nuisance on-site, the fashion has come back — with added urgency in Britain where the pipeline of funding from public sources no longer flows so easily and where responding to some apparent public demand is becoming a new essential.

Flag Fen, in the wetland of eastern England, is being seen as a model of the new approach. It is conspicuous in the pages of Visitors welcome, the new English Heritage guide for excavators, which is reviewed warmly from across the Atlantic elsewhere in this issue. Here the Wheeler of the Fens explains what he is doing there and way.

Type
Papers
Information
Antiquity , Volume 63 , Issue 238 , March 1989 , pp. 51 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1989

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References

Binks, G., Dyke, J. & Dagnall, P. 1988. Visitors welcome: a manual on the presentation and interpretation of archaeological excavations. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Pryor, F.M.M. 1974–84. Excavation at Fengate, Peterborough England, the first-fourth report[s]. Toronto & Northampton.Google Scholar
Pryor, F.M.M., French, C.A.I. & Taylor, M. 1986. Flag Fen, Fengate, Peterborough 1: discovery, reconaissance and initial excavation (1982–85), Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 52: 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar