TEA-Issue 47 Winter 2015 - Digital.CSICThe European Archaeologist – Issue 47 Winter 2015/2016 4 Archaeology must be concerned with the big issues. Many of us would share the conviction

The European Archaeologist – Issue 47 Winter 2015/2016

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EAA Matters

Letter from the EAA president

by Felipe Criado-Boado ([email protected])

It is a great honour for me to have become president of the EAA, following Kristian Kristiansen,

Willem Willems, Anthony Harding and Fritz Lüth in this responsibility, and to represent 2500

members who include some of the most dynamic archaeologists in Europe, exploring together all of

the different fields of Archaeology and Archaeological Heritage. This is the first time that I have

addressed all of you, and for this reason I would like to mention some of the activities that have been

carried out since publication of the Fall 2015 issue of TEA. I also want to share with you my vision

and a number of ideas about the immediate future of the EAA. The Executive Board has already

discussed some of these ideas: I benefit from this dialog, just as I also benefit from talks with and

suggestions from many of you.

For members and others. My first words are for those who voted, either for me or for Helen van

Londen, and those who did not, because all of you have, in one way or the other, sent messages to

which I must pay attention. And secondly, I consider the position of president not as a merit but a

responsibility; not as a post, but instead as a service that I am ready to provide on behalf of all of you.

But my words address the immediate future, and this includes all of those who are not in the EAA and

see us from outside, even from other continents, but expect something from us because Archaeology

and Heritage are now in a challenging position. More than 20 years ago, our founders had the

foresight to create the EAA, with a clarity of view that not only brought us to where we are today, but

also ensured that the EAA fitted quite precisely into the new geometry of Europe that was then at the

start of a new historical stage. Now the future is changing, and it is hard to tell how it will develop.

Thus I have the profound conviction that we need a new vision for the next 20 years.

We archaeologists are now facing a problem. People feel a sense of reluctance towards

Archaeology. Despite its public appreciation and cultural prestige, this means that people feel a

certain aversion about heritage management, particularly when this is identified most strongly with

Administration Services that exist to prevent things from happening. Certainly the situation differs

from country to country. But a priori conservationism and professional elitism have caused, albeit

indirectly, a public disaffection towards Heritage and Archaeology as unintentional consequences of

the Malta Convention. Then came the recession, and part of the current system of Archaeology

collapsed, causing a dramatic effect on commercial activity and professionals, some of the weakest

links in the archaeological system. And so this situation calls for us to reconstruct a post-Malta

Archaeology, to search for the active role the EAA could play within it, and to align our actions with

the main concerns of today.

A critical basis as a starting point. In fact, our main problem is that this is not a single problem: it

has emerged together with global and climatic change, the emergence of a fully artificial environment

(whether Anthropocene, Trantor or Coruscant), an electronic world controlled by the internet, digital

technologies, social media, DNA industrialization, health-mystification, the emergence of Bio-Info-

Nano-Neuro technologies, the negative consequences of globalization, radical terrorism, extreme

fundamentalisms; and, above anything else, social inequality that has risen to a level that is no longer

sustainable for humankind, against the backdrop of a sneaking hunch that Europe has not turned out to

be what was expected when the EAA was founded.

A new ambition. Archaeology should contribute to welfare and the strengthening of European social

and cultural values, something that can be possible after making a critical revision of the phantoms of

our history and the colonialist side of progress and Enlightenment, and then forming part of a Revised

Modernity (or Re-Modernity) that we still have to construct. Some will argue that this is either too

ambitious, too far removed from us as archaeologists, or something that would be more suitable to

obtain from other disciplines: however, this is not my point.

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Archaeology must be concerned with the big issues. Many of us would share the conviction that

Archaeology can contribute to this because it can, from materiality and the longue durée, address the

key themes of humanity: those that provide insights into what it means to be human: our relationship

with the environment, sustainability, mobility, memory, tradition, community, identity, consciousness,

action... Archaeological knowledge and practice produce a more reflective understanding of these

issues by bringing together the current revolution in archaeological theory (providing new questions

and perspectives) and scientific methods (fostering new techniques and cross-disciplinary

transference), as Kristian Kristiansen has recently contended. In my view, this capacity of

Archaeology is beyond question, but the key issue is how the EAA can contribute to this

archaeological revolution and bring Archaeology back into contact with Society. We must be able to

convince our members and colleagues to galvanise Archaeology towards addressing the big issues, to

answer the main questions facing all of us today, in Europe and the rest of the world. This ambition

should pervade our annual conferences, cutting across all sessions and individual contributions. In

everything we do (excavating here or there, carrying out scientific analyses or practicing either

preventive, savage or community archaeology), we should ask ourselves to what extent the new

knowledge we acquire contributes towards a better understanding of these issues. Many

archaeologists do this. In fact, archaeology has been doing this for quite a while. But do we do it as

much as we could? We should strive to achieve this goal, which is something in which the EAA can

play a part.

The EAA has to grow in order to become fully representative. As an Association, my vision is that

the EAA must grow in size in order to become representative of the whole of European Archaeology.

After the DISCO project, we know that there are about 30,000 archaeologists in Europe, and the vast

majority who are not in the EAA experience worse working conditions and are more isolated and

vulnerable. Moreover, the EAA cannot forget that these colleagues, some of whom are in Europe and

many in other countries and continents (Latin America, Africa, Asia) where there are not strong

associative cultures, look to us in the hope that we can create references to bolster Archaeology and

Heritage for the benefit of all, even if they do not wish to become members or cannot afford the fees

of their membership (something that is very much a reality for many students, young colleagues,

professionals without full time jobs or archaeologists in low-income countries).

The EAA needs to re-organize its administration. To attract more members, the EAA must

improve its organization to provide greater support and better services to its members. A substantial

part of our effort should go towards fostering our administration in Prague, giving it a greater scope

for action and more professional skills. Adrian Olivier’s Report provided detailed insight into our

inner workings, and clearly indicates what we must and can improve. iMIS deployment will result in

major progress in this respect. There are already specific plans to implement this new system

throughout this year, and we must strive to adopt new functionalities that facilitate our interaction

with members, and at the same time improve the organization of future annual conferences. There are

many good reasons to keep things this way, but one of the most important is to avoid the loss of

intellectual capital and expertise that we steadily suffer as a result of doing the same things with

different people each time, or changing the models each year (consider, for instance, our Books of

Abstracts with different formats each year), which hinder creating a tradition that makes things easier

for the community. Moreover, the way in which the EAA engages with the social media, e-

administration, digital presence and so on, can also improve substantially.

Ensuring a balanced budget and a horizontal culture. Obviously, these improvements have to

comply with two basic conditions. On the one hand, they have to be compatible with the budget; the

scenarios we have explored with our Treasurer have shown that the EAA is sustainable under current

conditions with 2000 members (with 1800, we would be at risk), although in order to extend its

investments and expenditure, the EAA should ideally have a base of 2500 permanent members. On

the other hand, there are strong demands for the EAA to apply these improvements without losing its

current collaborative, critical, horizontal and friendly culture. In fact, we will not improve by

choosing between two opposing dilemmas, setting a flat organisation against a professional one. Like

many other things in Europe, the EAA has the challenge of combining the best values of tolerance and

dialogue of European culture with formulas that are economically viable in the medium term for

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sustaining welfare for everyone. At the same time, we have to critically review whether this tolerance

is as sincere as we say it is, and not just a condescending type of self-representation, and whether this

sustainability is as innocent as we intend. We have to achieve sustainability in both economic and

social terms. A symmetrical vision can help in the challenge of making opposing aspects compatible,

and here I am not referring to some kind of ‘neoliberal consensus’, because we will never be able to

avoid conflict, but we will be able to reduce it to a point where it allows for a reasonable coexistence.

I am also thoroughly convinced that the EAA has an equally significant problem, as while we are

proud of our horizontal values, the cost (for instance) of events as important as the annual dinner

contradicts them, creating an elitist space whose high cost cannot be paid by many members. We have

to do something to ensure that the ideals of integration go hand-in-hand with acceptable prices.

Integration also means having the sensitivity to open the EAA to closer relations with other

organizations: the sort of win-win relationship we achieved with MERC could be extended to other

associations.

Some priority themes. The objectives mentioned above (dealing with big issues, becoming fully

representative, improving services, and balancing dilemmas) cannot conceal other equally important

issues that the EAA must also consider. I refer to four that were partly anticipated by Willem Willems

(as became clear at the recent Symposium held in Leiden marking the first anniversary of his death,

organized by Monique van den Dries and others) and pointed out by a critical review of the recent

twin-history of Commercial Archaeology and the EAA made by Margaret Gowen (which is published

in this issue of TEA).

Better integration of archaeological research and heritage management. Despite the usual

rhetoric, Archaeology and Heritage are still quite separate worlds. This ‘divorce’ could even become

worse in the near future, as while in the past it was caused by corporative interests of archaeological

academy, in the present it could become a perverse effect of the current focus on neutral scientific

excellence. Despite the ongoing scientific, archaeometric, and digital revolution in Archaeology,

which offers all of us a magnificent opportunity to make use of it at scientific or social level, and

which is especially relevant in certain areas, this does not make us culturally, socially and

transversally significant. Archaeology is popular, but is it really relevant? The engagement of

Archaeology with Heritage can serve to balance this bias. It is widely assumed that Heritage needs

Archaeology, because the management of archaeological heritage is knowledge-based, research-

oriented, important to the public, and provides information that is accessible to the public (as our

former president F. Lüth likes to remind us). But at the same time, Archaeology needs Heritage,

because Archaeology needs people and people come to Archaeology through Heritage. Heritage is

what happens when the past is actualized in the present. In other words, when Archaeology or

archaeological remains are activated, they become Heritage, making it clear to what extent the past is

still alive in the present. This is why a research agenda in Archaeology would not be possible without

a strategy to incorporate and interweave all of the different disciplinary and social sectors in within

Heritage. The future of Europe is also based on the fields of Heritage and Archaeology, not only

because of their central position to help negotiate our present engagement with materiality, the past,

memory, tradition and identity, etc., but also because they create opportunities to create new values

and practices, and to bring about new forms of action to design post-crisis scenarios.

There is a need to become influential in policy-making at the European level. There is a

widespread belief that Archaeology should be part of cultural and scientific policies in the EU. The

absence of archaeological heritage in so many specialized fields of activity (from environmental

preservation to cultural industries, from rural-urban management to creative employment) at a

European scale will require constant action from the EAA in coordination with other archaeological

bodies and entities, in order to overcome this breach. This said, I am not sure whether there is an

equally strong sense that in order to achieve this, Archaeology needs to be politicised. I am not talking

about partisan politics, but about something that goes much deeper. It is not possible to gain political

influence without becoming political and taking part in the political arena. In particular, we cannot

work outside the global framework of cultural policies and social innovation. This game must form

part of a rethinking of politics in Archaeology that overcomes the deficit of current political options

that are unable to explain the new social spaces that cut off traditional (modern) political identities;

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this is even some lack of present social sciences. The contested dimensions of Heritage and

Archaeology, the unavoidable conflict that they cause, makes it clear that everything is political, and

calls for a re-politicization of our practice, for retaking public space (in a material and virtual sense),

for making cities and neighbourhoods, for building scenarios of feasible action, or for thinking of new

social subjects. Activism, like mediation, is an incredibly important part of our work, not only because

our way of acting by contributing to the present is to reactivate materialities, sites, landscapes and

memories, but also because we must include current, ubiquitous demands for participatory action in

our projects. Like the restoration project for Vitoria Cathedral (in the Basque Country in Spain) stated

since 1998, we must act in an “open for works” mode (in comparison to the still-dominant paradigm

of “closed for repairs”).

Beyond public engagement: Archaeology as Activism. There are numerous types of social

participation that Archaeology could embrace. Community and volunteer work do not have a clear

status in many countries, insomuch as the relationship with amateurs and amateurism is usually vague

and ambiguous. In fact, English words such as “community” or “public” do not mean the same

throughout Europe, due to cultural and linguistic differences. We must be honest and recognize that

current participatory demands call for replacing top-down implementation with bottom-up

construction, transforming the often simple linearity of our project’s life-cycle into complex matrixes

that engage the different agents and contexts embedded in archaeological practices. While the final

goal of a re-politicization of Archaeology should be the management of change, not static

conservationism but instead an active design of a dynamic world, it will provide practical benefits by

generating public opinion about archaeological sites and projects, by taking advantage of the

reactivity effects of Archaeology Heritage practices, and shaping the foundations upon which to build

a coexistence between communities and actors in contexts of cultural heterogeneity, where encounters

and interactions give rise to conditions for cooperation and acting together. I see an example that

could provide insightful stimulus for the practicing an activist Archaeology: the new generation of

architects is not only rethinking the social engagement of their work, but also reinventing the way in

which we currently design and build at this moment in history (think about the British group

Assemble, winner of the last Turner Prize; while young Spanish architects are also gaining world-

wide relevance in this way, or the Chilean Alejandro Aravena, winner of the last Pritzker Architecture

Prize). There are also a lot of young archaeologists exploring similar limits; but, what is the EAA

doing for them?

Focusing on cultural value in all of the different domains of archaeological activity. The

intentions described above will be facilitated by placing greater emphasis on the social and cultural

dimensions of the value produced by Archaeology. As many colleagues emphasize, we need more

research on the definition, production and circulation of cultural value. Once again, Heritage becomes

a privilege domain for thinking and constructing the future. Archaeological knowledge can contribute

towards renewing our relationship with remembrance, identity, space, mind and the body, by creating

memories through narratives and stories based on science and experience. An interesting conjunction

here is that these new dimensions of value are connected with the transformation of value in

knowledge-based economies, and in new collaborative practices in which economic values mostly

underlie symbolic capital. Because of this, Archaeology cannot operate alone. It must embrace the

current calls for problem-oriented research, cross cutting work and real transdisciplinarity. The fusion

of genres, rhetoric and, in particular, intersecting with art, artistic performances or even journalism

will become more and more powerful means for action and production. The ways of creating value in

our discipline are ambivalent, as often the process is more important than the result itself. The work of

archaeologists, in all its phases, is extremely attractive to the public. Archaeology is part of the

industry of contents, and my personal belief is that we must do our best to support a proactive and

positive engagement of it with the cultural industry. In this context, the really good news for

Archaeology is that archaeological work (and workers) cannot be replaced by an algorithm, as occurs

in so many fields of activity today. This being the case, Archaeology should turn its attention towards

certain new topics such as Heritage ownership, collective rights, or heritage commons.

Expanding Archaeology and the EAA. Fully introducing reflexivity, multivocality, social relevance,

and sustainability into Archaeology will require open transversal cooperation with other disciplines,

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including Ethnography, Anthropology, Philosophy, History of Science, Sociology, Journalism,

Innovation Studies and, generally speaking, what is known as the STS field (Society-Technology-

Science). This is the reason why we must promote horizontal cooperation with other disciplines and

fields. If we could provide funding for our members to attend conferences, I would not choose

archaeological events, but instead would propose promoting the valuable presence of Archaeology

and the EAA at meetings of the EASA (http://www.easaonline.org/), AAA

(http://www.americananthro.org/), 4S (http://4sonline.org/) and some others. We need archaeologists

who are trained to operate in open, transdisciplinary environments. We must find allies in other

disciplines and fields, taking advantage of the ability of Archaeology and archaeologists to act as

mediators: not only to learn from them and through them, but also to appraise our contribution from

Heritage and Archaeology to the ongoing “intellectual wars”. We have never achieved such a degree

of reflexivity and self-awareness as we have today. Years of discussions between theoretical models

and practices, intellectual stimulus and openness between them, the multiplication of data and

analytical methods, heritage-directed and things-embedded research, and a science-based orientation

combined with narrative and interpretive practice, now allows us (in Archaeology and the humanities,

social sciences, hard sciences or simply the management of the present), to think about all of these

topics in depth. We can talk in a way that is trans-theoretical, and increasingly transdisciplinary and

pragmatic. But the main question that still remains is how to transform this self-awareness into a

future rationale that progressively overcomes the current cultural crisis and the hegemonic paradigms:

how to transform everything we know into a clear line of action for the EAA: one that promotes the

changes that both archaeologists and society need.

Strategic thought and planning. These and other ideas that will come from members, from the

Board, committees, working parties, and the Secretariat, together with the practical priorities we can

identify, will require us to begin a strategic planning stage. This cannot involve a long, indefinite and

shut-in planning process, mainly because today, strategic planning is being replaced in organizations

by strategic thought. For this reason, the Executive Board has already decided to work on presenting

members with a strategic proposal in the coming months. This will not be a closed program for the

future, but mostly an open system to facilitate strategically oriented permanent action, with

continuous proactive discussion.

Best wishes to all of us for 2016!!! I would like to end by mentioning something that is always on

my mind. Many of us have faced up to challenges in the past because we wanted things to change. But

now we need to be more realistic; we face up to challenges because things will not change. Things do

not change by themselves. Things compel us: they require our absence in order to remain as they are;

and they require our presence to become something new. If Archaeology is the science of things, how

can we not be symmetrically involved in Heritage? Because in fact, these active dimensions of things

constitute Heritage, not just static scientific objects.

Here I have briefly presented some ideas about how Archaeology and the EAA could respond to the

main challenges that are now facing society. Quite modestly, I have presented what will guide me in

my work as the Association’s president. But this is a collective enterprise: none of this will come

about because the president says so. It will happen because many of us share and develop these or

similar ideas.

The Leiden Symposium ‘Crossing borders and connecting people

in Archaeological Heritage Management: where archaeology and

heritage management meet’

by Margaret Gowen, EAA Treasurer

At the outset, I should say that it was a great privilege to be asked to share the podium with Felipe

Criado-Boado, EAA President, at the first symposium of the Willem Willem’s chair on Current

Issues in Archaeological Heritage Management at Leiden.

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Published by the European Association of Archaeologists, c/o Institute of Archaeology CAS, Letenská 4, 11801 Praha 1, Czech Republic

Tel./Fax: +420 257014411, [email protected]. ISSN 1022–0135

Editors: Katharina Rebay-Salisbury and Roderick B. Salisbury ([email protected])

EAA Administrator: Sylvie Květinová ([email protected])

Contents © named authors and the EAA

The views expressed are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent official EAA policy.

In this issue Editorial .................................................................................................................................................. 2

EAA Matters ........................................................................................................................................... 3

Letter from the EAA president............................................................................................................ 3

The Leiden Symposium ‘Crossing borders and connecting people in Archaeological Heritage

Management: where archaeology and heritage management meet’ ................................................... 7

CUP will be the new publisher of EJA ............................................................................................. 11

Evaluation of the EAA conference in Glasgow through the eyes of thirty ....................................... 12

Calendar for EAA members January – May 2016 ............................................................................ 16

Debate ................................................................................................................................................... 16

Tübingen Theses on archaeology ...................................................................................................... 16

Announcements..................................................................................................................................... 20

Archaeology and Power. Positionings for the future of researching the past. .................................. 20

Framing the View: How to understand heritage and identity on a regional scale ............................ 22

Foundation of the Slovak Association of Archaeologists ................................................................. 22

Historic England Research ................................................................................................................ 24

Tributes ................................................................................................................................................. 25

Tribute to Willem Willems ............................................................................................................... 25

Jon Humble: An appreciation by his many friends at Historic England ........................................... 25

Conference and Workshop Reports ...................................................................................................... 27

EAA-SAA joint conference Connecting Continents: Archaeological Perspectives on Slavery,

Trade, and Colonialism, Curaçao, 5 – 7 November 2015 ................................................................. 27

Second Anthropocene Working Group Meeting .............................................................................. 27

ArchaeoCakes ....................................................................................................................................... 35

The newsletter of EAA members for EAA members

I s s u e 4 7 – W i n t e r 2 0 1 5 / 2 0 1 6

The European Archaeologist – Issue 47 Winter 2015/2016

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Editorial

The Winter Issue of The European Archaeologist includes two pieces on a topic of relevance for

European archaeologists and the public: the relationship between archaeology and the public in times

of social change. Our new EAA President, Felipe Criado-Boado, has written a letter to introduce

himself and his vision for the future of the EAA and the need for greater engagement with current

crises and events. In the Debate section, the ‘Tübingen Theses on archaeology’ formulated at last

year’s conference of the German Society for Pre & Proto-history (DGUF conference) in Tübingen,

presents interesting suggestions on the interaction of different stakeholders in archaeology. Emerging

forms of media technologies require new ways of thinking about how knowledge is spread, and active

engagement by professional archaeologists is called for. This discussion is relevant for all European

archaeologist. The debate will be continued at this year’s DGUF conference in Berlin from 5th to 8th

May 2016 (see Announcements).

This issue also contains tributes to Willem Willems and Jon Humble, whose contributions to heritage

will be sorely missed, as well as reports on an EAA-SAA joint conference “Connecting Continents”,

and the Second Anthropocene Working Group meeting, both held in November 2015, and

announcements regarding the newly established Slovak Association of Archaeologists and publication

of the second issue of the e-magazine Historic England Research.

Remember, 15 February 2016 is the deadline for paper and poster submission for the 22nd EAA

Annual Meeting in Vilnius! You can submit your abstracts and find more information at EAA2016

Vilnius.

By the way, have you joined the EAA Facebook group?

The deadline for the Spring Issue of TEA is the 15 February 2016. As always, please e-mail us at

[email protected] if you would like to get in touch.

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury and Roderick B. Salisbury