This document discusses how crowdfunding and crowdsourcing can help address challenges facing archaeology due to budget cuts. It presents DigVentures and the Flag Fen Lives project as examples. Flag Fen Lives was the first crowdfunded archaeological excavation in Europe, raising over £27k. It provided training, satisfied archaeological objectives, and increased visitor numbers at the Flag Fen site. The project engaged contributors through varied participation levels from social media to on-site involvement. It demonstrated how a value-led, socially contracted approach can benefit archaeology's triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental value.

1. Social Contract Archaeology: a
business case for the future
18th Annual Meeting of the EAA
Helsinki – Finland

3. Social Contract Archaeology
• Crisis and Opportunity
• Solution – Crowdfunding/Crowdsourcing
• What is DigVentures and Flag Fen Lives
• Spectrum of Engagement
• Does it work?
• Value-led Archaeology
• Connected, Adaptive and Intelligent: A business case for the future

4. Crisis
• The ‘Northants Effect’ looms large on the horizon, with an
unofficial 11% cut in frontline local authority archaeology
posts creating ‘black holes’ in service provision.
• Withdrawal of grant-in-aid for the Council for British
Archaeology and English Heritage may yet see those
organisations change beyond recognition.
• The tripling of university fees for entry-level archaeology
qualifications, for which there is a substantially decreasing
market.

5. Opportunity
• Membership of the National Trust, English Heritage, and the
Council for British Archaeology is growing
(Thomas 2010)
• The CM&S Select committee identified that heritage tourism
contributes £20.6 billion to the UK economy
(HLF 2010)
• ‘...in some cases it may be possible to subsidise the public
good attributes of a site through exploiting certain of its other
more marketable assets.’ (Garrod and Willis 2002)

6. What is Crowdfunding?
• Over 450 Crowdfunding Platforms
• Equity Based Crowdfunding
• Lending-based Crowdfunding
• Reward-based Crowdfunding
• Donation-based Crowdfunding

7. What is Crowdsourcing?
“Crowdsourcing is a when a company takes
a job that was once performed by employees
and outsource it in the form of an open call
to a large undefined group of people
generally using the internet.” Jeff Howe, May 2006

8. DigVentures
•DigVentures Ltd is committed to providing
seed capital and building audiences for
archaeology projects worldwide
•Our response to deepening economic issues and the
downward funding spiral of archaeology within the
university context is to do things differently: sourcing
private money to create cost-neutral public research
archaeology
•We believe current community archaeology and
engagement models do not provide a sustainable solution,
and devalue archaeological expertise

9. Flag Fen Lives
• Worked with English Heritage to
develop a MoRPHE compliant
project design for archaeological
evaluation
• We launched our campaign on 29th
February 2012, raising over £27k for
the dig in 90 days
• Flag Fen Lives now stands as
Europe’s first-ever crowdfunded and
crowdsourced archaeological
excavation

10. Flag Fen Lives
•Flag Fen is internationally acknowledged as one of the most
important Bronze Age sites in the world. The archaeology is in
jeopardy due to extensive drainage and development of the
surrounding area
•The visitor attraction is failing: visitor numbers at the Flag Fen
Archaeology Park have sharply decreased since the end of live
excavation in the early 2000s from a peak of over 20,000 to
under 14,000 in 2008

11. Flag Fen Lives – Project Aims
• The overarching aim of the project is to contribute to the future
management and presentation of the Flag Fen Scheduled Ancient
Monument, ensuring that appropriate management information is
available to decision makers and that this is communicated as
effectively as possible to the community. (English Heritage SHAPE
sub-programme number 11111.130)
• The Flag Fen Lives project had a three-fold mission:
• satisfy the archaeological imperative,
• provide field skills training,
• And reinvigorate the visitor experience

12. Building our Venturer community
•Aspiration: a research excavation on an
internationally important site
•Engagement: Promoted the idea of ‘team’: ‘We
will be building a community with archaeology at
its heart: our funding ‘Venturers’ will be a part of
the project from start to finish’
•Value: Offering value for money was a key
aspect to our success, and an area that other
heritage-based crowdfunding projects have failed
to capture
• Reach: Creating a robust online platform
enabling us to offer exclusive daily content and a
forum

13. The Spectrum of Engagement

14. Broadcast interviews
• BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Fri 13 Aug
– Francis Pryor, Brendon Wilkins (DV) 4.5mins
• BBC Radio Cambs – Paul Stainton Show, Mon 30 July
– DV team (Lisa, Brendon, Raksha) promoting FFL and talks
• Peterborough Community Radio, Mon 30 July
– Interview with Sarah S
• BBC Radio Cambs – Jane Smith (cross-county), Sat 28 July
– General + focus on Summer School
• BBC News - Look East, Thurs 26 July
• ITV News - About Anglia, Tuesday 24 July
• BBC Radio Cambs – Paul Stainton x 4 (see below)
1. Fri 20 July: Interview with Francis Pryor
2. Fri 13 July: Interview with Sarah S and Lisa (DV)
3. Wed 16 May: Interview with Raksha Dave (DV)
4. Tue 24 April: Interview with Sarah S and Lisa (DV)

15. Print/web coverage
• BBC News website feature (Science & Envt)
• Evening Telegraph ‘The Guide’ (cover)
• The Moment Magazine (feature and podcast)
• 4 x ET news articles (web)
• ET feature (web)

16. Amplified via
Social media

17. One-Click Engagement
Source: Kezia Evans, UCL. MA in Public Archaeology, thesis in process.

18. The Spectrum of Engagement

19. On-site Visitors
Resulted in a 24% increase on Flag Fen visitors numbers

20. On-site Visitors
Where did visitors come from?
In addition to two from Netherlands, 1 France, 2 South Africa, 4 USA

21. New Audience Reach
• 12% of visitors completed survey

22. On-site Visitor Engagement
The breadth of engagement for on-site visitors

23. Venturer Engagement
The depth of engagement: what did you learn?
Source: Kezia Evans, UCL. MA in Public Archaeology, thesis in process.

24. Venturer Geographic Reach (UK)

25. Digital Venturer Geographic Reach

26. Fit for Purpose: Value-led Archaeology
• Total Economic Value: defined as a
combination of use value (public participation
through outreach, open days and non-
specialist publication); option value
(conservation, consolidation and preservation
of archaeology in situ for use by future
generations); and existence value (published
and accessible results and finds for use by
researchers).

27. Value-led Archaeology

28. Current Procurement
Models

29. Triple Bottom Line

30. Social Contract Archaeology
A value-led archaeology situated within the
emerging trend for social commerce, entering
into a social contract with an unlimited
constituency of funders and stakeholders.