Italian public archaeology on fieldwork: an overview

In recent years, Italian field archaeology has displayed a growing interest in civic engagement. Several ongoing excavation projects have shown both benefits and drawbacks of developing a closer collaboration with non-archaeologists. Through creative and original public outreach activities they have certainly succeeded in reaching different audiences, but problems still remain: there is neither a shared methodology, nor a solid academic background and debate. Is there such a thing, thus, as Italian public archaeology? This paper addresses this crucial question by looking closely at a variety of outreach activities developed by a few Italian excavation projects, and contextualizing them in the framework of public archaeology studies from a global perspective.