Theme:
3. Sustainable archaeology and heritage in an unsustainable world
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
So What? How to Gently Kill Your Darlings or How to Communicate to an Audience as Wide as Possible
Content:
While archaeology is an academic discipline and high-level intellectual dispute about archaeological theory and the best interpretation of the material culture is encouraged, archaeology is also a commodity in tourism business and sites welcome large numbers of visitors of various backgrounds.
Archaeological results are very specialized in-detail studies of particular narrow aspects of former societies or propose general theories on cultural development, presented at academic level in comprehensive papers or individual books of several hundred pages. However, archaeology is financed by “the public”. Therefore, “the public” claims its right to participate in the results of archaeological research. Since “the public” is a cross section of our society with a wide range of interests and intellectual properties, communicating the results of archaeological research requires an understanding of the target groups and requires a reduction of the complexity of the research results to simple but still true messages.
Museums, archaeological parks and sites have tried numerous and various ways to understand visitor perception and their approach to heritage and archaeology. Based on this understanding (or these assumptions), they developed various ways of communication ranging from reenactment and reconstructions or hands-on-experiences to signboards, popular publications and traditional museum exhibitions. In an ever-changing world, the new media replaced many traditional ways of communication and only recently, the emotional approach to archaeology by the visitors became mainstream. Furthermore, the sites, the ruins and the exposed walls communicate with the visitors just by being there. Still, the main objective is to bridge the gap between accurate academic results and the visitor’s demands.
In this session we would like to learn new ways to convey the message to the public. We would like to hear from practical experiences both successful and unsuccessful from university scholars, archaeological site managers, museum and tourism experts.
Keywords:
Communication, Audience, Presentation
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Peter Kienzle (Germany) 1
Co-organisers:
Cynthia Dunning Thierstein (Switzerland) 2
Affiliations:
1. LVR-Archäologischer Park Xanten
2. Archaeoconcept Director
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