This book of nine selected papers from the 2010 Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology conference Engaging the Recent Past: Public, Political Post-Medieval Archaeology, is presented with an introduction by the editor, Chris Dalglish, and a concluding chapter by Siân Jones, making a compact and focussed book of about 180 pages. As the title of the conference, though not the book, makes clear, it is about politically engaged archaeology, and its public role, and has therefore a tendency to concentrate largely on the ambiguous and complex nature of public engagement with archaeology, rather than the material culture itself, a point made by Jones in her conclusion (p 172).
The papers come from across the British Isles, and are split into two sections, the first of which looks at memories & communities. The first two papers, by Catriona Mackie & Harold Mytum, look at the archaeology of the Isle of Man; Mackie considers the role of the open air museum in Cregneash in creating a unified, and over-simplified cultural and national identity for the island, whilst Mytum looks at the use of a distinctive Manx identity in war memorials relating to the First World War, and the parallel forgetting of the island's use for internment of enemy subjects. The three papers following this, by Melanie Johnson & Biddy Simpson, Michael Nevell, and Robert Isherwood, consider case studies of the role of the public in archaeological projects, and how these projects allow individuals and groups to create memories, and explore new identities through the past.
A second section, themed around the engagement of the past in the present, opens with a particularly interesting paper by Audrey Horning about the politics of material culture and archaeology in a dichotomous community, in Northern Ireland. This is in marked contrast to the second paper, by James Dixon, which proposes the use of archaeological techniques for the analysis of modern political problems. The two following papers, by Powers et al. and Wilson et al. (two papers largely by the same authors), consider a particularly sensitive aspect of post-medieval material culture, the analysis of human remains, and argue for consistent strategies and a research framework for approaching the material.
This is particularly relevant book at the present time. A shift in the priorities of archaeology has been taking place over the last 20 years, shaped only partly by archaeologists themselves. Research-led archaeological projects are now frequently funded or part-funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and as a result, public involvement must be built in from the start. And this is not a small thing; a project built around the public has a different shape and priorities from one led purely by academic demands, not least because public interests and concerns are frequently not those of the professional discipline. Increasingly, we have to ask, right at the beginning of the project 'who are we doing this for?', and pick our way through the complex issues involved in integrating professional, academic and public values in the structure of our work. This book, aimed at the professional or academic, makes explicit some of the pitfalls and problems along the way, and also some of the benefits, both obvious and unexpected, for all concerned.