The Values of Community Archaeology: A Comparative Assessment between the UK and US

This thesis seeks to address issues surrounding the growing phenomenon of the community archaeology project, and the lack of criteria and methodologies for assessing their effectiveness. It focuses on community excavations in a range of contexts, both in the UK and US. It assesses the values these projects produce for communities and evaluates what community archaeology actually does, concluding that such projects frequently fail to balance the desired outcomes of their stakeholders, with the short-term nature of funding a particular problem. Finally suggestions are made for future community archaeology research project designs.