Whenever a building site appears, often so do the archaeologists, looking to study what may be found deep beneath the streets.
Normally, this information is recorded, written up, and while of considerable use and interest to historians, there’s not been that much public engagement with the history that’s discovered.
There have been some excellent examples of building sites being opened to the public on weekends, but candidly, it’s not an easy thing to let the public onto building sites. Sometimes, an excavation leads to an exhibition, but not often.
So, a UKRI funded Fellowship project has been set up to work on how public outreach can be improved.
This is important as the archaeology is funded by the property developers, and they also have a remit to be nice to their neighbours, and if showing that they can tick their “social responsibility” box by making the archaeology more available, then we all benefit.
The survey can be completed here.
The survey is more about the public benefit (social value) than archaeology itself.
