Session: #349

Regular session

This session is about to highlight the different roles archaeologists and archaeological institutions are playing and will play in our societies. Our aim is to encourage reflexive postures on our practices and values. Indeed, if citizen-sciences and participation are becoming very popular, we also need to consider our roles as archaeologists and citizens and what do we want to achieve by producing archaeological knowledge.
We do consider that, as researchers and citizens, we have the responsibility to understand the way we produce “scientific content” and for whom and how do we share this knowledge.

This session offers the opportunity to discuss different topics such as:
1) the way we produce knowledges and discourses upon the past and for whom; what is our social responsibility doing this? how archaeology can help finding solutions and answers in our present society about the current environmental – economical – ethical crisis our global world is facing?
2) What is the role of mediation in archaeology: what do we want to transmit and how?
3) what is our role as experts; what does “expertise” mean? How can we achieve inclusive co-creation of discourses and values about the past? How do we manage participation in content creation, research, transmission, preservation? That is, how far are we ready to go to implement inclusiveness in the production of knowledge? Is that necessary? What roles “the public” and the broader population are playing in archaeology and what for?

By asking these questions, our aim is to show diverse ways of connecting the scientific sphere (and the institutions that are supporting it) with different populations.

Citizen-science, Knowledge production, Role of transmission, Experts and non-experts, Applied archaeology

no

yes

no

no

no

Ellinor Dunning (Switzerland) ^1,2

Kai Salas Rossenbach (France) ³
Amala Marx (France) ³