This article presents the key results of a major survey carried out by the NEARCH project on the public perception of archaeology and heritage across Europe. The analysis focuses on three main points of significance for contemporary archaeological practice. The first is the image of archaeology and its definition in the perception of the general public. The second concerns the values that archaeology represents for the public. The third focuses on the social expectations placed on archaeologists and archaeology. The NEARCH survey clearly indicates that there is a significant public expectation by Europeans that archaeology should work comprehensively across a broad range of areas, and that cultural heritage management in general needs to engage more with different archaeological and heritage groups.Keywords: public archaeology, social engagement, European survey, NEARCH project Since the 2008 economic crisis, thinking about archaeology and the social sciences has changed. The repercussions of the market crisis have affected academic disciplines as well as the global economy (Schlanger & Aitchison, 2010). The primary impact on archaeological practice was the cessation of construction work, and underfunding of archaeological projects. In some countries (e.g. Spain and Ireland), commercial archaeology companies which depended on new investments were European Journal of Archaeology 21 (1) 2018, This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the same Creative Commons licence is included and the original work is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use. (Eogan, 2010;Parga-Dans, 2010). In other countries (such as Poland) the quality of archaeological work decreased (Marciniak & Pawleta, 2010). Today, archaeology and archaeologists find themselves in a new market reality. While the effective communication of the value of archaeology for understanding ourselves and our society has always been important, it has also been greatly magnified by the crisis. Therefore, the ideas championed by the public and community archaeology domains are even more critical within archaeological practice (see Merriman, 2004;Högberg, 2007; Madsuda & Okamura, 2011; Kajda et al., 2015;van den Dries, 2015). Other factors, such as institutional crises (Marciniak, 2015), denationalization of heritage policy and practice, the growing importance of multinational enterprises (Willems, 2014), greater emphasis on the human rights perspective on memory and identity (Hodder, 2010), or the relationship of heritage to well-being and quality of life (Abel et al., 2010) also have an increased influence on archaeological research. These multifaceted developments have been identified among practitioners in the field as a reflection of more general transformations with...

Abstract

Many sites related to the First World War are forgotten and neglected in today's Poland. This paper shortly presents the ways of practicing Bconflict archaeology^in Poland and it discusses results of the non-invasive archaeological survey conducted in Tuchola and Czersk, places where during the First World War Germans built and run prisoners of war camps. In the article the material remains of the camps that have survived in the local landscapes till the present are analyzed. Both sites are at the same time remembered and forgotten by local communities. This paper tries to account for oblivion as an inherent part of local landscapes that adds a unique value to them.

Kajda K. and Kostyrko M. 2016. Contemporary Dimension of Heritage Promotion -Towards Socially EngagedArchaeology. Sprawozdania Archeologiczne 68, 9-23.In this paper we present the outcomes of a public archaeology project entitled: Applied archaeology: Societypast-remote sensing. The project aimed to study the social dimension of archaeology and ways of popularizing knowledge of the past within society. In the article we present the results of the interviews and polls that were carried out with the inhabitants of the region in which archaeological work was carried out. On the basis of these results we present and analyze the social expectations towards archaeology as well as the kind of challenges presented to archaeologists by local communities. We also describe how an archaeologist and his work are perceived and ask whether society needs this kind of scientist and this kind of knowledge. Additional issues concern the boundaries of archaeological research and public perception of archaeological research methods.

This paper discusses the results of project entitled Heritage for all: Perception of the past and archaeo- logical heritage by people with intellectual disabili- ties, which the authors carried out on a group of 14 young individuals who were diagnosed with intel- lectual disabilities. The project aimed to detect how the past is perceived and conceptualized by students with learning and cognitive problems and how we, archaeologists and museum workers, can transfer knowledge about the past to them in a more ap- propriate way. This paper also provides a context for a need for inclusive archaeology as a way of practising archaeology as a discipline of social and cultural value for present-day people. Despite the limited number of people approached during the research and the specific character of education for people with intellectual disabilities in Poland, some conclusions can be drawn. First of all, participants in the project understood the past not as abstract, historical events, but rather as actions related to their personal experiences. Secondly, they remem- bered more about the past when it was shown and explained to them in an active, participatory way.