Unearthing Returns: The Public Value of Archaeology
England’s rich archaeological landscapes are a source of happiness and pride for many. They tell the stories of the generations who came before us and contribute to the culture and heritage of the place as it is now. Archaeology also contributes to England’s tourism economy, inspires learning, and helps anchor a shared sense of place and personal identity.
Yet, while the costs of protecting and investigating this type of heritage are understood, the full range of benefits archaeology provide have been difficult to quantify. This is because they usually fall outside traditional market transactions. To help fill this gap in understanding, Historic England undertook this comprehensive economic valuation study of England’s archaeological activity.
The research is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) and the Culture and Heritage Capital Programme that seeks to better articulate the value of arts, culture and heritage on an economic platform.
Using the DCMS Culture and Heritage Capital (CHC) framework (Sagger and Bezzano, 2024), we apply a range of HM Treasury approved economic valuation methods to quantify the benefits of archaeology across 3 areas:
- Active engagement: the direct benefits experienced by people who visit archaeological sites or volunteer in archaeology. We used a Wellbeing Valuation approach, a Travel Cost Method and Contingent Valuation to value changes in life satisfaction, recreational benefits and willingness to pay.
- Passive interactions: the indirect benefits for people who live near archaeological and historic assets, assuming heritage environments and everyday lived experiences generate public welfare even without active engagement. We used regression analysis to examine the relationship between the density of heritage assets and reported life satisfaction.
- Non-use values: the value people place on the preservation of archaeology simply because it exists, and because they wish to protect it for future generations. We surveyed a representative sample of the public using Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Willingness to Accept (WTA) methods to ascertain these.
What we found
England’s archaeological heritage generates significant, measurable public value, both for those who actively engage with it and for the wider population.
There is strong support for the protection of archaeological heritage
A growing concern for the archaeology sector is storage. It is projected by 2027, 75% of the archaeology stores and public depositories could stop accepting the new artefacts due to a lack of capacity (Tsang, C., 2025).
To understand public’s preferences regarding this, we ran a contingent valuation survey, framing the question in 2 different ways;
- Would you be prepared to pay a one-time surcharge in your one year’s worth of Income Tax, to support the creation of the national archaeological archives, ensuring it can support capacity enhancement of archaeological archiving?
- Would you be prepared to accept the loss of archaeology archiving in your area if you are compensated for this through a decrease in your annual council tax?
- When asked about contributing to a new National Archaeological Archive, respondents stated they would be willing to pay (WTP) an average (median) £10 per household as a one-off tax contribution.
- One in three people said they would not take any amount of money in return for removing the legal protections for archaeological finds, showing strong support for protecting England’s archaeological assets.
- For the respondents who would accept (so-called Willingness to Accept (WTA)) an amount of money for removing protections for artefacts, we then asked what they would accept for the loss of legal protections for archaeological discoveries. This compensation averaged (median) at £30 per household. While not technically comparable, the difference in the scale of WTP and WTA in broad terms suggests that people are more concerned about losing their right to access and experience archaeological finds than about the broader goal of protecting those finds.
Active engagement with heritage and archaeology improves wellbeing
- Regularly visiting heritage sites is shown to improve one’s life satisfaction. This wellbeing benefit is valued at approximately £2,092 per person per year for those who visit monthly. (While the findings apply to the heritage landscape as a whole, data constraints mean we cannot say with confidence whether the same conclusions hold for archaeological sites specifically, which are considered a subset of this landscape.)
- The research studies 2 archaeology sites in detail and found archaeology delivers significant non-market value [1]. Visitors to Avebury (a free to access site) showed a consumer surplus, which is the additional benefit derived above what they paid, of £3.91 per person. Visitors to Wroxeter revealed a consumer surplus 26% higher than the ticket price for the site. This means archaeological sites provide wellbeing, economic and cultural benefits to visitors, far beyond their market value.
- Volunteering creates measurable wellbeing gain for the volunteers themselves, by improving their physical and mental health. Studies have reported wellbeing impact up to £1,200 for weekly volunteers (Lawton et al., 2021).
- Furthermore, volunteers are a valuable resource for many organisations. [2].
- This dual benefit of volunteering can be monetised to find the value added by volunteers. For instance, using a set of assumptions, we estimated Londoners contribute approximately £24.7 million to the London economy through archaeology volunteering.
Living near historic assets boosts quality of life
- People living in areas with high density of archaeology (proxied by archaeological excavations) were seen to have significantly higher wellbeing benefits.
Why it matters?
England’s archaeological heritage holds immense value for society — value that extends well beyond what any ticket price or visitor number can capture. This study demonstrates that with the right valuation tools, we can better make the case for protecting and supporting England’s archaeology.
By applying a suite of Treasury-approved economic methods to archaeology for the first time, this study offers a rigorous and replicable way to articulate the public value of archaeological sector. These findings can be used to support investment decisions and business cases, especially helping demonstrate the non-market benefits of archaeology to the policy makers and funders for the sector.
Footnotes
[1] Non-market value refers to the additional value generated by an asset over and above that captured by the market-based revenues, i.e. the ticket prices.
[2] To calculate the value of work done, we use a concept called replacement value of the labour contributed, which requires technical knowledge to calculate the market rate for providing the volunteering services such as management training, accounts, project management etc.
References
- Sagger, H. and Bezzano, M. (2024). Embedding a Culture and Heritage Capital Approach. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/embedding-a-culture-and heritage-capital-approach/embedding-a-culture-and-heritage-capital approach [Accessed on: 30.06.26].
- Lawton. Lawton, R. N., Gramatki, I., Watt, W., & Fujiwara, D. (2021). Does volunteering make us happier, or are happier people more likely to volunteer? Addressing the problem of reverse causality when estimating the wellbeing impacts of volunteering. Journal of happiness studies, 22(2), 599-624.[Accessed on: 13.07.26]
Tsang, C. (2025) The Collecting of Developer Funded Archaeological Archives: 2024 Survey, Historic England. Edited by C. Tsang. Available at: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/9121/TheCollectingofDeveloperFundedArchaeol%E2%80%A6 [Accessed on 03.07.26]