June 2015: Designing the Town Museum Project

Recap

The Berkeley Castle Project (BCP) began in 2005 and set out to excavate and explore the archaeology of Berkeley Town, Gloucestershire.The annual excavations are tied to the formal curriculum. Within the BCP sits the “Engagement Team”, which students can elect to join, and which I manage in parallel to excavations. Engagement is fundamentally embedded within research, and teaching and learning efforts of the Department. Over the past three years, engagement efforts have placed students at the heart of community and public engagement, through free tours, artefact handling sessions, social media, etc.Students take their knowledge of archaeological research and hands-on fieldwork experience at Berkeley Castle, combined with their classroom learning, and transform it into a tangible engagement output. This is an excellent example of research-led teaching taken into engagement activity. The Town Museum Project is one of the many ‘mini projects’ co-run by students.

The project aims to take artefacts out of storage and into the public sphere

The Town Museum project

The aims of the project were:

• to identify an effective way to bring archaeology to the community of Berkeley
• to provide opportunities for students to enhance their engagement skills
• to showcase the archaeological research undertaken by the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology

The objectives were:

• to design a temporary exhibition of artefacts, (ensuring that each piece is properly labelled, catalogued, and photographed) for public display around the town of Berkeley
• to invite the community to participate in hosting a temporary display of excavated artefacts
• to place students at the heart of all activities (choosing artefacts, labelling and designing trays, creating poster content, one-to-one engagement directly with the community participants)
• to evaluate all aspects of the project, including student, stakeholders and participant reflections and feedback
• to work with our heritage stakeholder (owner of the artefacts), Berkeley Castle, and consider what activities could support their efforts and concerns
• to share the project model, outcomes and impacts as widely as possible

Regarding the stakeholders:

• Berkeley Castle, have facilitated and supported the project since its inception, giving permission for artefacts to go on public display and printing information materials as requested by the Engagement Team
• Twenty community participants include both private residences and commercial businesses throughout the town. They have signed an agreement to place display trays in their window and take care of them for up to two weeks
• The Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, through Dr. Stuart Prior, ensures the accuracy of the archaeological information shared by the project
• Our students, working electively on the project, volunteer their own time to ensure delivery

All students are welcome to join the Engagement Team!

Students are drawn from all levels, including first, second, and third year, and masters students. This provides an excellent opportunity for students to learn from each others, regardless of academic level. Of great importance is the chance for students at all levels to develop practical real-world skills.

Contact: Aisling Tierney a.tierney@bristol.ac.uk

www.facebook.com/digberkley ¦ www.twitter.com/digberkeley ¦ www.instagram.com/digberkeley

Advertisement

June 2015: Preview – Berkeley Engagement Project

The Berkeley Castle Project began in 2005 and set out to excavate and explore the archaeology of Berkeley Town, Glous. Over the past ten seasons of digging, the project directors delivered numerous public talks and tours, and we received media attention at home and abroad.

---

Previous engagement

In 2013, I spoke with the directors about the possibility of starting engagement efforts to build further on this work, to include social media and more diverse engagement projects. This would benefit the profile of the dig, improve student skills relating to public engagement, and help ensure that the local community felt part of the project.

A community engagement event in 2014 was the start of welcoming the community’s comments on the project and was a great success (supported by a grant from the University of Bristol’s Green Apple Scheme). We also created more blog and video content, fun online quizzes and even archaeology top trumps! This sat alongside the free “artefact handling” sessions offered to every visitor (a selection of artefacts that students talk through with visitors and allow them to touch and explore).

Fun, downloadable archaeology Top Trumps – another student idea!

One of our students used specialist skills to develop a 3D model of one of the excavated buildings!

---

Engagement embedded within teaching

In 2015, we aim to continue these offerings and go even further. We incorporated engagement training into two undergraduate courses in November 2014; Post-Excavation Techniques (2nd year) and Managing the Past (3rd year). These units are tied the excavation and every student who takes them must partake in two weeks of fieldwork.

• In Post-Excavation Techniques, we explored communication strategies, covering the nature of final archaeological publications, types of report strategies, grey literature, open source content, public consumption of research materials, future proof publication and interpretation. This included assessing how findings and elements of research papers and publications are re-interpreted in the press and via social media. The sessions covered ethics on a global scale, as social media engagement with the public is an ethical concern for heritage, academia and general archaeological practice.

• In Managing the Past, students reflected on how social media is used within different areas relating to their discipline and how it can enhance their employability. They assessed museums, archaeological companies, universities, international bodies like UNESCO, etc., critically reflecting on the content and stylings offered by these bodies. They also considered their own public profile and what steps they might take to utilize social media to enhance their employability and professional profile, thus supporting career skills development.

---

Student Feedback

Feedback provided by students identified the following:

• Post-Excavation Techniques: Students improved their learning in a number of fields, but particularly: (75-100%) public engagement; social media, planning engagement strategies, skills that you can take into future careers, benefits and drawbacks of public engagement, and how to be careful with your personal and professional online profiles. Other comments: “Really enjoyed lecture, would be great perhaps to see a future unit on archaeology and the media” / “I really do think better engagement with the university community could be good, … Perhaps in a year or so, it can be something the university is collectively proud of!”
• Managing the Past: Students improved their learning in a number of fields, but particularly: (87-100%) credibility; press releases and the press association; critically assessing how archaeology is presented in the media; and (67%) communication strategies; ethical issues; social media; and public engagement.

---

Student ideas

Within both units, student ideas for engagement at Berkeley were explored within three informal seminar sessions. Here’s a snapshot of the student suggestions.

Engagement ideas developed by University of Bristol undergraduate students

The above suggestions will be incorporated into the Engagement Team planning stages. It is hoped that many of the ideas can be worked in to implementation, so as to ensure all students feel involved in engagement, even if they do not elect to join the Engagement Team. Inviting student ideas ensures that they feel part of the project and know that their voice is respected. This can also encourage personal investment and dedication into the department’s efforts.

---

Next steps

Following teaching, the next stage is recruitment for the Engagement Team who work alongside the excavation at Berkeley. Here, students practice the skills developed in the classroom in a real world environment.

Induction meetings have been completed for all current applicants. Applicants are drawn from all levels, from 1st year to MA level. During induction, students reflect on what aspects of engagement they are most interested in and every effort is made to place them in a team accordingly. Project planning is already underway and includes:

• Developing downloadable key-stage learner packs for teachers and school children
• An innovative “Town Museum” community project. This places excavated artefacts on display in homes and businesses alike to create a town exhibition where the community become curators of their own past.

Both projects transform University research into outputs that deliver tangible educational and engagement impacts, and ensure that students gain valuable experience of project planning, management and delivery.

---

Health & Safety prevents public access, but we try to work around it!

Over the next month, I’ll be reporting on what the students and I get up to at Berkeley. Stay in touch: www.facebook.com/digberkeley | www.twitter.com/digberkeley.

Contact: Aisling Tierney a.tierney@bristol.ac.uk

*The above teaching strategies are part of a University of Bristol ‘pump prime’ teaching development grant awarded to Aisling Tierney (Engagement Coordinator and current PhD student) and Dr. Stuart Prior (BCP Director and Senior Teaching Fellow in Archaeological Practice)*

People of the BWRP

The main aim of my visit to Bristol Wood Recycling Project was to talk to people about archaeology. Specifically, what I wanted to do was to find out why people were making use of the BWRP and what they were doing with the materials they left with. I’ve always found that these simple conversations lead into discussion of wider issues. Archaeology is good at working on different scales at the same time, looking both at objects and at the wider-world systems they are part of. So are regular people.

The person I spoke to most was Kaleb, in charge on the day I visited. I’ll come back to my conversation with him on Friday.

What I noticed really clearly about the place is that a very large proportion of the custom came from young couples. BWRP is obviously playing a part in people kitting out their first homes, itself a really important thing. I didn’t talk to any of them though, I focussed on the people who looked like they knew what they were doing, I wouldn’t want to put off anyone unsure of their DIY needs and skills!

The first person I chatted to was with Kaleb when I arrived. He was doing something fairly straightforward, taking a piece of plywood to turn into a tool shelf for the back of his van. A small job, for sure, but  a small example of the interdependence of projects of this kind and independent businesses. One of the main attractions is that it’s cheaper of course, but the person in question was also keen to support the BWRP and its wider aims (see yesterday).

Measuring and cutting plyboard for transport

The next person I chatted to was Ben, who I found taking wooden pallets apart.

Excuse me, mind if I talk to you about archaeology?

Ben is a long-term customer of BWRP and used local reclamation yards as well before they closed. I chatted to Ben about the kinds of things he has made with wood from the BWRP (see below), of which there are quite a lot. He told me that he has always worked from a philosophy of fixing rather than replacing things, more for practical reasons than because of any green philosophy. In one sense, what we can see in these regular, very practically-minded regular customers is one of the ways in which people work hard to inhabit individually the world as constrained by politics, economics and more. Yet Ben was also clearly aware of the environmental and social issues at the heart of the BWRPs aims – and the fact that people can do something about them – so he is certainly an important part of enacting that wider network. Here are some of the things he’s made (thanks for the photos and permission to post them, Ben).

The fence Ben made with the pallets he was taking apart while we chatted.

Sedum roof made with wood originally from Cabot Circus

Basement window made with wood from a church in Totterdown that was converted into flats

Shortly before I left, I talked with Sarah, who I overheard saying she was looking for wood for an art project. It turned out that a friend was being very productive in some DIY that day so she had decided to join in and make a table. She had come to the BWRP having seen it when walking past walking dogs. Her plan was to get an old cupboard door and fill the recessed centre with pebbles and resin. Discussing the archaeological take on BWRP, we moved onto a discussion about precarity in the city, Sarah being a post-doc researcher in a university department where she works in a room full of other researchers all on two-month contracts. I wonder whether the BWRP is also useful as a kind of therapy for people who need to do something practical to take their minds off wider issues.

So, these are some of the people of the BWRP, people who took time out of their DIY Saturdays to let me stand and talk about archaeology with them for a bit. I’m grateful to all of them for letting me disturb them.

I’ll draw out a bit more of what this all means for public archaeology (and urban archaeology in general) on Friday.

 

What sort of problem is eBay?

As I have said in previous posts, when I have mentioned to people that I’m doing a project on eBay – however small and experimental – the usual response has been a smirk and a shake of the head. It’s clear to me that eBay is seen as a problem, or at least as something not worth engaging with, but I have struggled to pin people down on exactly what kind of problem it is and why. Two main potential problems spring to mind.

The ethical minefield

Perhaps the obvious problem, the one that turns archaeologists off straight away, is that eBay contains a lot of metal-detecting finds. It also, potentially, contains objects acquired in even more problematic circumstances than that. There is much written on this and I don’t need to go into details myself here. Paul Barford for instance has written extensively on the subject on his blog Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues and has even written specifically on eBay. Also of interest is Kurt Montgomery’s work on the influence of the internet on militaria collecting, which highlights many of the same issues, among much more.

It is a real problem. It is a problem that means valuable information is lost to analysis and to databases like the PAS. It is also a problem that created and now sustains the particular monetary values attached to archaeological material and therefore needs to be addressed.

Non-communication

As my unsuccessful attempt to speak to eBay sellers shows, there’s also a problem with the forum itself. It is, of course, understandable that people using eBay to quickly and easily sell a few things don’t want to talk about what they’re doing. It becomes even more likely when those people are selling metal-detecting finds and it’s an archaeologist asking them about it. Understandable, but a bit of a shame. It’s partly the silence from eBay sellers and from eBay itself that makes it look like the problem it does.

Is thinking eBay is a problem a barrier?

There are real problems with eBay, but what is the difference between the forum being problematic and those problems becoming a barrier to engagement? My admittedly small sample data scrape of six artefact types suggests that when it comes to the objects that would usually be considered to have higher monetary values and to hold more ‘archaeological data’, eBay contains only minuscule amounts compared to, in this instance, the PAS. Is it then more the idea that eBay sellers are disregarding others’ desire for the information their objects would provide or the notion of monetizing historic artefacts that is the problem? That must be part of it, but how many sellers are aware of these problems? We don’t know because it’s really hard to talk to them. It’s almost a Catch-22.

My proposed solution to this issue is to stop approaching eBay as an insurmountable problem. When we take a start point that eBay is bad and that its sellers are bad and that its defining characteristic is the loss of archaeological material, we create a barrier that it is really hard to see past. I know that is a real problem. I know that eBay don’t help themselves by refusing to engage. However, if we take a different start point – of eBay as a group of people interested in historic objects who we don’t currently talk to, but who we could learn new things from if we could engage them in some way – the onus would then be on us to try harder, to move past or lay aside our reasons for negativity and to keep trying.

EBay and eBay sellers are just another hard-to-reach group. There is huge scope for the aims and methods of public and community archaeology to change the relationship between them and the wider discipline.

The failure bit…

So… I’m interested in the potential for eBay to be of use to public archaeology research as a database of objects that can give some level of access to information about how people relate to objects. There are also the sellers themselves. What I wanted to do with this mini-project, after a bit of a play with the data I collected, was speak to eBay sellers about their use of eBay. I’m not directly interested in the issue of ‘illicit antiquities’ this month, largely because it is a well-covered topic and also partly because I think that debate can be a bit of a barrier. I’ll post on the subject this week. What I am more interested in for PA2015 is how much people know about where the things they are selling came from, whether they’re interested in knowing more about where they go and how active they are.

It was my first intention to send a survey link out to all of the sellers whose data I had collected back in November, but I decided against sending about 750 unsolicited emails through eBay. Instead, I wrote to two sellers for each of my artefact types asking if I could send them a survey link. I had four replies. Three of them said no. One said yes, but didn’t go on to complete the survey. So, precisely zero public engagement.

I was not hoping to collect statistics with this exercise, at least not after I gave up on the mass mailing. What I hoped to do was engage a couple of regular eBay sellers who I could work with to understand better how people relate to objects within the eBay context and to become (eventually)’ eBay archaeologists’, using their normal eBay interactions to develop and spread knowledge about the people-object networks created and enacted by the forum.

Although this failed for PA2015, it is not an end. I’m hopeful of still being able to speak to some eBay sellers at some point and I think the idea of eBay archaeologists is interesting and useful. Also, the kind of archaeology going into the idea is, as far as I am aware, quite unusual for public archaeology contexts.

What I would like in response to this post is to hear other stories of public archaeology ‘failures’. It’s not something we hear about enough and a few other people I have been chatting too have been very interested in the subject. Please add comments below and gather them together into a post at some point this month.

Map Orkney Month final thoughts: Multi-vocal cartography and the collaborative re-imagining of place.

After a month of collaborative mapping a new map of Orkney has been created. By thinking big, Map Orkney Month seems to have captured people’s imagination. Our map looks like Orkney, however it is far removed from the Ordnance Survey and the tourist trail of Neolithic World Heritage Sites, brochs and bird watching. Our map is an unfamiliar Orkney, revealed through the experience and creativity of its inhabitants.

 

Mapping was undertaken on all the main permanently inhabited islands in the archipelago, and on most days during March, often with multiple contributions per day. All the main modes of transport were included: plane, ferry, rowing boat, bus, car, push bike and walking. The imaginary and psycho-archaeological contributions from within Orkney following the journeys of photographer Gunnie Moberg, and Elsewhere including East London, Bergen – Norway, and Wei Ha Wei – China, added another level, blurring the distinctions between past and present, real and imaginary.

Despite what many initially thought, however, it was not necessarily about covering ground, charting large areas or recording what we already know. The emphasis (from my point of view at any rate) was on everyday journeys, less familiar places, stories and creating heritage sites through enacting or choreographing the project. The only loose instructions were to record journeys for a single day within March using a handheld GPS or smart phone, and record one site of significance.

Participants took this how they wished (I did not ask them what they were planning nor dictate the outcome), with some recording part of the day or a short walk, some recording numerous sites, and others keen to show the highlights of and map their island. Some took recording everyday journeys literally and stuck to their normal routine, others chose a day that they knew something different was happening, and some undertook choreographed mini-projects. Media included GPS, smart phones, tablets, text, photos, sound and video. The diversity of contributions is bound by a collective creativity and thoughtfulness which has naturally gravitated towards what could be termed Creative Archaeology. In terms of archaeological theory, MoM is about exploring an archaeology of surface survey (as opposed to the usual trope of excavation and the depth metaphor), archaeologies in and of the present (Harrison 2010) and the idea that Contemporary Archaeology has the potential to find new forms of practice (Dixon 2009). Moreover, it exposes the idea that, ultimately, archaeology is about the telling of stories (Sarah May pers comm). In the context of Public Archaeology 2015, this was achieved through collaboration and multi-vocal mapping – a county wide archaeological walkover survey – with the ‘public’ taking the lead (a public that also includes archaeologists).

For me, the most powerful experience of the project was giving away the control; posting out the technical equipment and basic know-how, not asking what participants were planning, and waiting for the results to be posted back and emailed. The results from this brand of public archaeology were experimental and unexpected. Many thanks to all of the participants, without whom there would have been no project, to the Pier Arts Centre and Grooves Records for hosting the two weekend workshops and to James Dixon for creating Public Archaeology 2015.

What next?

The intention is still to produce an A3 leaflet with the new map detailing journeys, sites and photographs. These could be coded and the sites listed with coordinates on the back. Although slightly abstract, the leaflet will provide the potential, and perhaps inspiration, for people to go and find some of these places. Originally, I wanted to complete this within the month, but this was not possible as MoM became rather epic. I plan to work on this in the next few weeks. I’m also going to get feedback from participants about their experience, how they found the idea of mapping with a GPS, what they learnt and why they mapped where they did. One participant has already said ‘you are changing the way people think about space, which is really hard to do, and really good’. Much to reflect upon.

Lastly, I did make a small contribution on the first day, but thought I’d leave it until last…

Dan Lee: Stromness – Kirkwall 01/03/15

In the spirit of Public Archaeology 2015, which encompasses 12 month long projects throughout the UK, I wanted my contribution to somehow connect Orkney with other places and reflect this wider collaboration and engagement. As such, after travelling by car from Stromness to Kirkwall, a journey which I do every day, and going swimming with my daughter, we drove to the top of Wideford Hill. This very windy 225m summit hosts numerous telecommunication masts and dishes which connect Orkney with the wider world.

Also, I knew there was a topograph – a metal plate showing the relative distances to other places – erected there by the Kirkwall Rotary Club in 1968. A juxtaposition of places compressed into a single monument:

Swona 13m

Duncansby Head 24m

Edinburgh 211m

Hunda 9m

London 535m

Burray 10m

In recording this site, I wanted to link together these places (and people) across the UK and Orkney physically and electronically, using satellites circulating in Mid Earth Orbit via my small GPS receiver. Later in the evening, I went for a walk up Brinkie’s Brae, a small granite hill behind Stromness with clear views to the north, to try and see the aurora (nearly 50% probability according to SpaceWeather.com), and caught a faint glimpse of green in the northern sky, linking MoM (spatially and materially) with other northern latitudes and electromagnetic storms from the sun catching the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

A Walk Around the Avebury Landscape

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know, such as the existence of the largest artificial mound in Europe, Silbury Hill, located in what has been described as a ‘ritual landscape’ consisting of evidence of prehistoric activity on Windmill Hill, the Avebury henge surrounded by numerous burial sites; those that survived the plough still visible as tumuli and long barrows, including a well-known chambered example at West Kennet and its larger unexcavated sibling off to the south-east. Vestigial remains of avenues of sarsen stones lead to places where there were once monuments… but to what? The resident elephantine known unknown. And then there are the unknown unknowns…

The Adam & Eve stones, all that still stands of the Beckhampton Avenue – Photo: Rob Irving.

At 11 on Sunday morning, historian Brian Edwards is waiting outside the Waggon & Horses pub, just along the A4 from Silbury Hill. We’d never met before; he told me he’d come to check me out… to see what I’m about. After a little more conversation it became apparent to me that he’s a veritable librarian of what I didn’t know I didn’t know. Brian tantalizingly suggested that my geophysical survey of the ground between West Kennet long barrow and Swallowhead Spring may have disclosed something other than what I thought it had. We’ve been in communication about what this might be ever since. It’s public engagement of a sort. Further clues to mythologies that are still talked about and enacted in this area can be found in Brian’s excellent paper ‘Silbury Hill: Edward Drax and the excavations of 1776’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine, 103, (2010), pp. 257-269.

After a while, more people arrived and Brian had other matters to attend to. The theme of today’s known unknowns was ‘ley’ lines – straight and serpentine – so Leslie and I, Maria, Chris, Rupert and James set off on our adventure. The route taken was north via the Adam & Eve stones to Windmill Hill, southwards to Avebury for a swift half and a wander around the stones, continuing along the river valley to Silbury Hill and, in time for sunset, the West Kennet long barrow before returning to the pub for an evening meal. Maria is writing a more detailed response to the walk…

Avebury Avenue (2012) – Photo: Rob Irving. ‘These sort of works in my opinion have more simple grandeur, and strike with more religious admiration than the finest works of Greece and Rome; in my opinion there is the same comparison between them as between the finest dressed works of Mr Capability Brown and the great works of nature.’ Letter from Edward Drax to Lord Rivers, 1776. [‘Silbury Hill: Edward Drax and the excavations of 1776′, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Magazine, 103, (2010), pp. 257-269.]

---

Rob, Rupert and James on Windmill Hill – Photos: Leslie Glenn Damhus.

---

Leslie on Windmill Hill. Silbury Hill is visible in the middle distance, 1.8 miles away – Photo: Rob Irving.

---

‘At the point where the Beckhampton Avenue crosses the River Winterbourne, Silbury Hill can be seen with its summit platform exactly in line with the background southern horizon. Paradoxically for the remaining 70-80% of their length both the avenues’ courses are designed to obstruct all view of Silbury Hill.’ From Lionel Sims’ Entering, and Returning from, the Underworld: reconstituting Silbury Hill by combining a quantified landscape phenomenology with archaeoastronomy, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 15, 386-408 (2009) – Photo: Rob Irving.

---

Waden Hill – Photo: Rob Irving.

---

Silbury Hill (2012) – Photo: Rob Irving.

---

left to right: Chris, Maria and Rob at West Kennet long barrow – Photo: Leslie Glenn Damhus.

---

Sunset over West Kennet long barrow – Photo: Rob Irving.

---

Mythoarchaeology: Moving On

Ignited this January through PA2015, my venture of being led by myth in the utilisation of visual archaeology (beginning with a geophysical survey) is in its infancy, with more plans afoot. Early responses are promising.

Silbury Hill – Photo: Rob Irving

As previously stated, I like what Jeanette Winterson has to say about art and time (and their interrelations), and her observation that there’s a tendency in the West to avoid tricky encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it, is relevant to the mythoarchaeology enterprise (which seeks out tricky encounters). So, in and amongst the chatter about Situationism and sociological experiments I was interested to find one or two of the folks at The Modern Antiquarian forum adding to the legend narrative by trying to fit my A Geophysical Survey of ‘Earth Energies’ in Avebury’s Ritual Landscape using a Magnetic Susceptibility Coil into their own individual playframes  – e.g., that the line evident in the data, which follows Hamish Miller’s dowsed ‘Mary’ line, is an ancient pathway caused by people traveling between sacred sites. There’s a pleasing neat circularity to how this explanation relates to older familiar versions of the ‘ley’ myth, its cosy familiarity at least presenting the illusion of rationality. For someone else, this layer of a deeper map which treats myth with some importance was either art or “has something in common with the legend of Silbury – cobblers.” (An allusion to a local tale of a shoemaker tricking the Devil.) In terms of public engagement, this is a promising start – contemporary legend can take time.

Silbury Hill as realised by likers of the Mythoarchaeology Facebook page.

It looks like there are some really interesting PA2015 projects coming up in the months to follow. Good luck to Jane, Dan and Elizabeth, and all the other contributors to an excellent conception on James’ part. As for me, here’s yet another reminder that I’m walking around the Avebury Complex on Sunday, the 1st, and invite anyone to join me. Don’t expect a guided tour – let’s let the landscape, and the places that constitute it, speak for itself. We set off from the Waggon & Horses pub on the A4 near the Beckhampton roundabout around Noon.

June 2015: Aisling Tierney, archaeologist

The Berkeley Castle Project

For the last few years, I have been involved with the Berkeley Castle Project run by the University of Bristol. My role started as a student and evolved to Coordinator of the Social Media project as of 2013.  The idea behind working on social media was to showcase the amazing work that our Bristol students undertake every summer as part of their undergraduate programmes and the incredible research by academics. An average day sees at least 50 students on site and there is an fantastic buzz in the air, full of excitement at the thought of new discoveries and lots of enthusiasm from those who understand it as a valuable learning experience that they can take with them into their careers.

Public Engagement – social media

2013’s Social Media project was a real success, reaching a vast worldwide audience (Find out more here: facebook.com/DigBerkeley). It also allowed the students to develop great transferable skills on professional practice and public engagement. All sounds great, right? But there was one element missing for me – engagement with the local community. We have a great relationship with the main tourist attractions of the Jenner Museum and Gardens and Berkeley Castle, and St. Mary’s Parish. The local community were offered free tours and talks every season. In my view, however, this placed them as passive recipients of knowledge and offered no obvious route for them to share their views.

Community Engagement – first steps

By a fantastic turn of luck, the University of Bristol started the Green Apple Scheme that supports projects that relate to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which can include community engagement. I saw this as a great opportunity to get some much needed funding to engage with the public and provide relevant archaeological outputs while introducing students to wider concepts of ESD. The community were invited to a student-designed student-led workshop where they discussed issues including: communication and engagement; community representation; and environment and social sustainability. Students then reviewed the responses and created an in situ exhibition in the three sites of excavation (the Castle, the Jenner Museum, St. Mary’s Church) and also posted materials in the local community library – all in time for the Festival of Archaeology. (You can read the full report of the project here: Link).

All ages were represented at the community engagement event

How I want to engage with the public

Part of the problem with local community engagement is that the community needs to come to us. As we only run the excavation on weekdays, many nine-to-five workers just can’t get involved. And even if people are free, we can’t always allow them on site due to weather, available supervisors, etc.

What would happen if the archaeology was brought to them instead?

Our main excavation trench in Nelme’s Paddock faces a narrow street of house built right onto the footpath. Flower pots, cats, and lacy curtains decorate the windows, but these could be supplanted (on a temporary basis) with real archaeological artefacts excavated just across the road. Imagine the feeling of having temporary curatorship of such finds in your own home, sharing the stories of these finds with your friends, neighbours and family. Perhaps each house could host a different artefact type, from ceramics, to animal bones, to shards of glass, with a little explanation alongside. This could even expand to shop window displays in local businesses.

Creating a temporary town-museum could help ensure that the community is included in the archaeological project and invite further participation and a sense of ownership over their own heritage.

Collaboration

The project could also sit within next year’s plans for the Festival of Archaeology and Berkeley Castle‘s socio-historic heritage trails. Combining efforts and joining forces will mean that there is a better public offering, better engagement, and a better sense of community involvement.

May 2015: Elizabeth Bennett, performance and landscape researcher

Inspiration

‘When Shirley Collins talks about folksong, it isn’t a conversation of historical information, musicological data sets, Roud or Child numbers. It is of the corner of a Sussex field … it is a mother strolling through that field’s corner and becoming, for a moment, every young woman who’d ever strolled past it. To Shirley Collins … each age-old song is that corner field – a magical locus in which the singer is no longer merely themselves, but becomes every man and woman who has ever sung that song’ (Justin Hopper, 2014)

The Singer

I sing regularly in a Sussex-based folk choir and I have heard folk songs sung all my life by my mother who has performed in folk clubs around Sussex for the past 40 years. Following in Shirley Collins footsteps, literally and figuratively, I intend to sing the folk songs of Sussex in sites of resonance. I will aim to publish one recording a day, with an introduction to the site, the history of the song, and then an unaccompanied performance in situ. As a researcher, I am particularly interested in notions of landscape that are haptic and auditive rather than visual, therefore I intend for the recording to be purely audio and to discuss how imagination might add to the process of landscaping for the audience.

The Songs

A multitude of folk songs are set in the month of May, and it is within this month that I will be posting my research. I hope that I will be able to explore why May has proven such a muse for singers of the British Isles, by discussions around the social and agricultural practices of this time of year and the processes of nature that have inspired them. Although in contemporary times we have been able to record folk songs, both in the written and the audio form, for this project I would like to interview Sussex folk singers and learn songs orally from them. This method both continues original traditions of practice and reflects how I have absorbed folk songs throughout my life.

Brighton Vox Choir – Firle, Sussex

The Setting

At the outset of the projects I had wanted to learn songs throughout the British Isles and sing them in sites of well-known archaeological merit. My decision to narrow the perspective is two-fold; my postdoctoral research argues that landscaping is a process and Sussex, being my home county, has been the site of my formative landscapes [or lifeworld as Pearson and Shanks term it: ‘the totality of a person’s direct involvement with the places and environments in everyday life’ (Pearson, Shanks 2005: p. 153)]; furthermore I believe that this will contribute to notions of the everyday and vernacular archaeologies explored throughout Public Archaeology 2015. Therefore, whilst I may record a song on the lofty heights of Chanctonbury Ring, I may also record a song walking through Lancing Recreational Ground on my way to the Co-op.

Questions?

1. Public engagement as it stands would be with those who are engaged in the project through twitter and the blog, and the singers that I approach to teach me the songs of Sussex. How might I engage the non-blogging public? Do I perhaps perform all 30 songs at the end of May at a local folk club? Or do I sing the songs live at the sites with people around and therefore have both a non-web and non-folk audience?
2. If archaeology is a subject concerned with artefacts, how might we begin to perceive the artefacts of folk performance practices? Am I the artefact? Or are their traces of songs imprinted on the land? Is this interpretative archaeology?
3. Is landscape the preserve of the seeing subject? How might folk song contribute to a multi-layered conception of landscape – or a deep map?
4. Beyond Mike Pearson and Mike Shanks’ collaboration Theatre/Archaeology (2005), are there texts or projects of interest that may help me to formulate my ideas around the relationship between performance and archaeology?

https://soundcloud.com/elizabeth-bennett-4

Hooper, J (2014). By The Mark On His Hand. Available at: http://www.justin-hopper.com/by-the-mark-on-his-hand/ [Accessed on 11/08/2014]. Electronic.

Pearson, M. Shanks, M (2005). Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge. Print.