Archaeological Research Program Receives Special Recognition from Archaeological Institute of America

Program is presented as example of outstanding outreach and public participation in archaeology.
There are likely scores of programs that deserve kudos for outstanding efforts at reaching out to students, volunteers, and the interested public in the field of archaeology. This has often been done through field schools, volunteer opportunities, special exhibitions and educational programs, and news releases of new developments and discoveries for public readership consumption. In support of these efforts, the prestigious Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) recently launched a program designed to recognize programs that exemplified a dedication to promoting archaeology to the wider public. Beginning new in 2011, AIA's Excavation Outreach Contest has considered application entries from a variety of archaeological excavation and research programs, evaluating them based on the Institute's professed motto, "Excavate, Educate, Advocate". They chose their winner for 2012 -- the Maya Research Program (MRP).

To get to the winner, the AIA announced an open call for submissions in January, asking for a 100-word description of a project along with a photo for the AIA website. AIA members, students, and the general public were then given the opportunity to vote for their chosen outreach project. This year’s entries came from projects in Manzanola, Colorado; Bamburgh, UK; Blue Creek, Belize; Mule Creek, New Mexico; Oxford, UK; East Lansing, Michigan; Jujuy, Argentina; and Zapotitlan, Mexico. All of them exhibited exceptional outreach elements, but only one, in the end, rose to the top by a wide margin. The MRP collected almost one third of the votes.

The MRP has sponsored fieldwork in northwestern Belize for the past two decades, with an energetic, proactive program encouraging public participation in their excavations and related projects each year. Recently, the MRP caught media attention when it's participants managed to raise funds to purchase the endangered archaeological site of Grey Fox and prevent its destruction. Without the purchase, the unexplored site would have disappeared under the bull-dozer for land clearing, a process that leads to the loss of cultural resources as well as bio-mass destruction.

For more information about the recent Excavation Outreach Contest, go to http://www.archaeological.org/outreach/contest.

For information about the Maya Research Program, go to http://www.mayaresearchprogram.org/.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2012/article/archaeological-research-program-receives-special-recognition-from-archaeological-institute-of-america