When I told colleagues that I was investigating the portrayal of archaeology in contemporary popular culture, many thought immediately that I was interviewing people. Popular culture is however not identical with widespread perceptions or beliefs – although these are often reflected in popular culture.

Nevertheless, I would have loved to obtain some new empirical data of how people actually perceive archaeology and archaeologists. Unfortunately I did not succeed in getting the necessary funding. This chapter will therefore briefly review several surveys with results relevant to my study that were conducted by others. Unfortunately the amount of such existing research is very limited. The British archaeologist Nick Merriman (2004: 8) is right in stating that archaeologists have largely been ”communicating blindly to an audience they do not understand, and (that) it is no wonder that so many attempts at communicating archaeology result in boredom or incomprehension.”

A small number of polls and surveys investigating public attitudes towards archaeology and archaeological heritage have however been carried out, mostly over the past decade. In Sweden, a representative survey of the adult Swedish population was conducted in 2002, carrying the title ”What does the cultural environment mean to you?” (Statistiska Centralbyrån 2002). Its aims were broadly similar to English Heritage’s representative study of attitudes towards heritage among adults in England (English Heritage 2000). Both projects related to heritage in general and particularly to the situation in their respective countries. The English survey contained no questions relating specifically to archaeological issues.

Polls and surveys that were specifically geared towards archaeological issues include:

- Nick Merriman’s postal survey of behaviour and attitudes concerning heritage, museums and the past among a representative sample of British adults (Merriman 1991),

- Lisa Mackinney’s interviews about archaeology with a relatively small number of visitors of the California Academy of Sciences (Mackinney 1994a, 1994b),

- David Pokotylo’s co-authored reports, based on questionnaires distributed by his students, about public attitudes towards archaeological resources and their management in the greater Vancouver area (Pokotylo and Mason 1991; Pokotylo and Guppy 1999),

- the Society of American Archaeology’s representative survey of adult Americans about public perceptions and attitudes about archaeology (Ramos and Duganne 2000),

- David Pokotylo’s research about attitudes towards the archaeological heritage among a representative sample of the Canadian population (Pokotylo 2002),

- and a number of other, either very specific or fairly informally conducted local surveys (e.g. Paynton 2002; Högberg forthcoming).

Some interesting insights from these existing surveys are relevant also to the argument of this book.

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