Development-led Archaeology in Northwest Europe

By Richard Bradley, Colin Haselgrove and Leo Webley

Many countries in northern Europe have seen a huge expansion in development-led archaeology over the past few decades. Legislation, frameworks for heritage management and codes of practice have developed along similar but different lines. The Valetta Convention has had considerable impact on spatial planning and new legislation on archaeological heritage management within EC countries as well as on the funding, nature and distribution of archaeological fieldwork. For the first time these 12 papers bring together data on developer-led archaeology in Britain, Ireland, France, the Low Countries, Germany and Denmark in order to review and evaluate key common issues relating to organisation, practice, legal frameworks and quality management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Feb 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781842177235

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1

Introduction: development-led archaeology in northwest Europe

Frameworks, practices and outcomes

Marc Vander Linden and Leo Webley

Introduction

Over the last two decades European archaeology has experienced a revolution, changing from an academicdriven discipline to one in which the majority of practitioners work outside the academic world. ‘Development-led’ or ‘preventive’ archaeology has become the largest employer, and developmentled projects now by far outnumber field operations carried out purely for research, despite the recent dip in activity caused by the global economic crisis. Unsurprisingly, the significance of these changes has attracted much discussion and debate. Several conferences and publications have highlighted the variations across Europe in systems for delivering development-led archaeology (e.g. Bozóki-Ernyey 2007; Demoule 2007; Willems and van den Dries 2007a; Kristiansen 2009), though such has been the pace of change that further important developments have since occurred in a number of countries.

Much of the previous debate has emphasised a contrast between those systems in which developmentled archaeology is seen as a public task, and those in which it is regarded as a service to be provided by competing contractors. These two philosophies have been characterised as the ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ (Willems and van den Dries 2007b; Kristiansen 2009; Demoule 2010) or ‘regulated’ and ‘deregulated’ (Carver 2009) models, in a debate that has at times taken on something of an ideological tinge. Though such categorisations usefully summarise one aspect of the variation between systems for development-led archaeology, they do not express the full range of the complexity. Furthermore, the discussion at the Leicester round table made it clear that in practice the experiences of those working under so-called ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ systems are actually often quite similar – that is, the same fundamental issues and challenges tend to recur.

In this introductory chapter, we wish to provide a broad overview of the contemporary organisation and practice of development-led archaeology across northwest Europe (the Low Countries, France, Germany, Denmark, Britain and Ireland), drawing on the points raised by the contributions in this volume. We shall highlight the common ground as well as the key areas of divergence, covering aspects as varied as legal and administrative frameworks; the roles of the various public and private sector organisations involved; and fieldwork and post-excavation practices (Fig. 1.1). We shall also pose the question of how these differing frameworks and practices affect the constitution of the archaeological record – in other words, how do they shape our understanding of the past?

Figure 1.1. Venn diagram summarising the relationships between the components of development-led archaeology.

The purpose of development-led archaeology

The first moves away from purely reactive systems of ‘rescue’ archaeology began over 20 years ago in some parts of northwest Europe. A major catalyst for change was the Valletta Convention of the Council of Europe, signed in 1992 and subsequently ratified by all northwest European nations. Among the key recommendations of the convention were that archaeology should be integrated into the planning process, and that where development threatens archaeological heritage, the ‘polluter pays’ principle should be applied. That is to say, the developer – whether a private company or a branch of the state – should pay for any necessary archaeological work.

By both asserting the importance of archaeological heritage as a source of the European collective memory and as an instrument for historical and scientific study (Article 1) and calling for the integration of archaeology into the planning process, the text of the Valletta Convention encapsulates a tension at the heart of development-led archaeology. For many archaeologists, the purpose of the discipline is simply to provide new knowledge and understanding about the past – that is, it has a scholarly or academic purpose. But the role of development-led archaeology in the planning process – and the large sums of public and private money that it consumes – means that it must also provide benefits and value for money to developers, local and national government and the wider public. The question of what and whom development-led archaeology is for is fundamental to any assessment of the success or otherwise of different national systems, a point touched on by several contributors to this volume. Bazelmans (Ch. 2), for example, notes that the debate over development-led archaeology in the Netherlands pits two competing visions against each other: the notion of archaeology as a scholarly ‘imaging of the past’, and the view that its primary role is to enable democratically elected administrations to make decisions over cultural heritage. Thus the large numbers of field evaluations of development sites carried out in the Netherlands can be considered a success when seen from the administrative point of view, but some university-based archaeologists merely feel frustration that few of these evaluations lead to full excavations with reports which can easily be used in academic research. Similarly, Fitzpatrick (Ch. 10 discusses the mismatch between the function of development-led archaeology in the UK planning system and what many (especially academic) archaeologists expect from it.

Frameworks

While the Valletta Convention has to some degree achieved its aim of bringing about greater convergence in legal and administrative frameworks for archaeology, in practice the broad recommendations of the convention have been interpreted in differing ways across northwest Europe, reflecting the different political discourses in each country. Wide variations can also exist at a regional level within federal countries such as Belgium and Germany, a point illustrated by Heun (Ch. 7), who shows how a single long-distance rail project was dealt with very differently by the heritage authorities of the three German Länder that it passed through.

The basic tasks required to ensure that archaeology is taken into account in the planning process are similar in each country; the differences lie in how the system is managed and in the nature and responsibilities of the various organisations involved. Some of the key questions include:

–   What criteria are used to decide when archaeological work is required?

–   How far does the developer’s responsibility to fund archaeology extend, and when must the state step in?

–   What kinds of organisation carry out the necessary fieldwork?

–   How is it ensured that archaeological work is directed towards appropriate research goals and is carried out to a high standard?

These issues are considered in turn below.

Planning policy and development control

The recent political history of many northwest European countries has seen an increasing transfer of competences from the centralised state to more local administrative levels, a process often referred to as devolution. As a result, the daily management of development-led archaeology is today generally conducted at the local level.

Nowhere in northwest Europe is it considered feasible or desirable to archaeologically evaluate all development sites. Systems are therefore required to monitor planning applications and advise the local planning authorities on which developments require archaeological work. This stage of the archaeological process is always carried out by state employees, attached either to local authorities or to other public bodies (such as the German state ‘monument offices’ or the Danish local museums). These organisations must often perform a difficult job with limited resources, as they do not receive any direct financial support for this work through the developer funding mechanism.

The criteria used to select sites for archaeological work can vary significantly, even between different local authorities within a single country, and are not always made explicit in a written set of rules. Decisions will usually be informed by some form of monuments record or archaeological map, maintained at local or national level. In some countries, such as the UK, the developer may also commission a deskbased archaeological assessment of the site before any planning decision is made. This may be at the request of the monitoring organisation, or at the initiative of the developer, to avoid unexpected delays and costs later on. Some administrations require clear indications that archaeology is expected within the development area before work is called for. Elsewhere, systematic field evaluation (e.g. trial trenching: see below) is routinely called for in development areas even where there are few or no prior indications of archaeology. In some cases this is based on a surface area threshold. Mikkelsen (Ch. 8) describes the policy adopted by one local museum in Denmark: where there are no prior indications of archaeology, an evaluation is recommended for all development areas of over 2000m². In France there is a national legal requirement that all development areas above 3ha must be evaluated, a significantly higher threshold (Collart, Ch. 5).

Funding

In line with the Valletta Convention, the principle of developer funding is now established across most of northwest Europe. Nonetheless, there is much variation in the level of financial commitment actually required of developers. Everywhere it is recognised that the contributions expected of developers must be reasonable, but defining what is ‘reasonable’ is no easy matter (Otten, Ch. 6). At a minimum, there is agreement that developers are responsible for funding excavation in cases where the presence of archaeological remains has already been established, but differences emerge over who pays for other stages of archaeological work.

In some jurisdictions, such as the UK and the Netherlands, developers are routinely required to pay for evaluation fieldwork as well as any subsequent excavations. They should also fund post-excavation analysis and reporting, even if some projects only receive limited post-excavation work in practice. The market in archaeological services is intended to ensure a fair deal for developers, although concerns have sometimes been expressed by archaeologists that the downward pressure on costs could negatively affect the quality of the work. A similar framework has now emerged in Flanders, though here public money is still used for work relating to certain kinds of developments, such as ‘strategic’ industrial areas (Wouters, Ch. 3). The situation in France is slightly different in that evaluations are not funded by individual developers, but rather by a general development tax. The funds raised by this tax are also used to pay for some excavations, for example in the case of public social housing schemes. The system has some advantages for developers in that costs for evaluations are predictable. Also in Denmark, there are special arrangements for evaluations. Developers are obliged to fund large evaluations (covering more than 5000m²), but many smaller evaluations must be paid for by public funds. In the absence of any market mechanism, budgets for developer-funded evaluations and excavations are set by the local museums that carry out the work but must be approved by the national Heritage Agency to ensure that they are reasonable. A relatively restricted approach to developer funding is applied in some Länder of Germany, where largescale intrusive evaluation rarely occurs. Developers are generally only required to pay for test trenching and full excavation where there are prior grounds to suspect the presence of significant archaeology. Special contractual arrangements apply to the lignite mining areas, where the mine company pays a set annual sum towards fieldwork costs. Developers may pay for a basic excavation report, but are rarely required to fund detailed post-excavation work. In a few other parts of northwest Europe not covered in this volume, such as Wallonia (Belgium), there is as yet no formal system of developer funding, although developers have provided resources for fieldwork in the case of a few major infrastructure projects such as gas pipelines and high-speed rail lines (Plumier 2007).

The contributions to this volume make it clear that there is no funding model currently in use in northwest Europe that consistently provides resources at a level that archaeologists might wish. Concerns that market systems may drive down expenditure on archaeology have already been noted, but in situations where a public body sets the amounts that developers must pay there will inevitably be political pressure to keep these sums ‘reasonable’ (e.g. Collart, Ch. 5).

Even under the broadest interpretations of the developer funding principle, the financial responsibilities of the developer do not extend beyond (notionally) ‘mitigating’ the destruction of an individual site. From an academic perspective, this is sometimes seen as one of the shortcomings of the developer funding system – it contains no mechanism to support the kind of synthetic research that would realise the full potential of the data from individual excavations. Of course, few developers would agree that they have any duty to fund such wider programmes of research.

Field organisations

As we have seen, the identity of the organisations carrying out development-led fieldwork has been the subject of much discussion, with a contrast often drawn between ‘socialist’ (state-run) and ‘capitalist’ (market) models. In reality, of course, these two models only form the extremes of a spectrum of possibilities existing across northwest Europe. In a few places, the same public-sector bodies that advise the local planning authorities on archaeology also carry out any necessary fieldwork, in a relatively pure application of the ‘socialist’ model. This is the case, for example, with the Danish local museums and many of the German state monument offices. More usually, these functions are separated to avoid any actual or perceived conflict of interest. In the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands there is a well-established market in archaeology, with developers free to choose a contractor from a range of competing organisations. While these countries are often seen as the archetypes of the ‘capitalist’ model, it should be noted that many of the leading players in these markets are either not-for-profit charities or are attached to universities or other public bodies. A similar market system is now developing in Flanders, though the archaeological service of the Flemish Community has a monopoly on archaeological work relating to public infrastructure projects. France has chosen to follow an intermediate path between the ‘market’ and ‘state’ solutions, with public bodies (Inrap and local collectivities) having a monopoly on evaluations but commercial companies allowed to tender for excavations. Another intermediate position has been adopted in some German Länder, where commercial firms operate but are contracted and supervised by the state monument office, not directly by the developer.

Research direction and quality management

An issue that exercises several of the contributors to this volume is the question of how we can ensure that work is focused on worthwhile research goals and carried out to a high standard. In both ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ systems, the organisations involved in development-led archaeology are required to complete large numbers of projects rapidly and cost-effectively. Concerns have been raised that these pressures may lead to falling standards, or to a routinisation of practice, with fieldwork becoming a ‘box-ticking’ exercise rather than a reflective process tailored to specific research questions. In some countries, there have also been concerns that the administrative regimes for development-led archaeology tend to emphasise the recording of archaeological remains as an end in itself. The notion that ‘preservation by record’ is the goal of development-led archaeology has been extensively critiqued in recent years, and it is now widely recognised that practice should be explicitly focused on increasing understanding of the past (De Clercq et al., Ch. 4; Last, Ch. 9; Fitzpatrick, Ch. 10; Gowen, Ch. 11).

In countries with markets in archaeological services, the fragmentation of fieldwork between numerous competing organisations has led to a desire for greater coordination of research. One result of this has been the development of research agendas for the Netherlands, Flanders and various regions of the UK, generally written by committees with representatives from across the archaeological sector. As argued by Last (Ch. 9), such agendas can play a valuable role, provided that they are regularly reviewed and updated, and are focused enough to have a practical value without being so narrowly focused that they become restrictive. The existence of research agendas has not of course prevented individual contracting organisations maintaining their own research priorities or interests, often relating to a particular local region. In France, the largest player in development-led archaeology – the public body Inrap – has drawn up and periodically reviewed its own set of national-scale research priorities (Guillon, Ch. 12).

Another trend has been the development of formal systems of quality management to maintain standards of work (Andersson et al. 2010; Willems and van den Dries 2007a). Three aspects to quality management can be distinguished – management of the process of archaeological work, of the products of this work, and of the people that carry it out (Bazelmans, Ch. 2; see also Hinton and Jennings 2007) – though clearly these elements are closely interrelated. One approach to ensuring that contracting organisations are competent and behave responsibly is to require that they operate under a licence from government or a national heritage agency. This is the case in the Netherlands, where field and post-excavation work must also follow a written set of national quality standards (Willems and Brandt 2004). In France too, field organisations operate under licence, and must name an appropriately qualified scientific leader for each individual project. Flanders and Ireland follow a slightly different approach, with licences issued for individual projects, but applicants must similarly show that they are suitably qualified and experienced. In Britain, by contrast, the heritage agencies of England, Scotland and Wales do not have a comparable regulatory role, and there are effectively no externally imposed rules restricting which organisations or individuals can enter the market. The emphasis is instead on self-regulation of the profession through corporate and individual membership of the Institute for Archaeologists. Responsibility for ensuring that particular projects are completed satisfactorily falls on the local government archaeologists who issue briefs for the work and check the final reports, to varying degrees of strictness.

Ultimately, high-quality work can only be expected when those employed in development-led archaeology are capable and motivated. Ensuring that university archaeology courses provide the skills needed to work in the development-led sector is therefore important (Fitzpatrick, Ch. 10). Improving employment conditions for archaeologists would also have a positive effect, by raising morale and encouraging experienced staff to remain in the profession (De Clercq et al., Ch. 4).

Practice

Archaeological projects carried out in a developmentled context may have up to three main stages:

1.   Evaluation to determine whether archaeological deposits are present on the development site, and assess their character and extent;

2.   Excavation;

3.   Post-excavation analysis and production of a report.

In practice, only a minority of development-led projects actually progress through all of these stages – much to the frustration of some university-based archaeologists (Bazelmans, Ch. 2, De Clercq et al., Ch. 4).

As we have seen, in some countries such as the Netherlands the methods employed at each of these stages are strictly regulated, in others they have been established largely through practice. Some of the most significant variations in methods are summarised below.

Evaluation

The initial phases of evaluation are often non-intrusive. This may include the preparation of a desk-based assessment, informed by archaeological maps, monument records, or aerial photography. Surface survey (fieldwalking) or geophysical survey may also be employed, though their effectiveness varies according to geology and site type.

Intrusive evaluation methods include coring, test pitting and trenching. The method of gridded coring with sieving of samples from potential archaeological levels has become common in the Netherlands and Flanders in recent years, especially in areas with thick alluvial or peat overburden where trenching is not appropriate. It is particularly effective for locating earlier prehistoric sites (Bazelmans, Ch. 2; De Clercq et al., Ch. 4). Systematic test pitting is useful for identifying sites for which most of the evidence consists of artefact scatters in the ploughsoil, as is often the case with prehistoric sites on arable land. However, despite the demonstrable value of coring and test pitting for certain types of site, trial trenching remains the dominant form of intrusive evaluation across most of northwest Europe. There is significant variation in the arrangement of trenches and the percentage samples employed. A minimum 10% sample is specified in France and the Netherlands, and 12% in Flanders, while in Britain smaller samples are typical (1–5%) with no official standard. This is a crucial issue, as several studies have shown that the density, size and arrangement of trenches has a major impact on the character of the archaeology found (e.g. Hey and Lacey 2001; Verhagen and Borsboom 2009). The ephemeral features that characterise many early prehistoric sites can often be missed in trenched evaluations, especially when the level of sampling is too low, and Last (Ch. 9) suggests that this could explain why pre-Bronze-Age remains occur less often in evaluations in England than desk-based assessments predict.

An increasingly routinised and mechanistic application of standard evaluation methodologies in development-led archaeology is an issue raised by several contributors (De Clercq et al., Ch. 4; Fitzpatrick, Ch. 10). Important evidence will be missed unless evaluation techniques are tailored to the specific context of each site, both in terms of landscape and soil characteristics, and the research questions – in other words, what we are looking for.

Excavation

Excavation is generally thought of as the natural next step when significant archaeological remains are discovered in an evaluation. It should be remembered, however, that in situ preservation is specified as the preferred option in the Valletta Convention, and also in the heritage policies of many northwest European countries. In practice, though, mechanisms for achieving in situ preservation of remains discovered in a development-led evaluation are largely lacking. In those cases where newly discovered remains are left in situ, this is usually simply due to developers changing their plans on the grounds of cost (Mikkelsen, Ch. 8).

Many of the methodological issues surrounding excavations are similar to those relating to evaluations. Do methodologies follow set procedures, or are they reflexively adapted to each site? And given that total excavation of every site is unfeasible, what sample of each site should be investigated? The Dutch Archaeology Quality Standard states simply that field directors should determine the number and position of cuts required per context in such a way that a judgement can be made on the chronology and structure of the feature, acknowledging that some features such as ditches will normally only be sample excavated (Willems and Brandt 2004, 158). In the UK, local government archaeologists require varying levels of sampling, though one formula often used is that at least 50% of all ‘discrete’ features and 10% of linear features (such as ditches) should be excavated. Concerns have been raised that this approach leads to a mechanistic ‘digging by numbers’. Better results can be gained where resources are focused on deposits with particular potential to address specific research questions (Last, Ch. 9; Fitzpatrick, Ch. 10).

Post-excavation analysis and reporting

If archaeological fieldwork is to make any contribution to our understanding of the past, it is essential that some level of post-excavation analysis takes place and a report is prepared. As we have seen, however, there is wide variation in the extent to which developers are held responsible for funding such work. The traditional ideal of detailed analysis leading to a journal article or monograph only occurs in a minority of cases. More often, the end result is a basic ‘grey literature’ (unpublished) report, deposited in a national or regional archive. In some countries, there is a set deadline for the completion of these reports (24 months in the case of France for example). However, even where such mechanisms are in place some excavations may fail to generate any report, for reasons that are not always clear. In Germany, where developers are often not required to fund any detailed post-excavation work, the tradition has been for postgraduate students to ‘adopt’ unpublished sites as thesis topics, a situation lamented by Heun (Ch. 7).

University-based archaeologists have sometimes criticised the reports generated by development-led archaeology, the complaint essentially being that they do not resemble academic research publications. Thus for Demoule these reports, which are in principle accessible as any other administrative document, are...too dry to be directly diffused to the public or even to the rest of the scientific community (2009, 244; translated MVL). As argued by Fitzpatrick (Ch. 10, such critics often fail to understand that the role of these reports and the context in which they are produced is quite different to that of a traditional academic monograph. The view that grey literature reports have little value because they are not peer reviewed can also be questioned – given the multiple stages of monitoring imposed on development-led projects in many countries, it could be argued that there is more quality control than in academic archaeology where the entire process eventually rests on one or two referees or an editorial board. The foreignness of grey literature to those used to traditional academic publications should not obscure the value of the information it often contains.

Concerns have also often been raised over the question of access to the vast quantities of reports and other data generated by development-led archaeology. In many countries, reports are – in theory at least – in the public domain, even if access can be difficult in practice. In some cases, however, the ownership of data is a murkier issue. In the UK, concerns over client confidentiality have on occasion been used to justify a delay in dissemination of a report. In some other parts of Europe, data and interim grey reports can be regarded as the intellectual property of the organisation or excavation director that carried out the fieldwork, until the eventual publication of a full report. Fears over illegal treasure hunting can be another factor inhibiting dissemination of information about unpublished sites.

More usually, however, problems of access are essentially practical, with reports languishing in archives where they are rarely consulted. One of the more extreme cases is England, where reports are dispersed across more than 60 local archives, a situation hardly conducive to synthetic work (Bradley 2006). It should be stressed, however, that problems of access to data on fieldwork are nothing new, and in fact reporting backlogs were often worse in the pre-Valletta-Convention era (e.g. Bazelmans, Ch. 2). Furthermore, the situation in several countries has recently improved through initiatives using the internet to provide access to reports on fieldwork and other data such as archaeological maps and monuments records (e.g. Mikkelsen, Ch. 8; Gowen, Ch. 11), a trend that seems set to continue in the future. Routine, prompt dissemination of results via the internet would greatly enhance the role of development-led archaeology in improving both academic and public understanding of the past. This approach will however require us to abandon the notion that a traditional academic monograph or journal paper is the only proper, respectable way to disseminate results, a model simply not appropriate for all of the vast mass of data being generated.

It is too often forgotten that the final report is not the only output of an archaeological project. Major fieldwork projects typically generate large archives, in the form of digital data, paper records, artefacts and ‘ecofacts’, and these also have a vital role to play in facilitating future research. New possibilities have now emerged for the archiving of digital data (and digitised paper records) via the internet, but the archiving of material remains poses more intractable problems due to their conservation requirements and sheer bulk. A key question is whether the developer or the public purse has responsibility for providing the funds needed for appropriate long-term storage of both digital and physical archives. In some countries, notably the UK, the issue has not been adequately resolved and space in designated stores is dwindling or is already exhausted. Difficult decisions may soon be necessary on which elements of project archives are routinely retained.

Outcomes

The dramatic increase in the amount of information produced by development-led archaeology in recent years is sometimes construed as a problem – we are drowning in data and synthesis is impossible (cf. Bazelmans, Ch. 2). In the face of such pessimism, several contributors to this volume have highlighted ways in which development-led work has produced radical new insights into the past. A key point is that large-scale excavations in advance of quarrying, housing estates and major infrastructure projects have allowed ancient landscapes to be revealed on a scale that was rarely possible in the pre-developer-funding era. In several regions this has resulted in much better understanding of the long-term development of settlement patterns and land use. To take just one example, little was known until recently about past occupation of the sandy regions of Flanders, but a series of major excavations have now revealed Bronze Age funerary monuments and later prehistoric, Roman and Medieval settlements (De Clercq et al., Ch. 4). Small-scale, routine operations can however also provide valuable information, particularly when numerous investigations in a single region allow a bigger picture to be built up (Mikkelsen, Ch. 8). Fitzpatrick (Ch. 10 cites the example of the synthetic work of David Yates (2007), who has used evidence from many scattered pieces of developmentled fieldwork to demonstrate the creation of field systems during the middle Bronze Age across much of southern England.

The potential of development-led archaeology to provide dramatically new, unexpected findings is heightened by the very fact that it is led by development – in other words, the choice of where to carry out fieldwork is not primarily governed by archaeological preconceptions. It can thus help us to break free of some of the biases inherent in the work of earlier generations of researchers, who often focused disproportionately on particular regions, periods or site types. That said, it must be recognised that development-led archaeology also creates its own set of biases (Last, Ch. 9; Bradley, Postscript). As we have seen, the routine application of trial trenching as the main method of intrusive evaluation may lead to an underrepresentation of certain kinds of site, particularly earlier prehistoric sites. There are also geographical biases, as work is of course concentrated in those areas with the greatest development pressure, which tend to be lowlands and valleys rather than uplands. Mikkelsen (Ch. 8) suggests that Mesolithic and Neolithic sites are underrepresented in recent fieldwork in Denmark in part because they tend to be located in coastal and wetland areas, which are often protected from development by environmental regulations. A further factor is that legal protection of certain classes of monuments such as upstanding barrows and hillforts means that they rarely fall within the remit of development-led work. Examination of such biases is vital if non-development-led research projects are to complement development-led work by targeting lacunae in knowledge.

For all of the politically-charged debates over the merits of the various systems for development-led archaeology, there has as yet been relatively little comparison of the outcomes of these differing systems in terms of the new knowledge that they generate about the past. We hope that one step in this direction will be provided by the current research project The prehistory of Britain and Ireland in their European context¹, for which we are systematically collating data on later prehistoric sites across northwest Europe investigated since 1998 in a development-led context. Early results have shown marked contrasts in the number and character of sites uncovered in neighbouring administrative areas, contrasts which seem more likely to reflect the activities of modern archaeologists and bureaucrats than those of prehistoric people (see also Bradley, Postscript).

Closing remarks

The frameworks for and practices of development- led archaeology vary across northwest Europe in complex ways. It is nonetheless striking that similar challenges and dilemmas are being faced under these very different systems. Parallel debates are taking place across the region on issues such as how far the responsibilities of developers to fund archaeology should extend; how we can ensure that archaeological work is carried out to high standards and is focused on appropriate research goals; and how results can be effectively disseminated. While academic outcomes are the main concern for many archaeologists, it is widely recognised that more should be done to ensure that development-led archaeology also fulfils a broader social role. Meeting these various challenges will not be easy, but one way forward surely lies in comparison of the practical experiences of different countries across Europe and beyond. In particular, there is a need to compare the outcomes of different systems of development-led archaeology, in terms of how much and in what ways they have actually increased understanding of the past. This could only improve the chances that future changes to these systems are grounded in evidence rather than ideology.

Note

1   www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/research/Projects/arch_prehistory_europeancontext.aspx

Further resources

Web links to the various legislative documents, regulations and organisations involved in developmentled archaeology in northwest Europe can be found at:

www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/research/Projects/arch_prehistory_european_links.aspx

References

Andersson, C., Lagerlöf, A. and Skyllberg, E. 2010. Assessing and measuring: on quality in development-led archaeology, Current Swedish Archaeology 18, 11–28.

Bozóki-Ernyey, K. (ed.) 2007. European preventive archaeology. Budapest: National Office of Cultural Heritage, Hungary, and Council of Europe. (www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/archeologie/EPreventiveArchwebversion.pdf)

Bradley, R. 2006. Bridging the two cultures – commercial archaeology and the study of prehistoric Britain, Antiquaries Journal 86, 1–13.

Carver, M. 2009. Archaeological investigation. London: Routledge.

Demoule, J.-P. (ed.) 2007. L’archéologie préventive dans le monde: apports de l’archéologie préventive à la connaissance du passé. Paris: La Découverte.

Demoule, J.-P. 2009. L’archéologie dans la société: les responsabilités des archéologues, in A. Schnapp, J.-P. Demoule, A. Lehöerff and F. Giligny (eds), Guides des méthodes de l’archéologie, 234–50. Paris: La Découverte.

Demoule, J.-P. 2010. The crisis – economic, ideological, and archaeological, in N. Schlanger and K. Aitchison (eds) Archaeology and the global economic crisis. Multiple impacts, possible solutions, 13–17. Tervuren: Culture Lab Editions.

Hey, G. and Lacey, M. 2001. Evaluation of archaeological decision-making processes and sampling strategies. Maidstone: Kent County Council. (www.planarch.org/downloads/library/eval_of_arch_decision-making.pdf)

Hinton, P. and Jennings, D. 2007. Quality management of archaeology in Great Britain: present practice and future challenges, in Willems and van den Dries (eds) 2007a, 100–12.

Kristiansen, K. 2009. Contract archaeology in Europe: an experiment in diversity, World Archaeology 41, 641–8.

Plumier, J. 2007. Vingt années d’archéologie préventive en Belgique francophone, in Demoule (ed.) 2007, 176–88.

Verhagen, P. and Borsboom, A. 2009. The design of effective and efficient trial trenching strategies for discovering archaeological sites, Journal of Archaeological Science 36, 1807–15.

Willems, W. J. H. and Brandt, R. W. 2004. Dutch archaeology quality standard. Den Haag: Rijksinspectie voor de Archeologie. (www.sikb.nl/upload/documents/archeo/knauk.pdf)

Willems, W. J. H. and van den Dries, M. H. (eds) 2007a. Quality management in archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Willems, W. J. H. and van den Dries, M. H. 2007b. The origins and development of quality assurance in archaeology, in Willems and van den Dries (eds) 2007a, 1–12.

Yates, D. T. 2007. Land, power and prestige. Bronze Age field systems in southern England. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

2

Serving two masters: Dutch archaeology since the Valletta Convention

Jos Bazelmans

Introduction

Dutch archaeology has changed dramatically in the past ten to fifteen years with the application of the Valletta Convention (1992) to spatial planning and to new legislation on archaeological heritage management (2007). This article outlines the impact of both the political-administrative decentralisation of archaeological heritage management and the introduction to archaeological research of the ‘developer pays’ principle and market forces. This Dutch, partly neo-liberal, way of dealing with ‘Malta’ has brought about shifts in the nature, number, duration and geographical distribution of the sequential forms of archaeological investigation, namely desk-based assessment, prospection (coring and trenching), watching briefs, definitive excavations and reports. These revolutionary changes in Dutch archaeology around the turn of this century followed on from two other major transitions after World War Two. Three Dutch journals – Helinium, Archaeological Dialogues and Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries (founded in 1961, 1994 and 2009 respectively) – mark these three consecutive periods of