This book is about the portrayal of archaeology in contemporary popular culture. It is not a manual for a better didactics improving the public understanding of the discipline of archaeology. There will be important lessons for professional archaeology to be learned, but these lie on a more general level than specific methods and approaches applicable to individual public education initiatives.

Many archaeologists use the term ”archaeology” indiscriminately to refer both to their own field or subject and to the past being studied, for example in the book title The Archaeology of Britain: An Introduction from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Industrial Revolution in the magazine title Archäologie in Deutschland. I do not. This book is concerned with the portrayal of the field or subject of archaeology only. I am not disputing the great significance of popular representations of the past but they were not the topic of my research.

I will be presenting important facts, analyses and interpretations, and a few potentially controversial arguments about the social role of archaeology. My intended audience are professional archaeologists and others working in the (broadly defined) heritage sector as well as students studying fields such as archaeology, heritage, cultural studies or science studies. The book will also be relevant to all those interested in the field that has become known as the ”public understanding of science” and in studies of the depiction of science and scientists in popular culture (e.g. Haynes 1994; Bjorklund 2001; Kirby 2003; Weingart et al 2003).

This is a draft manuscript. All illustrations suggested in this manuscript are provisional. More figures will be needed to give this work a suitable visual form. Full publication remains to be undertaken in 2005.

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