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068- EAA2019 - Francesco Ripanti
82 Plays5 years ago
Tristan of the APN spoke to Francesco Ripanti about his public archaeology work.
Francesco Ripanti has a PhD in public archaeology from the University of Pisa, with a project focusing on participation in Italian community archaeology. Graduated with a Master’s thesis in archaeological methods at the University of Siena, his research covers several themes related to public archaeology, heritage and museum studies. Greatly interested in archaeological storytelling and communication, he has tried out his skills authoring short videos set at the Roman site of Vignale (Italy), short stories about 25 objects exhibited at Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche (Ancona, Italy) and for a digital storytelling prototype at the Ancient Agora of Athens (Greece).
http://archeovideo.wordpress.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Podcast Network and Francesco Ripanti
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Francesco Ripanti from University of Pisa. And your kind of special interest is public archaeology, which is what your PhD is about. Is that correct? Yeah, you're correct.
Public Participation in Italian Community Archaeology
00:00:17
Speaker
So whereabouts, what were you kind of looking at in the research you were doing?
00:00:23
Speaker
I focus on the study of public participation in three Italian community archaeology excavations. And so I developed an operational methodology for evaluating these public participation. I mean, that's one of the biggest issues is getting quality and quantity of data in these kind of
Methodologies: Interviews and Questionnaires
00:00:48
Speaker
ways. So just very briefly, how did you actually conduct that research?
00:00:52
Speaker
I use the different tools, mainly semi-structured interviews and focus groups. I tried also with the questionnaires, but I encountered some problems related to the distribution of questionnaires in these archaeological sites because, of course, they are ongoing excavations.
00:01:17
Speaker
So when there are some events, it's very difficult to understand why those visitors who visit for the first time decide.
00:01:32
Speaker
those other people who are actually, for example, association members who help you to organize the event. So, of course, my questionnaire was not adapt. It was not the best questionnaire for how to encounter this problem. It was unexpected, so I prefer to focus more on interviews and focus groups.
00:01:57
Speaker
Because of part of interviews, you can actually ask more questions if somebody says something quite interesting. Yeah, I found out many interesting insights that I didn't expect initially. I didn't expect initially. So yeah, I definitely appreciate a lot of interviews.
Presentation on Archaeological Site Futures in Tuscany
00:02:20
Speaker
And you're giving actually a presentation on all of this work tomorrow.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, tomorrow I'm going to have a presentation related to one of these questions concerning the future of these archaeological sites according to their insider and outsider stakeholders.
00:02:42
Speaker
What is it like in, and this is in the Tuscany region of Italy, that's correct. So these kind of digs, I mean, they're obviously community digs and they obviously require things like funding and resource.
Funding Italian Community Archaeology Projects
00:02:57
Speaker
How are excavations like dealt financed in Italy? Is it from the government? Is it from private sources? Where's the money coming from?
00:03:08
Speaker
The Italian context is very different than, for example, the English context in regards to community archaeology projects. Basically, there isn't a general framework regarding fundings.
00:03:25
Speaker
For example, these three case studies have its own organization for this. For example, Projodel Molino is based on citizen science.
00:03:43
Speaker
So there are some, let's say, volunteers, citizen scientists, that pay to do field work for non-invasive operations because the Italian legislation does not consent to dig to those who are not archaeologists.
00:04:12
Speaker
In Vignale, I have been part of the staff team in Vignale since 2007, and there we don't have any funding for community archaeology, but mainly we involve all the stakeholders who want to be part of the project.
00:04:38
Speaker
None of them want to dig. They just want to support the project and organize the main events, books, and so forth with archaeology. So it's quite different. Community archaeology is a young discipline in Italy.
Types of Laypeople in Archaeology Engagement
00:04:56
Speaker
So there seems to be a lot of different people on these sites working together at different levels with different backgrounds and for different reasons. When you were speaking to them as part of your research and doing the interviews and stuff, did you find there was a big difference between how they looked at the sites?
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I found three different kind of lay person, let's say, lay people. One of them is the visitors, those who attend events, those who experience a passive participation, let's say, in a passive way.
00:05:41
Speaker
And then there are the diggers, those who want to dig, of course, as I said in Poggio del Molino. And then we have a kind of lay person that I call the devotee, that is that person that
00:05:58
Speaker
Most of the time they are locals, so they want to know more about the site. They want to enter the fieldwork and they want to maybe give their help, support the excavation with helping archaeologists, even logistically. So I identified these three kinds of lay people. It's really interesting. Thank you very much for sharing. I reckon.
00:06:27
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.