I am part of Sadie Watson’s FLF project ‘Measuring, maximising and transforming public benefit from UK Government infrastructure investment in archaeology’. This is a vast and ambitious project, and my role consists of analysing how archaeologists and the construction sector work together. This includes the way in which both groups communicate and interact with each other.

A good relationship between archaeology and construction will have many positive consequences. This could mean archaeology playing a greater role during the planning process or contributing towards community-building during construction projects. On the other hand, a more difficult relationship could mean not only wasting archaeology’s potential, but also possible delays in construction or unsafe practices.

How does an ethnographic approach help?

The approach that we are taking in this section of the project is an ethnographic one. And while the word ethnography might remind us of far-flung locations, it is an incredibly useful tool to study social practices and interactions in our own societies. In this project, we are focusing on semi-structured interviews, where we have a set of key themes to talk about with the people in these relationships (such as managers and supervisors) in both archaeology and construction.

So how does this kind of project work?

The first steps include two crucial aspects: designing the research questions and developing an ethical protocol.

The research questions need to be specific but also leave room for the interviewees to feel free to talk extensively. The ethical protocol is also fundamental, since we are asking our interviewees to share their experiences and knowledge with us. It is our duty to protect the information they provide, and to guarantee that they remain anonymous, so they can speak freely.

After this, interviews take place, and their contents are transcribed (written out in note form). Then those notes are analysed and coded, which basically consists of adding conceptual or thematic labels to different fragments, thus connecting them with the research questions and allowing us to compare and connect answers from different interviews. It is through this process that we start to see the logic behind the answers, and to connect the dots, turning data into knowledge.

What have we discovered?

While it is a bit too early to share any definite results, there are some things that we are finding fascinating.

For example, it seems that an element that plays a huge role in the relationship between Archaeology and Construction is… communication. In the vast majority of cases, good communication encapsulates a positive relationship between both disciplines, thus opening the door to unleash the potential of archaeology to add public benefit to developer-led projects.

Our preliminary results also suggest that we cannot escape the larger social, economic and symbolic context where both disciplines interact. For example, archaeology has been seen, perhaps, as a burden in developer-led projects. And while this is changing rapidly, that stereotype still looms on the horizon.

And a final aspect that we are finding quite intriguing is the fact that archaeologists and constructors do not always speak the same language…which is odd, as indeed we do technically use the same language and work in rather similar environments! But the concepts we use do not always have the same meaning. We may also use similar terms to measure how things are going – such as the success of a project – but are not measuring the same things.

We’ll be able to explain this in more detail after finishing our research, so keep your eyes peeled!

Social value Research