The “What” and “Why” of Public Relations for Archaeology: A Postscript to Decicco’s Public Relations Primer

Abstract

Gabriel DeCicco's public relations primer, commissioned by the Public Relations Committee of the Society for American Archaeology and published in American Antiquity, is a useful and comprehensive discussion with a serious limitation. DeCicco's (1988) article is a very good technical guide to generating newspaper-based public relations, but it contains only scant consideration of the fundamental questions of what to say, and why to use public relations. In this postscript to DeCicco's primer, I discuss the importance of recognizing these two questions and articulating responses to them.