ABSTRACT
Museums are a significant and powerful vehicle for the public construction of the past and for public involvement in archaeology. For much of their history, archaeological museums have been relatively inward-looking and have tended to serve the needs of the academic discipline of archaeology over and above the needs of the wider public. This chapter explores some of the initiatives that are being undertaken in the UK, and argues that some of them represent a new way forward for a more publicly oriented concept of archaeology as a discipline which balances the former overemphasis on the needs of the academic community and ‘posterity’. Museums are powerful media of representation because they deal with the very material on which claims to identity and truth rest. Many museums have moved beyond the object to use the Internet to create a virtual information resource.
