GRAND CHALLENGE No. 5: COMMUNICATING ARCHAEOLOGY Outreach and Narratives in Professional Practice

Communicating archaeology to non-expert audiences can convey the role and value of the discipline, implant respect for heritage, and connect descendant communities to their past. A challenge facing archaeology communicators is to translate complex ideas while retaining their richness and maximizing audience engagement. This article discusses how archaeologists can effectively communicate with non-experts using narrative and visual tools. We provide a communication strategy and three case studies from North America. The examples include the packaging of archaeological theory in the shape of mystery novels for student consumption; the use of artwork to anchor archaeological narratives in public outreach; and, the use of historical fiction to reformat archaeological content for Indigenous communities. We conclude with a discussion of outreach capacities and some of the risks and rewards of professional interactions with non-archaeologists

Mangling Symbols of Gentility in the Wild West: Case Studies in Interpretive Archaeology

Published by the American Anthropological AssociationGentility (a.k.a., ???Victorian culture???) was the preeminent model of propriety in mid- and\ud late-19th-century California. Thanks to industrial production and an efficient supply\ud network, the genteel mores of Victoria???s England came to be expressed in a suite of\ud artifacts that became de rigueur for anyone who aspired to a position of respectability???\ud even in the wilds of the American West. The trappings of gentility, however, were not\ud used only by the aspiring white middle-class to achieve some kind of nervous social\ud acceptance. In this essay, we present archaeological examples from the Mexican-California ruling class, a Chinese-American merchant, expensive brothels, and the home of African-American porters, to show that the symbols of gentility had power outside the\ud parlors of the white middle-class and that other groups manipulated the powerful symbolic content of these artifacts for their own diverse ends

King: Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective

Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective Thomas F. King. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2005, 166 pp., $21.95 (paper)

“Several Paradise Ladies Are Visiting in Town” : Gender Strategies in the Early Industrial West

ABSTRACT Gender can provide a powerful interpretive construct in historical archaeology and should not be an optional dimension in archaeological site interpretation. As a central structuring principle of society, gender is not limited to either specific artifact categories and site types or to women per se. Rather, it is a fundamental part of what organizes women and men into historically and archaeologically recognizable units like households and structures their relationships with the larger community and society around them. The following discussion presents a general overview of current approaches to gender in anthropology and history. Two case studies drawn from the 19th-century American West demonstrate some of the implications this discourse has for both the data and the interpretive frameworks employed in historical archaeology