ABSTRACT
Excavation has a unique role to play as a theatre where people may be able to produce their own pasts, pasts which are meaningful to them, not as expressions of a mythical heritage. Especially in rural areas excavation provides, much more readily than museum displays or books, possibilities for enthusing an interest in and awareness of the past among non-archaeologists. Excavations need to become, much more so than they are today, nexuses of decoding and encoding processes by which people may create meaning from the past. This is to advocate a socially engaged rather than a scientifically detached practice of excavation.
