scholarly journals Sharing Stories: Students’ Experiences in Archaeological Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-28
Author(s):  
Magdalena Kozicka ◽  
Ewa Wielocha
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
Nicolaus Copernicus ◽  
Mass Events

AbstractSociety of Archaeology Students (SAS), in Polish: Koło Naukowe Studentów Archeologii (KNSA), is one of the oldest student societies working within the Institute of Archaeology of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. In recent years SAS began to work in cooperation with other archaeological, historical and educational organisations, as well as with museums and open-air archaeological reservations. Most of our work is focused around building and maintaining the archaeological consciousness in contemporary society – not only through participating in various mass events but also through preparing workshops for people from local communities, as well as through adding archaeological impressions to various museum events and mass outdoor reenactment festivals. Within the current outlook on archaeological methodology, those actions are linked to so-called public archaeology – the concept that is still somewhat new in many areas of archaeological activities in Poland.The following article concerns strategies that are present in the SAS’ archaeological popularisation initiatives, as well as our reflections and inquiries on the topic of archaeological education in contemporary reality, with its numerous homogenised, standardised or idealised concepts of the past, often mirrored in many historical festivals’ conventions. Through our observations based upon various experiences, we would like to try to determine how the archaeological education and popularisation could be more widely recognised not only as a valuable but rather as an inseparable part of being an archaeolo-gist – university scholar or a field-working one.

To be or not to be? Public archaeology as a tool of public opinion and the dilemma of intellectuality

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Almansa Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Expert Opinion ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Public Debates

AbstractStating the value of archaeology for contemporary society is a very difficult task hardly undertaken by archaeologists. Work with a contemporary record directly linked to local communities, and the approach of public archaeology, have helped to bring society and archaeology closer together. However, the role of a public intellectual goes beyond archaeology, delving into current social worries. Is it possible to play this game from archaeology? The multiple and complex relations between archaeology and society open the door to participation in public debates, but we stand to lose our essence. We face a Shakespearean dilemma, a choice between having an influential voice in the present, or just an expert opinion.

Public Archaeology in Poland: State of the Art and Future Directions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Michał Pawleta
Keyword(s):  
Present State ◽  
General Public ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Archaeological Heritage ◽  
Archaeological Practice ◽  
The Past

This article aims to conceptualize the present state of public archaeology in Poland, which has recently become topical in archaeological practice. The author defines public archaeology and discusses the historical background of such activities in the context of the specific traditions of Polish archaeology. He then describes the main forms of outreach activities undertaken by archaeologists in Poland and presents community-oriented initiatives that go beyond the education of the general public about the past and strive to engage local communities in activities focused on archaeology and archaeological heritage. He concludes by outlining some directions that this sub-discipline may adopt in future.

Communicating archaeological heritage

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-171
Author(s):  
Shuhaida Md Noor ◽  
Mastura Jaafar ◽  
Yugeetha Balan
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Archaeological Heritage ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Village Elders ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract Existing archaeological heritage communication focuses on educating the public by emphasising scientific knowledge from the perspectives of experts (e.g. archaeologists), often sidelining the perspectives of the local community. Nevertheless, the local community’s perspective is equally important in providing humanistic insights and in connecting the past to the present context. This research explores how local communities make meaning of and relate heritage to their social identity. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 purposely-sampled representatives from various local community groups in Lenggong Valley, Malaysia; including village heads, village elders and individuals from various social and cultural backgrounds. The findings provide interesting insights into how the local community defines and connects to heritage. Importantly, this study highlights multilayered dimensions of archaeological heritage that are intricately connected to contemporary society. Incorporating these wider dimensions into archaeological heritage communication will result in communication that is more socially, culturally and psychologically relevant, thus engendering greater interest and appreciation.

Performing States-Of-In-Between: Dogs, Parrots, and Other Humans in Recent Austrian Performances

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-310
Author(s):  
Sabine Wilke
Keyword(s):  
Fine Arts ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Dramatic Effect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
The World ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Recent Developments

Every late spring since 1951, the Wiener Festwochen bring performers from around the world to Vienna for an opportunity to share recent developments in performance styles and present them to a Viennese public that seems to be increasingly open to experimentation. These festival weeks solidify a specific form of Viennese self-understanding and self-representation as a culture that is rooted in performance. This essay seeks to link two recent Austrian performances—one of them was part of the Wiener Festwochen in 2016, the other was staged in downtown Linz during the past few years—to this Austrian and specifically Viennese culture of performance by reading them as contemporary articulations of a tradition of radical performance art that can be traced back to the Viennese Actionism of the sixties and later feminist articulations in the seventies and eighties. They play on the dramatic effect of these actions, specifically their joy in cruelty, chaos, and orgiastic intoxication, by staging regressions and thus making visible what has been dammed up and repressed in contemporary society.1 Just as their historical models, these two performances merge the performing and the fine arts and they highlight provocative, controversial, and, at times, violent content. But they do it in an interspecies context that adds an entire layer of complexity to the project of societal and cultural critique.

Touching the Past to Remember the Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-397
Author(s):  
Meghan J. Dudley ◽  
Jenna Domeischel
Keyword(s):  
Social Memory ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Introductory Article

ABSTRACTAlthough we, as archaeologists, recognize the value in teaching nonprofessionals about our discipline and the knowledge it generates about the human condition, there are few of these specialists compared to the number of archaeologists practicing today. In this introductory article to the special section titled “Touching the Past to Learn the Past,” we suggest that, because of our unique training as anthropologists and archaeologists, each of us has the potential to contribute to public archaeology education. By remembering our archaeological theory, such as social memory, we can use the artifacts we engage with on a daily basis to bridge the disconnect between what the public hopes to gain from our interactions and what we want to teach them. In this article, we outline our perspective and present an overview of the other three articles in this section that apply this approach in their educational endeavors.

scholarly journals Indestructible Pasts and Paranoid Presents: John Franzen against Active Forgetting in Purity

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Cristina Garrigós
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Event ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Conscious Process ◽  
Unconscious Desire ◽  
Selection Of

Forgetting and remembering are as inevitably linked as lifeand death. Sometimes, forgetting is motivated by a biological disorder, brain damage, or it is the product of an unconscious desire derived from a traumatic event (psychological repression). But in some cases, we can motivate forgetting consciously (thought suppression). It is through the conscious repression of memories that we can find self-preservation and move forward, although this means that we create a fable of our lives, as Nietzsche says in his essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1997). In Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Purity (2015), forgetting is an active and conscious process by which the characters choose to forget certain episodes of their lives to be able to construct new identities. The erased memories include murder, economical privileges derived from illegal or unethical commercial processes, or dark sexual episodes. The obsession with forgetting the past links the lives of the main characters, and structures the narrative of the novel. The motivated erasure of memories becomes, thus, a way that the characters have to survive and face the present according to a (fake) narrative that they have constructed. But is motivated forgetting possible? Can one completely suppress facts in an active way? This paper analyses the role of forgetting in Franzen’s novel in relation to the need in our contemporary society to deny, hide, or erase uncomfortable data from our historical or personal archives; the need to make disappear stories which we do not want to accept, recognize, and much less make known to the public. This is related to how we manage information in the age of technology, the “selection” of what is to be the official story, and how we rewrite our own history

scholarly journals No news is better than evil news. Clearing up the way to face Alternative Archaeologies

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Jaime Almansa Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Professional Discipline ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Interpretation ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Way

While Archaeology started to take form as a professional discipline, Alternative Archaeologies grew in several ways. As the years went by, the image of Archaeology started being corrupted by misconceptions and a lot of imagination, and those professionals that were claiming to be scientists forgot one of their first responsibilities; the public. This lack of interest is one of the reasons why today, a vast majority of society believes in many clichés of the past that alternative archaeologists have used to build a fictitious History that is not innocent at all. From UFOs and the mysteries of great civilizations to the political interpretation of the past, the dangers of Alternative Archaeologies are clear and under our responsibility. This paper analyzes this situation in order to propose a strategy that may make us the main characters of the popular imagery in the mid-term. Since confrontation and communication do not seem to be effective approaches, we need a change in the paradigm based on Public Archaeology and the increase of our presence in everyday life.

scholarly journals The vegetation of Tshanini Game Reserve and a comparison with equivalent units in the Tembe Elephant Park in Maputaland, South Africa

Koedoe ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J.Y. Gaugris ◽  
W.S. Matthews ◽  
M.W. Van Rooyen ◽  
J. Du P. Bothma
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Management Decisions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Renewable Natural Resources ◽  
Game Reserve ◽  
Northern Maputaland

The Tembe Elephant Park was proclaimed in 1983 after negotiations between the then KwaZulu Bureau of Natural Resources and the Tembe Tribal Authority in consultation with the local communities of northern Maputaland, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The park boundaries were subsequently fenced and animal numbers started to increase. The fence has kept the utilisation of renewable natural resources by the local communities at bay for the past 19 years. In this period, the vegetation of the park has been utilised only by the indigenous fauna, but it has been affected by management decisions and possibly also regional environmental changes.

scholarly journals Empoderando vidas y naciones resilientes desde el giro biográfico-local.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseba Agirreazkuenaga
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global History ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
Local Research

In order to establish and consolidate the themes and ways of writing history, historians must be attentive to the global and local public agenda. Empowered lives - Resilient nations is a program for human development promoted by the UN. As long as there are local powers and local communities it will be necessary to carry out biographical-local research, analyzing these powers and communities in the past and present, establishing resilience patterns. We transform the historical research of the local past into global history. The personal and the political cannot be dissociated because “The personal is political and the political is personal”. Even eating is a political practice in today’s globalized world.

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