Field schools are foundational training for archaeologists and the corresponding methods for instruction are largely consistent within the discipline. The expectation is that at some point early in their careers students will enroll in a field school. To participate, students must pay summer tuition, dedicate a minimum of four weeks (usually longer) to full-time fieldwork, and in many cases travel to remote locations. The reality is that for many students such expectations make field school participation an impossibility—and ultimately make archaeology a nonviable career option for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Offering local field opportunities within the context of a regular school year alleviates those problems. A recent field school in north Idaho demonstrated how traditional field school structure excludes many students and how archaeologists can adjust instruction to make field training more accessible to students.

Current debates surrounding decolonisation and the democratisation of display are a critical issue for prehistoric collections as well as more recent material. The objects most likely to symbolise prehistory in museum displays, and thus in the popular imagination—those made of precious, skilfully worked materials—are a restricted group of iconic things, often interpreted as reflective of social status rather than anything more personal or spiritual. To contextualise this debate, the authors outline public reaction to the display of alternative objects with more representative messages within The World of Stonehenge exhibition, which was held at the British Museum in 2022.

This article introduces a model that harnesses praxis as a powerful tool for critique, knowledge, and action within the realm of public archaeology. The adopted framework focuses on persistence as a middle-range methodology that bridges the material past to activist and collaborative-based projects. Recent research at Mission La Purísima Concepción in Lompoc, California, shows the effectiveness of this model and its real-world application. Visitors to California missions encounter the pervasive “Mission Myth”—a narrative that systematically overlooks and marginalizes Indigenous presence while perpetuating ideas of White hegemony and Eurocentrism. Archaeological excavations in the Native rancheria and collaboration with members of the Chumash community help resist notions of Indigenous erasure. By activating notions of persistence through public archaeology, this study contributes to dismantling entrenched terminal narratives, paving the way for a more accurate representation of the past and fostering a more inclusive archaeological practice.

As the venues for professional training and education, universities have always shaped the future of the archaeological discipline—for better but also, in important ways, for worse. Historically, university structures promoted practitioner homogeneity and social inequity and, at the largest research-intensive universities, even managed to turn “service” into a dirty word. However, using the same structures that perpetuated damaging practices in the past, universities can just as readily transform archaeology into the inclusive, community-engaged discipline it should always have been—while serving communities in ways that matter to them. This article explains and illustrates how and why we have tried to do this through the founding and operation of the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network (OKPAN) at the University of Oklahoma. OKPAN seeks to improve relationships among diverse Oklahoma communities by framing archaeology as a tool that that can serve communities’ interests while creating pathways within universities for members of historically excluded groups to join and help further transform the discipline.

In 2019, we launched the Northern Arizona Paleoindian Project to expand on findings from the Rock Art Ranch (RAR) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU; NSF#1262184). The REU recovered 24 Paleoindian artifacts in association with drainages. Expansion of the research required mitigation of the patchwork landownership in the area, which encouraged a collector-collaboration model following Pitblado (2014) and Douglass et alia (2017). We held public events in collaboration with a network of agencies, avocational groups, collectors, and landowners to assess potential for Paleoindian archaeology in the area. In March 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic halted our efforts, allowing us to evaluate our project and practice. We find that tapping into existing local networks of responsible resource stewards (RRS) can greatly accelerate project development. We also find that private collections are endangered, and preserving this portion of the archaeological record requires documentation and long-term curation. Most importantly, we find that archaeologists working with collectors are uniquely positioned to build bridges between Indigenous communities, RRS, and professional archaeologists to help stabilize legacy collections and that this focus should drive collector-collaboration research design. Ultimately, the project must move toward a community-based participatory research design to seek equitable and culturally appropriate curation plans for local legacy collections.

Today there is a revival of groups who claim to practice ancient Latvian religion. They often accuse archaeologists of lying and concealing the evidence of Latvian past superiority. On the one hand, this might be considered a misuse of archaeological data in order to support religious or nationalistic beliefs. On the other hand, hypothetical reconstructions of prehistoric religious beliefs are related to public archaeology and the relationship between science and the wider society. The aim of this paper is to investigate attempts to reconstruct ancient Latvian prehistoric religion through the lens of the archaeology of religion, and at the same time to broaden the discussion into the problematic relationship between nationalism and public archaeology.

This article aims to conceptualize the present state of public archaeology in Poland, which has recently become topical in archaeological practice. The author defines public archaeology and discusses the historical background of such activities in the context of the specific traditions of Polish archaeology. He then describes the main forms of outreach activities undertaken by archaeologists in Poland and presents community-oriented initiatives that go beyond the education of the general public about the past and strive to engage local communities in activities focused on archaeology and archaeological heritage. He concludes by outlining some directions that this sub-discipline may adopt in future.

Although remote sensing techniques are increasingly becoming ubiquitous within archaeological research, their proper and ethical use has rarely been critically examined, particularly among Native American communities. Potential ethical challenges are outlined, along with suggested changes to archaeological frameworks that will better address Native American concerns. These changes center on a revised view of remote sensing instruments as being potentially invasive and extractive, even if nondestructive. Understanding the potentially invasive and extractive nature of these tools and methods, archaeologists are urged to work closely with Native/Indigenous communities to create more holistic practices that include community knowledge holders and to actively discourage stereotypes that pit archaeologists and Native/Indigenous communities against one another. Considering the speed at which remote sensing is being used in archaeology, these changes need to be embraced as soon as possible so that future work can be conducted in an ethical manner.

Although we, as archaeologists, recognize the value in teaching nonprofessionals about our discipline and the knowledge it generates about the human condition, there are few of these specialists compared to the number of archaeologists practicing today. In this introductory article to the special section titled “Touching the Past to Learn the Past,” we suggest that, because of our unique training as anthropologists and archaeologists, each of us has the potential to contribute to public archaeology education. By remembering our archaeological theory, such as social memory, we can use the artifacts we engage with on a daily basis to bridge the disconnect between what the public hopes to gain from our interactions and what we want to teach them. In this article, we outline our perspective and present an overview of the other three articles in this section that apply this approach in their educational endeavors.

In the United States, deaccessioning is a poorly understood collections management tool. Archaeologists often view deaccessioning with what Robert Sonderman called “primal fear,” and this fear has caused them to overlook the opportunities that deaccessioned artifacts and collections may provide in the area of public archaeology education. Although deaccessioning without checks and balances can be problematic, when done properly and ethically, it offers previously untapped resources to the creation of educational programming, such as teaching trunk programs. This article discusses the process of deaccessioning and suggests that deaccessioned artifacts may be useful as content for teaching trunk programs. We discuss a case study from our own institution, where we implemented a trunk program in 2016 that was largely stocked with material from a deaccession we had performed the previous year. We also offer suggestions for anyone wishing to implement a similar program.

The Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist has as one of its main objectives to actively engage the population of Wyoming in archaeological stewardship. To achieve this goal, in the past five years, we have launched the youth-oriented Summer Ventures program and the adult-oriented Wyoming Avocational Archaeology Training Program. Both programs were inspired by existing programs in other parts of the country and were launched following research and target audience surveys on how to best adapt them to Wyoming. Despite this preliminary research, our in-field experiences over the past few years have shown some patterns that are causing us to rethink both programs. This article discusses these initial in-field testing years, the issues we have encountered, and the ways we are redesigning both programs to better target the appropriate audiences in light of the different lifestyles of populations, particularly those of youths, in a rural state.

A quick search on antonyms for “creative” yields obvious results such as “uncreative,” “unimaginative,” and “uninspired,” but also terms such as “dull,” “derivative,” and “stodgy.” In the world of cultural resources and mitigation of adverse effects, “creative” is most often opposed to “standard.” That sounds like a good thing, right? Good old, reliable, dependable, predictable standard mitigation. But as we will see from the articles in this special issue, remarkable things can happen when those designing mitigation programs replace or augment “standard” approaches. What is it about a mitigation measure or program that leads us to term it “creative”? How can we expand those defining qualities of creative mitigation measures and programs to enhance the quality of standard mitigation approaches? How can we make the standard approaches, if not creative, at least not stodgy?

Public Archaeology in the Mediterranean Context (#pubarchMED) is a project that focuses on the management of archaeological heritage in the Mediterranean context from the perspective of public archaeology. Ranging from fully public models where preventive archaeology itself is a challenge to mixed models where the outsourcing of this work has been accomplished to a full extent, the variety of solutions is wide and with a common trend: struggle with mitigation and little space for creativity. This article will delve into the range of models that exist in the Mediterranean, exploring the way they approach, first of all, preventive/rescue archaeology, and then, the relationship between archaeology and society in the process. Building on the challenges of an underfunded scheme for an extremely archaeologically rich territory, different solutions have been set in practice—in some cases, under the auspices of competent administrations in the form of public policy—in the endeavor to include public archaeology in the practice, mostly encouraged by professionals as a personal or corporate initiative, and sometimes even consciously avoided. The discussion will offer some ideas for creative mitigation in the different scenarios, built on the comparative study and the broad possibilities to engage stakeholders positively in the process.

Archaeologists have a responsibility to use their research to engage people and provide opportunities for the public to interact with cultural heritage and interpret it on their own terms. This can be done through hypermedia and deep mapping as approaches to public archaeology. In twenty-first-century archaeology, scholars can rely on vastly improved technologies to aid them in these efforts toward public engagement, including digital photography, geographic information systems, and three-dimensional models. These technologies, even when collected for analysis or documentation, can be valuable tools for educating and involving the public with archaeological methods and how these methods help archaeologists learn about the past. Ultimately, academic storytelling can benefit from making archaeological results and methods accessible and engaging for stakeholders and the general public. ArcGIS StoryMaps is an effective tool for integrating digital datasets into an accessible framework that is suitable for interactive public engagement. This article describes the benefits of using ArcGIS StoryMaps for hypermedia and deep mapping–based public engagement using the story of copper production in Iron Age Faynan, Jordan, as a case study.

A consistent challenge in community and collaborative archaeologies has been the appropriate identification and understanding of project constituencies. A key step in stakeholder analysis is understanding and harmonizing the goals of archaeological work to the social role of the institutions for which we work. To illustrate the value of such a stance, we examine on-campus archaeology programs at colleges and universities, arguing that treating students as vital stakeholders is an important ethical obligation for both researchers and administrators. Including students as stakeholders in campus archaeology provides pedagogical benefits and a meaningful way to instill an appreciation of archaeology in an important constituency of potential voters and future decision-makers. We present a case study from Santa Clara University (SCU), reporting results of an online survey of undergraduates that was intended to gauge community interests in campus archaeology and heritage. We also detail activities undertaken by SCU's Community Heritage Lab in response to survey findings in order to raise the profile of the archaeological and other heritage resources on our campus.

As in most European countries and elsewhere, Spanish commercial archaeology is a business model based on the theoretical and technical principles of safeguarding heritage that thrived during the 1990s and 2000s. However, nearly half of the Spanish archaeological companies closed by 2014, stressing the drama associated with the redundancy of its workforce in a mere five-year period and the threat to heritage protection and management. The current context of global crisis has impacted this sector, which is on the brink of extinction. This emphasizes the need for a new paradigm of archaeological heritage management in the 21st century. This breakdown calls into question the extent to which archaeology can generate initiatives of sustainable heritage management. By analysing data derived from an empirical study of Spanish archaeological companies between 2009 and 2017, this paper explores the underlying factors behind the collapse of commercial archaeology. In doing so, it contributes to the current global debate about the future possibilities of heritage management in a post-industrial context.

Although archaeology has become increasingly concerned with engaging diverse publics, and has embraced the internet as a means of facilitating such engagement, attitudes towards Wikipedia have—understandably—been more ambivalent. Nevertheless, we argue here, Wikipedia's popularity and reach mean that archaeologists should actively engage with the website by adding and improving archaeological content. One way to do this is in the classroom: this paper provides a detailed how-to for instructors interested in having students create new Wikipedia content. We provide a case study in Wikipedia engagement from an advanced undergraduate course on African Archaeology, assess a program (Wiki Education) designed to help, and suggest further avenues for future outreach. We conclude that Wikipedia's utopian mission aligns with many of the goals of public archaeology, and argue that archaeology has much to gain by engaging with—rather than ignoring or even shunning—Wikipedia.

Inclusive approaches to archaeology (including queer, feminist, black, indigenous, etc. perspectives) have increasingly intersected with coding, maker, and hacker cultures to develop a uniquely ‘Do-It-Yourself’ style of disruption and activism. Digital technology provides opportunities to challenge conventional representations of people past and present in creative ways, but at what cost? As a critical appraisal of transhumanism and the era of digital scholarship, this article outlines compelling applications in inclusive digital practice but also the pervasive structures of privilege, inequity, inaccessibility, and abuse that are facilitated by open, web-based heritage projects. In particular, it evaluates possible means of creating a balance between individual-focused translational storytelling and public profiles, and the personal and professional risks that accompany these approaches, with efforts to foster, support, and protect traditionally marginalized archaeologists and communities.