There is growing awareness of the importance of public outreach in archaeology. Many professional archaeologists argue that in order to ensure continued funding we must communicate the relevance of our discipline to the public in a more effective manner. Furthermore, it is often argued that public outreach and education provides perhaps the only reliable defense against looting and rampant psuedoarchaeology.
Current outreach activities, however, tend to focus on what archaeologists have discovered about the past. While this type of outreach is important, a more effective model for public outreach would focus on the methods of archaeology, rather than the results. Archaeology, with its focus on multiple lines of evidence, intertwining of the sciences and humanities, and multi-cultural perspective provides a unique model for addressing and answering questions, a model which could serve as a base for education. Promoting the methods of archaeology as an educational model, or at the very least, remembering the methods in our outreach activities, may be, in the long run, the most effective method for establishing the relevance of our discipline.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-4616 |
| Date | 01 January 2002 |
| Creators | Daehnke, Jon Darin |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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