This semester I am teaching Applied Archaeology and Museums at the University of Memphis. This course addresses my primary research interests – the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage and its use as an empowerment tool for the public. Since I last taught the course two years ago, the resources for this empowerment tool multiplied exponentially. A good bit of the growth comes from digital technology put in the service of human needs. (Note this understanding of technology, well articulated by folks such as Clay Shirky, is at odds with the neo-Luddite perspective. See here for my rant on all that.)

Access to the products of digital technology is not always simple or readily available. Jason Baird Jackson posted an interesting piece on the high costs for accessing academic publications in a growing open access world. The post includes a link to The Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine that allows an author to retain specific distribution rights for their published work. Sherpa is a searchable database that lists distribution rights by journal that authors retain for open access distribution. Here I am less interested in discussing specific open-access issues, and more some of the current venues and perspectives in which cultural heritage information is presented to the public.

On the digital end:

A common point for these new opportunities is that even in my low-tech and financially strapped museum existence, all are practical possibilities where the primary limitation is not technology but labor to produce the products – a situation that can circle back to volunteerism and community service learning.

A second common point is that products of these technologies are accessible to a public with a wi-fi connection and basic internet surfing skills.

However, when considering the products that will live in real-time contexts created by students in my Applied Archaeology and Museums course this semester – after all, isn’t that what applied is all about? – I am concerned that the products be relevant to public interests and needs. Consider:

I had a back-and-forth with a recent graduate of our applied anthropology program who lamented that she felt well-prepared to write lengthy academic reports but her employers really only wanted the punch line impact statements, something her academic training left her unprepared to produce.

I am working with a student who is developing an exhibit for a county museum based on a several thousand piece surface collection curated in our museum repository for the past 30 years. The intern was excited by my preaching about the need for the exhibit to be relevant to the public, including avocational archaeologists who visit the museum. To that end, we discussed how the exhibit could interpret prehistoric trade and exchange, site function, and time period of occupation – all based on typical artifacts collected from the land surface after spring plowing or a good rain. However, as a well-trained anthropology undergraduate, the student was reasonably obsessed with making certain she typed her projectile points accurately. Her training made it hard to accept that the primary public interest of similar shaped points, from the same time period, manufactured at the same location, likely used for the same function, was not the correct typological name ascribed by an archaeologist several thousand years after the tools production. An exhibit that is not typology focused is not “dumbing down” to the public, but rather, functionally interpretive and different. That is a lesson from our co-creation with avocational archaeologists.

Co-creation with the public is a critical part of making resources relevant – whether digital or real-time. Co-creation has become a buzzword in museum contexts for the past number years, as popularized by Nina Simon in her Participatory Museum volume. My colleague Elizabeth Bollwerk and I have organized a fifteen paper session Co-Creation, the Public and the Archaeological Record for the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meetings this April in Austin, Texas. The session abstract is:

Co-creation in public archaeology is a means to engage and empower citizens to become stakeholders of the archaeological record. In museum contexts Simon (2010:278) writes that the purpose of co-creative community projects is “to give voice and be responsive to the needs and interests of local community members; to provide a place for community engagement and dialogue; and to help participants develop skills that will support their own individual and community goals.” The papers in this session discuss a variety of recent archaeological projects that implement the co-creative model. The contributions demonstrate how co-creation moves beyond “hands-on” educational experiences or typical volunteer programs because participants are invited to play an active role in designing and constructing the final products to address their needs and interests. Co-creation aligns with current emphases on informal, life-long, and free-choice learning models that foster public engagement in the preservation of cultural heritage resources. The papers in this session also explore the benefits and challenges of using this method and provide examples of best practices for implementation. Finally, these papers speak to the impact of co-creation on the discipline and how the process increases the ability of archaeology to contribute to debates on contemporary issues.

We are pleased that Carol McDavid, a pioneer in this process, including her work at the Levi-Jordan Plantation (link to 1998 website) will serve as a discussant for the session.

How do you envision co-creation in archaeology?