Possibilities of public excavations in the urban context

Abstract

<p>Although urban and rural sites constitute inherently different contexts for community engagement in archaeology, this distinction has not really been studied. This article sets out to survey urban sites’ advantages and disadvantages, the participants’ motivation for attending as well as achieved values as perceived by the volunteers and archaeology course participants at Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum (Turku, Finland). This dataset is compared to similar data collected from participants of public excavations in rural sites. The research suggests that the greatest benefit of urban sites is their easy physical and mental accessibility, and these qualities would make urban sites especially suitable for participants without prior experience in archaeology. For all the groups studied, the main reasons for attending were the will to learn new skills and knowledge and to assist in archaeological research. All the studied groups also felt that participating in public archaeology enhanced their well-being.<br></p>