Public Benefit as Community Wellbeing in Archaeology

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Opportunities for Improving Local Wellbeing: a strategic framework
  • 2.1 What Do We Mean by Wellbeing?
  • 2.2 Two Key Challenges: Complexity and Contestation
  • 2.3 Towards a Strategy
  • 2.4 Four Domains of Action
• 3. Examples of Wellbeing and Archaeological Excavation (Past and Potential)
• 4. Critical Success Factors
  • 4.1 Measurement and Evaluation
  • 4.2 Why Archaeology Works for Wellbeing
• 5. Where Now?

Figure 1: Our Wellbeing aims

Figure 2: The four domains of wellbeing and heritage in a proposed 2x2 matrix

Figure 3: An indicative example of the application of the four domains of wellbeing and heritage to an organisational portfolio

Figure 4: Indicative example of how the archaeological process at a simple level relates to the four 'domains'

Figure 5: An example of a wellbeing priority for heritage and archaeology taken from Historic England's draft strategy

Figure 6: Example of applying young people's interventions on the four domains in relation to the archaeological process

Figure 7: Likely critical success factors for working with young offenders

Figure 8: New Economics Foundation indicator structure adapted from their national accounts framework. Source: Ander et al. 2013

Figure 9: The Five Ways to Wellbeing based on source: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/mental-capital-and-wellbeing

Figure 10: A proposal for the Unique Selling Point of archaeology for delivering wellbeing

Figure 11: Important or critical factors in making the case for the benefit of wellbeing in archaeology

Figure 12: Stages on the journey to having wellbeing at the heart of what we do and five ways to drive an approach to achieve this

Ander, E., Thomson, L. Noble, G., Lanceley, A., Menon, U. and Chatterjee, H. 2013 'Heritage, health and well-being: assessing the impact of a heritage focused intervention on health and well-being', International Journal of Heritage Studies 19(3), 229-242. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2011.651740

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 2010 Measuring Progress: Sustainable Development Indicators 2010. PDF

Everill, P., Bennett, R. and Burnell, K. 2020 'Dig in: an evaluation of the role of archaeological fieldwork for the improved wellbeing of military veterans', Antiquity 94(373), 212-27. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.85

Mapes, L.V. 2009 Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of the Tse-whit-zen Village, Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Nimenko ,W. and Simpson, R.G. 2013 'Rear Operations Group medicine: a pilot study of psychological decompression in a Rear Operations Group during Operation HERRICK 14', BMJ Military Health 2014 160, 295-97. https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/160/4/295

Schaepe, D.M., Angelback, B., Snook, D. and Welch, J.R. 2017 'Archaeology as therapy: connecting belongings, knowledge, time, place, and well-being', Current Anthropology 58(4), 502-33. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/692985

Sloane, B. 2021 'Making the Case for the Public Benefits of Development-led Archaeology', Internet Archaeology 57. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.57.17