Most of the existing surveys did not look specifically at how archaeology and archaeologists are depicted in people’s minds but had other aims. Some of the cited results were therefore of a fairly general nature. Others were inconclusive as to their precise implications for the interest of this study. In practice, the existing studies investigated mostly one (or more) of three issues:

(1) public awareness and support for site preservation, for aboriginal claims to archaeological sites or finds, or for archaeology generally (incl. teaching and funding);

(2) the extent to which popular knowledge about the past, heritage management (incl. legislation), and archaeology generally are accurate and realistic;

(3) basic social parameters about visitors, sources of information about archaeological knowledge etc.

These issues are doubtlessly significant in their own right. The results of the surveys cited can serve to develop more effective means of communicating to the public about archaeology, improving education about both the past, the ownership or the best management of archaeological heritage, and increasing the support base for archaeological research and site preservation. My own interest and the perspective taken in this book are different though, and I am not concerned with gauging public support for archaeology or preservation, evaluating the accuracy of popular beliefs about archaeology or heritage, or establishing basic demographic and sociological facts about visitors and their knowledge. Instead, this work’s focus is on attitudes about archaeology as reflected in popular culture. Surprisingly, this field has not yet attracted a great amount of empirical attention. Ironically, although archaeologists are usually obsessed with context in the past, the cultural and social context of archaeology itself is still little known. As Nick Merriman (2004: 15) recently argued, ”archaeologists have until recently not treated their relationship with the public as something which merited their academic attention.” He went on to state that it is time now to study that relationship with the same degree of rigour as archaeologists study societies of the past.

In chapter 7, I will be discussing some of the wider implications of the issues discussed in this chapter. Before that, I need to delve deeper into the main themes characterising the portrayal of archaeology in popular culture, and the main strategies available to pofessional archaeologists of engaging with these themes.

Forward to The archaeologist in popular culture: key themes

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