SESSION INFORMATION:
PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES, DEBATE AND CRITIQUE
An Invited Presidential Session at the 99th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting
November 15-19, 2000 San Francisco, California

Co-Chairs: Patrice L. Jeppson and Carol McDavid

SESSION ABSTRACT

Much recent conversation about 'public archaeology', 'heritage', 'archaeological heritage management', 'cultural resource management', and other terms referring to 'public' archaeological practice has revealed a certain ambiguity about what the term 'public archaeology' means. Is all archaeology inevitably 'public'? Or, are there individual areas of expertise (education, legislative, technological, political, journalistic, performance, museums, tourism, etc.) that are beginning to form a legitimate area of specialized archaeological practice, analogous to geographic, technical, temporal, and other specializations? If this is so, what are the implications of this growing 'specialization', both within archaeology and in terms of public awareness? While there will be an introduction to provide an organizational framework for the session, the session organizers will not set out an a priori definition of what 'Public Archaeology' is – or isn't. Rather, individual participants will explore the different goals pursued under the rubric 'Public Archaeology', and will attempt to provide critical and self-reflexive assessments of what we actually do with our 'publics', and, perhaps more importantly, critical examinations of what this work with our publics does, in terms of archaeology as a discipline and in social life more generally. While it is true that archaeology characterized as 'public' is often limited to narrow descriptions of how-tos of engaging the public, the reality is that, worldwide, practitioners of 'public archaeology' (however they define themselves) are increasingly conducting and writing theoretically informed scholarship that goes far beyond the ''practical''. Papers in this session will highlight the nature of this recent work in public archaeology, and different national and regional styles of doing 'public archaeology' (or Heritage, CRM, etc.) will be represented. Active discussion will be a primary feature of this session; papers will be grouped in several sections, interspersed with discussion segments, so that the audience can be included in an exploration of these issues throughout the session.

Session papers are listed below in the order of presentation.
Extensive discussion opportunities are built into the forthcoming AAA
session. Participants can prepare themselves for the discussions by reviewing the resources following each paper title. Click on the underlined links following each paper title to view relevant material. Posted material includes individual abstracts for the papers in the session, text of the AAA paper or related papers, presentation graphics and websites.