ABSTRACT
This final chapter of the book considers the wider role of archaeology in society in the second decade of the 21st century. In so doing, I refer in this section to websites that will also update the text in the future. In the UK at present there is a sense that archaeology is besieged and the subject's values of conservation, collecting and recording are under threat. For decades, the Time Team programmes have presented archaeological material via television, but that does not seem to have resulted in a greater interest in the subject matter for the recruitment of students to university, in contrast to films such as Gladiator (2000) or more recently Immortals (2011), that have contributed to a growth of interest in classical studies and ancient history. This contrast is as much about the presentation of subject matter as the subject matter itself: one has engaged with popular culture and the other has sought to present the values of fieldwork and discovery as popular culture. However, there is a sense where Time Team sets out to create archaeologists as not like ourselves – they are different, are experts – whereas the movie creations are tangible and play with familiar plot lines presented alongside spectacle. The contrast is also between knowledge confirmation and knowledge that challenges people. It is the latter that is more often written into mission statements of museums than the former.
