A child's view of the past: Exploring public archaeology through the lens of the Avebury Papers

Georgia Smith, Undergraduate Student, Department of Archaeology

Others involved in this project: Dr Colleen Morgan (dissertation supervisor) and Dr Fran Allfrey, Department of Archaeology

Summary

The Avebury Papers project is digitising and sharing over 100 years of research on the Avebury monument, and emphasises open research practices. Avebury's accessibility draws significant public interest, and the community aspects of the project include public lectures, a blog, artist residencies, and a volunteer program to digitise the archive. The researcher’s dissertation aims to make archival research accessible to young people through the Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC). A session in December 2023 engaged sixteen YAC members, aged 8 to 16, in transcribing historic excavation diaries, and impact of the session was measured via questionnaires, informing future open-access resources. This initiative underscores the importance of accessible engagement in archaeology, and the researcher added to the field through creating resources which were made available on the YAC website to be used by other branches, teachers, home educators and other industry leaders.

Case Study

The Avebury Papers is an intensive investigation and digitisation of the material and paper archive, designed to critically engage with and disseminate over 100 years of research on the UNESCO World Heritage monument of Avebury. Avebury is a lesser known yet incredibly charismatic Neolithic monument that is open to the public, in contrast with Stonehenge, which is fenced and inaccessible most of the year. Avebury therefore attracts an incredible amount of local and international interest and while the digitised archive will be readily available online, smaller-scale interventions are key to invite people to engage with our research on their own terms. This multi-faceted and multi-scalar approach is vital for embedding open research principles and practice in the Avebury Papers.

The researcher leading a YAC session at Avebury, standing outside the Great Barn and Dovecote

^{The researcher leading a YAC session outside the Great Barn and Dovecote}

There is an extensive outreach programme in place at Avebury with 30+ volunteers helping to digitise the archive, a series of public lectures, a blog, and artists in residence who are reflecting on the archive for a future exhibition. Within this flurry of activity, this dissertation seeks to introduce and make archival research accessible to young people. Working within the framework of the Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC), the researcher designed a session with two activities that transformed materials from the Avebury archive and explored the methods of transcribing historic excavation diaries. This session was delivered at Avebury to sixteen YAC members aged between 8 and 16 in December 2023.

The researcher leads a YAC group to the stone circle at Avebury

^{Walking to the stone circle}

Impact was measured through questionnaires for the members that asked about how they perceived the difficulty of the activities and also gathering themes of their favourite past sessions, which can be used to inform future researchers who want to produce open access resources for YAC based on their own research. The accessible nature of the YAC activity will have ongoing impact - the resources created are available on the YAC website to be used by other branches, teachers, home educators and leaders from other groups.

Throughout this research the researcher learned how vital accessible engagement with open research practice is within archaeology. While there are many volunteers who have been able to interact with the researchers on the Avebury Papers, these volunteers have primarily been of retirement age, and therefore this activity brought this research to younger people. Delivering this activity brought the archive to life for a new generation of students. At a time where archaeology within schools is restricted - such as the scrapping of the archaeology A-level in 2016 - accessible engagement outside of the school setting is crucial for maintaining interest and inspiring the next generation of researchers. Collaboration with young archaeologists is certainly a passionate area, and opening archaeology to new audiences should always be a priority in future projects.

Funding

The UKRI-AHRC Avebury Papers supported this research through access to the Avebury archive and facilities and training in digitisation.

Links

Avebury Papers blog post: https://www.aveburypapers.org/young-archaeologists-and-time-travelling-diaries/

Activity worksheet: Transcribing and Digitising Excavation Diaries

Licensing information

Except where otherwise noted copyright in this work belongs to the author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence