Public Archaeology
From anthropology and archaeology to pubic archaeology to community-based archaeology to engaged heritage: pathway focused on community engagement
My Definition of Public Archaeology includes research that:
Stimulates public interest in the study of archaeology through the use of demonstrations of archaeological techniques and analyzes, workshops, training in excavation and recovery of artifacts and features, site tours, displays and exhibits, or the development of educational programs and materials;
Engages communities, social groups, organizations to come together for history, archaeology, and historic preservation and heritage activities;
Promotes awareness of cultural resources and heritage preservation;
Fosters individual or collective efforts to advance the ethical practice of archaeology.
Those components come from a community-based archaeology, a community-organizing model for heritage preservation and mobilization. The success of community-based programs come from radical openness and by starting projects by listening
Goals for community-based research include
Encouraging historic preservation, conservation, and public education;
Revealing hidden histories:
Exploration of public memory, localized heritage, and commemorations of the past;
Actively engaging with local and descendant communities regarding the past, history, and the cultural landscape;
Co-creating materials for community dissemination and public display;
Sustaining historic places as locales for civic engagement and civil discussions of the past; and
Attempting to make the past more inclusive and multi-vocal toward social justice and cosmopolitanism.
Archaeology has changed since the 1980s, public outreach and archaeology in the sunshine have expanded to community-based and collaborative approaches; I joined in the trend, first with a self-styled Public Archaeology in Sarasota; the invitation to join Looking for Angola fundamentally shifted my scholarship leading to the creation of the New College Public Archaeology Lab. Descriptions of those programs are below; publications related to those projects can be found on my CV and at https://ncf.academia.edu/UziBaram. In 2013, WGCU recorded and archived a three-minute interview on the Sarasota Bay Rancho video game, which includes a concise encapsulation of Uzi Baram's approaches in public archaeology.
Public Archaeology in Praxis:
Preserving Regional Heritage in Southwest Florida
Influenced by public archaeology programs around the USA, from 1997 to 2003 I organized a series of small scale projects around Sarasota County in partnership with the Sarasota County Archaeologist. There were pedagogical goals to the endeavor: to offer New College students experiential knowledge in archaeology and historic preservation, to offer service learning opportunities, and to build an archaeology focused on a civic engagement. The projects include the Paleo-Indian and Archaic period site of Little Salt Spring, the late 19th to early 20th century Rosemary Cemetery, and the early 20th century Venice Train Depot. The endeavor contributed to a National Registry of Historic Places nomination, helped with two museum exhibits at the Sarasota County History Center (2001 and 2006), trained several generations of New College students, and volunteered numerous public presentations and lectures as well as support for other archaeologists involved in public archaeology in the region.
Looking for Angola
In 2004, I joined a team of scholars looking for an early 19th-century maroon community on the Manatee River. The community is known today as Angola. My involvement includes supervision of the archaeological research which revolves around methodological challenges of locating a maroon community, public archaeology, raising questions for the archaeological and representational aspects of the work, and outreach to a broad audience to encourage local and descendant communities to join in the search.
Teaching Archaeology/Heritage to schoolchildren
Programs and materials including the Sarasota Bay Rancho video games, tabloids for Looking for Angola, and virtual worlds. Found at Teaching Archaeology and Regional Heritage for Schools
Traces of Our Past
In 2006, a community-based endeavor began the search for the hidden histories of the Manatee River communities. These histories include stories of pre-Columbian Native Americans and Seminoles, Spanish explorers and Cuban fishermen, free Blacks and enslaved Africans, and Anglo-American men, women, and children. Those hidden histories expand the search for the recent beyond the goals of Looking for Angola. The link to Traces of Our Past can be found on our partner's website Reflections of Manatee, Inc.
Traces of Our Past is also the title for a NCPAL-Time Sifters Archaeological Society Lecture series, 2009-13.
Heritage and Rising Sea Levels
In fall 2017 Hurricane Irma threatened the Gulf Coast of Florida. The eye of the hurricane passed to the east of Sarasota, the catastrophic fears did not materialize but New College of Florida and the public schools were closed for a week and the region suffered tremendous damage. At one point Sarasota Bay emptied out, requiring warnings to residents not to walk into the muck - the Bay waters returned. There were many warnings about this hurricane, storm surge, and rising sea levels but the time for warning is over. Heritage and Rising Sea Levels is an initiative focused on preserving regional heritage as social action, recognizing the history, the need to make decisions about what to preserve and what to document, and to use the deep past from archaeological research to guide understandings for what our future holds for us and future generations on this changing coast.
In August 2018, the third annual Tidally United Summit, a project of the Florida Public Archaeology Network, came to Sarasota:
The Summit ignited a program for disseminating the insights on crisis for preserving heritage sites across the Florida Gulf Coast, the lessons gained from research into the ancient peoples who faced the previous epoch of rising sea levels, and programs for heritage as social action.
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