Since the advent of statutory provisions which regulate intervention to Australian historical archaeological sites in the 1970s, archaeological business has boomed, both within the Academy and in a seemingly ever-growing archaeological private sector. Requirements for ‘research designs’, partnerships between consultants and academics and the crossover of colleagues from firms to faculties have facilitated an array of publications, exhibitions and interpretive facilities. Consent conditions thereby fulfilled, practitioners, professors and proponents proudly proclaim that the latent ‘research potential’ of the subterranean resource has been realized through the archaeological investigation process—the research, excavation, analysis and publication (whether purist or popular). But, has the science of historical archaeology become beholden to a rigid statutory framework and commodified form of scientific enquiry? Or, have public programs promulgated too much archaeological performance and inadvertently subverted other cultural values to the media profile of the ‘starchaeologist’? This somewhat tongue-in-cheek paper considers an uneven selection of public archaeological projects across the professional life of Professor Tim Murray, whose vision and energy has helped create productive links between academic and consulting archaeological practice in Australia. The public value of urban archaeological sites and the public persona of the archaeologists who research, excavate and present them have become well-established aspects of their cultural resource management. Outcomes such as research archives, tertiary research and published literature, in combination with public programs, community participation, in situ conservation and dissemination of information, justify urban archaeology in Australia, making it visible and acknowledged as a ‘public good’. So, the methodological considerations which inform research design, and the conservation principles that determine what is (or is not) excavated must be tempered by acknowledgement that there may also be cultural value in ‘doing archaeology’ and in the resulting ‘public’ outcomes.