Assessing Collaboration: Archaeological Applications Abroad

Abstract

Collaborating with communities has become an increasingly popular practice in archaeological projects all over the world. However, the strategies used for engaging communities have broad applications that are greatly determined by the social, economic and political climates of each region. How, then, are archaeologists supposed to ethically and professionally engage the communities their research impacts across these various contexts? Should there be a universal scale in which to measure and gauge community collaboration, and how can we assess that impact? My research uses strategies for assessing collaboration from various regions and disciplines, and applies them to an international context. Two archaeological projects in Greece and Jordan serve as the case study subjects for a formal assessment that measures levels of collaboration in five different categories and in two separate community groups. In conjunction with self-assessments taken by the archaeologists and students associated with each project, the results form a tool that comprehensively represents the needs and goals of all stakeholders associated. Ideally, this tool can be utilized to enhance our understandings on how the communities we work with perceive our projects and what must be done in order to understand how the goals of archaeologists and communities intersect each other.