 presentation is like the opposite of those where I try to put everything on the slide so I'm sorry. I'm just gonna jump straight in and I hope that I can summarize my ideas briefly enough yet still with enough substance to give us a constructive starting point for meaningful discussion and in distilling my argument down I've had to make a lot of generalizing statements the most blatant of which I've marked with asterisks I do not claim that there are no exceptions I'm certainly not the first to put forward aspects of this argument what I'm hoping to do however is to draw everything together into a workable model of practice that is not grounded in the discipline's normative crisis mode of operation so normative salved salved mode this is my first attempt then at articulating an enchantment model for archaeology I would like to put forward to you a series of cases that underlie my argument for the enchantment of the archaeological record case one archaeology has inherent in it sources of enchantment archaeologists but in fact everyone everywhere are literally atop untold histories all of the time histories that we've never seen before that we may know nothing of and that can thus surprise us and transform us in interminable ways the very nature of archaeology as a subject that's open to interpretation as new techniques and voices and intellectual frameworks etc. are introduced furthers this facility for surprise and transformation case two yet the typical methods we use as professionals tend to revolve around a crisis model driven by the sector's normative preservation paradigm and conservation ethos this model erroneously got guises archaeology as a non-renewable resource presuming there's some version of the past that can be saved in perpetuity case three such endangerment narratives are not only debilitating for archaeologists themselves but they have little to no appeal to wider audiences the crisis model blinds us and broader publics to new futures and different interpretations it fetishizes authenticity leading to cynicism false consciousness and nihilism in the face of its inevitable futility it betrays profound weaknesses and professional interpretative aptitude and begs for a new moral for the discipline my proposal is that archaeologists have the capacity to enchant the world at large and we can do this via the wondrous affordances of the heritage record itself teased out through number one fundamental changes to our primary recording systems and our higher order interpretations that are grounded in effective methodological practices number two facilitated agonistic dialogue building on the thinking of shantel move and Nicole Diffel and three cultivating both craft skills and creativity to make these previous two points realizable amongst both archaeologists and their audiences I'd like to suggest that in the context of archaeology and heritage enchantment is generated by what I will loosely call emotive engagement I defer to the definition of emotion and affect and feeling used by weatherl at al 2017 and I call attention to their assertion that quote emotion is action oriented it pushes people to do things as I interpret this emotion is enacted in the body it propels the body forward to act in some fashion enchantment then can spur change in the world what is crucial for my argument is that everyone has the aptitude to be inspired to feel to be emotively engaged moreover this it can be deliberately fostered even with people who might otherwise be resistant dozens of tested conceptual and methodological frameworks for this emotive fostering exist yes some of them are flawed many mistakenly assume emotion should only lead to positive affective outcomes and indeed most emotion assessment tools are actually embedded with this positivity bias nevertheless there is a huge body of evidence that indicates that emotive engagement leads to very powerful effects including remembrance attachment restoration learning care and resistance to hegemony leading to socio-economic political change further more the scholarship shows that people generally want to explore complex and controversial topics in cultural heritage context and major research endeavors across multiple continents demonstrate that people do not do not expect cultural institutions to be neutral but rather quote to have a social responsibility to take a leading role in inspiring people social and political activism in order to help bring about change and hope from lynch Bernadette Lynch however the evidence also suggests that professionals often wrongly judge their audiences underestimating their capacity to respond to debate to be challenged this is arguably the greatest problem we face as professionals because to fulfill our social responsibility for inspiring activism we need to invest in fundamental structural change yet only a minority of professional bodies are really prepared to accept the risks of such change and where participatory or inclusive models of practice have become standard the majority do actually follow a quote-unquote charity model which hasn't really changed institutional structures nor afforded true social justice or radical trust because these institutions don't actually have the means to deal with agonism or the frictions that come with true democratic debate so there are many different ways that I and others have been trying to tackle these issues with primary field work teams in commercial archaeology context and in research context and I wanted to just end by attending to one and the EU funded emotive project where we've been enrolling digital media in explorations of how affective engagement with heritage might produce care social conscience and civic welfare I'm not naive to the many problems of the digital and I really don't suggest that we must necessarily deploy digital technologies to achieve a motive impact but the digital does offer many means to subvert expectations and so can create the perfect condition to foster enchantment or to further enchantment and emotive we've been experimenting with this kind of subversion in various settings with different enchantment objectives in mind what our experiments have exposed is precisely those structural barriers that make pursuing activist goals in heritage almost impossible so in one case and you can just taking a tiny excerpt above where we've been developing a model for facilitated agonistic dialogue the seeming irreconcilability of professional views with those of wider publics is captured in the polar opposite responses that we received to a dialogue around mental health most of our users demonstrated the effect in a tech affective engagement that we had had hoped for so one says and you don't expect on a tour to get this level of debt with strangers or even with your family that's fantastic that experience would stick with you for a pretty long time whereas the institutional response portrayed the risk aversion that sabotages most activist participatory projects in this case this person said it could be quite damaging to people and then they go on to list all the many possible ways from mental health perspective also it'll destroy their political perspectives also it might get physical when they start getting passionate about it so there obviously there's so much to say here but I'm going to end by stating that I think enchantment needs to be fostered not just amongst why public audiences but most urgently amongst archaeologists and heritage professionals themselves I believe our professional practices regularly breed disempowerment stagnation and actually complete misconception of the heritage record and this doesn't need to happen flipping our model around through an enchantment let approach can I think expose archaeology for what it truly is an infinitely inspiring resource with a capacity to create a better world now and in the future thank you for listening