Practicing Archaeology (and Science) in the Current Political Climate – Archaeology Lecture by Anne Pyburn

UNC Asheville will present its first archaeology lecture of the fall 2019 semester on Sept. 25, focusing on how archaeologists and other scientists can and must engage more successfully with the public in the current political and mass media climate. This talk by Anne Pyburn is free and open to everyone at 7:30 p.m. in UNC Asheville’s Sherrill Center, Ingles Mountain View Room. It is presented as part of the Archaeological Institute of America’s (AIA) 124th Lecture Program that will bring leading scholars to audiences across the U.S. during the 2019-20 academic year.

Anne Pyburn is Provost’s Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. She has written and presented widely, and her published works include Collision or Collaboration: Archaeology Encounters Economic Development (co-editor with P.G. Gould, 2018, New York, Springer).

Abstract: Practicing Archaeology (and Science) in the Current Political Climate

Contemporary trends in mass media communication indicate serious confusion in the public consciousness about the nature of science and the status of evidential reasoning. Archaeologists, in an effort to make esoteric research programs interesting to the public, have contributed to this problem by providing over-simplified stories and “lessons from the past” that overinterpret evidence and mystify analysis. We have allowed public intellectuals from other disciplines to speak for us, and we have failed to address the dangerous gap between what we were saying about the past from what the public was learning about the past. One result has been that archaeologists’ news stories inadvertently promote political values that their data do not support.

Archaeology is not alone among the sciences in its attempt to enchant the public with fashionable explanations and easy answers, so the problems and the potential remedies for archaeology’s missteps with publicity are related and similar to those of other disciplines. In this presentation I consider how archaeologists and other scientists might recast our public interactions to encourage a more well-informed citizenry. I argue for a more respectful engagement with the public and insist that it isn’t necessary to be either tedious or simplistic to entertain an audience.

This event is co-sponsored by the Western North Carolina chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America, and UNC Asheville’s Departments of Art and Art History, and Classics. For more information, contact Laurel Taylor, UNC Asheville senior lecturer in classics and art history, ltaylor@unca.edu or 828.251.6290.

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Accessibility Contact: Diane Buzzini (828.251.6934) dbuzzini@unca.edu

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