笔谈:公共考古/公众考古概念下的考古学教育思辨

Discrimination of Archaeological Education and Cultural Consciousness based on the Concept of Public Archaeology

考古学和当代社会方方面面的联系越来越多,种种联系组成了公众考古/公众考古学要关注的诸多领域。脱胎于英文“Public Archaeology”的“公共考古”或者“公众考古”概念,在中国的实践和讨论均体现为考古学面向公众的沟通和共享姿态。公共性是公共考古最核心的特征,公共性体现得越充分,越能促进政府、机构、专家和民众之间的共赢;公共考古的教育性体现在能够架起专业考古与普通民众之间沟通的桥梁,让更多的民众理解考古学能为社会的发展提供什么,以便获得更多的支持;公共考古的开放性则要解决“谁的公共考古”这样的问题,通过改变考古学/考古学家与公众之间的单向关系,变考古学家的“他们的公共考古学”为公众的“我们的公共考古学”。今天公众考古已从最初“什么是”和“要不要做”的认识论阶段,发展到如何做好和怎样推进的实践论阶段,因此需要专业化、高质量的专业人才。应该从人才现存问题的导向出发,依托有条件的高校,推动公众考古课程建设并逐步发展到课程体系建设。公众考古需要常态化、体系化、制度化。对“公众”本身也需要研究和分类加以引导。从考古现场到遗址公园和博物馆的展厅,都是考古学家与“考古学利益相关者”“交流”和“解释”的最佳场域。利用公众考古活动系统开发设计针对中小学生的考古主题课程,可以将考古文博资源转化为提升学生综合素养的教育资源。而对高校尤其是师范院校而言,开展考古教育将大有可为。

The associations between archaeology and every aspect of contemporary society have been mounting with time, giving rise to various areas of concern within the domain of public archaeology. In terms of the features of public archaeology, public nature is the core one that must be given full play to promote the win-win situation among the government, institutions, experts and the public. The educational nature of public archaeology lies in that it can bridge the communication gap between professional archaeologists and the general public and gather more support by throwing light on what archaeology can provide for social development. The open nature of public archaeology is to tackle the problem of who are the stakeholders of public archaeology and to transform the public archaeology dominated by archaeologists into that shared by the general public by changing the one-way communication between archaeology/archaeologists and the public. At present, public archaeology has evolved from the initial epistemological stage of what it is and whether or not to conduct it to the practical stage of how to do it well and how to promote it, making the professional and high-quality talent in great demand. Since institutions of higher learning are the major platform for training public archaeological talent, it is necessary to promote the development of relevant curricula first and then build the curriculum system at qualified colleges and universities to address the existing problems. Nonetheless, communication is more fundamental than education in public archaeology. There is still a long way to go from unilateral output by archaeologists to knowledge and ideas sharing. Public archaeology should be routinized, systematized and institutionalized. In practicing public archaeology, it is necessary to intensify the research on the public and carry out individualized activities in different forms with different content for various objects of archaeological education. Venues like the archaeological site and the exhibition hall of the museum turned out to be the best field to communicate with and explain to archaeological stakeholders. We can transform archaeological and museological resources into educational resources to improve students’ comprehensive quality, such as carrying out project-based learning for primary and middle school students with public archaeological activities and resources and systematically developing and designing a series of courses on archaeological themes. Meanwhile, archaeological education at institutions of higher learning, especially the normal colleges and universities, will have a bright future.