P.M. Barford

This paper discusses a programme of producing a homogenous national archaeological sites and monuments record for Poland by systematic fieldwalking the entire country and systematising the archival information. This project is state-financed (by the Ministry of Culture and Arts) and has two main functions. It was initially regarded by most of the archaeological community primarily as a potential research tool, while from the beginning it was also seen as a tool for the management of the archaeological heritage. Both aspects are discussed here.

The Polish Archaeological Record (the abbreviation of the Polish name Archeologiczne Zdjęcia Polski AZP will be used below) is symptomatic of the sort of ambitious and idealistic undertaking which one might suggest perhaps could only be conceived by scholars working in a totalitarian (communist) state. The aim was a simple one, to make a detailed fieldwalking survey of the whole country (312 520 sq km, of which some 150 000 sq km are arable). One estimate suggested that the project could be completed in six to eight years, other more realistic ones (Kempisty et al. 1981, 23) suggested it may take 15-20 years to complete. Now twenty years later we are still engaged on completing the first stage of the last 30% of the survey (Fig. 1). It is the aim of this article to present this project, unique in its scope and execution, including a description of its present form and a few remarks assessing it as a database.

The process of compiling this Polish Archaeological Record is relatively detailed in comparison with other national and regional Sites and Monuments Records (SMRs) which tend to be based primarily on known discoveries. As an archaeological research and heritage management tool, the Polish Archaeological Record is therefore in some ways in advance of contemporary records of this type elsewhere in Europe. While the project itself (still in the process of the completion of the first stage of the fieldwork) cannot be changed in mid-operation without affecting the comparability of its results across the country, one may now start to consider ways in which the project could be modified in the light of experience to become a more effective tool in other areas. The process of assessment is aided by the recent publication of an attempt to summarise progress and an examination of the project (D. Jaskanis (ed.) 1996). The present paper aims to discuss the AZP project purely in terms of as a field method (technique) and documentary system. The recent development since 1995 of the project as a special programme of the Polish Ministry of Culture and Arts is not discussed here (see Brzeziński and Kobyliński 1997). 
 
 

First Principles

It is immanent in the process of archaeological research that there is often a fine balance between the rate of destruction of archaeological data and their recognition and recording. In many cases (non-earthwork) sites are only discovered when disturbance of the soil - that is partial destruction of the site - reveals artefactual material. One of the most common causes of this sort of disturbance over most of the area of the country is ploughing, which is one of the primary agencies leading to the extensive destruction of ancient landsurfaces and archaeological sites. In many areas of Europe, one may estimate that over 90% of known archaeological sites are (or at some time in the past have been) under plough. This destruction leads to a depreciation in the information value contained within the site, but paradoxically facilitates another kind of archaeological research, the study of broad settlement patterns by fieldwalking. The result of this kind of work may be the creation of distribution maps of discrete find scatters (Jankuhn 1977; Kobyliński 1984), allowing us to study a broad pattern, an overall picture of parts of a settlement network, of the size and distribution, as well as broad dating of scatters of surface rubbish and other traces of human activity. Another aspect which can be studied is the geographical location of sites in terms of landscape geomorphology or soil types. Such information can also be collected in order to construct effective plans to protect what remains of the archaeological record for future generations, and to programme the investigation of those parts of the record which cannot for some reason or another be protected by administrative means in the long-term perspective. 

The techniques of searching for and recording new sites by walking over ploughed fields ("ploughwalking") and other subsoil exposures and localising and collecting artefactual material are endemic to the epistemology of archaeology in most areas of the world. In Poland, several archaeologists employed these techniques on a large scale in the inter-war period. Although this type of work was generally very fruitful, most of these excursions led to the discovery of sites in the more predictable locations, along river valleys, often clustering nearer to railway stations, and reflecting the areas of activity of individual researchers, university chairs or museums. The distribution and type of finds reported to museums and other institutions was uneven and depended on a variety of associated circumstances, as did the recognition and degree of recording of earthwork sites. All of these factors introduced a bias into the picture of ancient settlement of the areas which now form the modern state of Poland. Another problem were the territorial changes in the period 1918 to 1945 and destruction or removal of museum resources and archives at the end of the Second World War which created additional difficulties in the compilation of the basic information where sites had previously been found and excavated. This information, together with material concerning new discoveries, was held in the Sites and Monuments records held in the archives of the conservation services and formed the basis of our knowledge of the location and distribution of archaeological sites across the country. These problems are not restricted to Poland of course, but in the 1970s however several voices were raised in Poland pointing out the unsatisfactory information base from which these sites and monuments records had been compiled, which led to calls to produce information of a totally different order.

This was therefore the background to the rise in the latter part of the 1970s of a project which was to have a fundamental effect on our knowledge of the distribution of ancient settlement in the area of modern Poland. It did not arise in a vacuum, Polish archaeology has over the past half-century paid great attention not just to individual sites, but also their place in the overall settlement networks, their location within the natural environment and relationship to each other. In the late 1960s and 1970s several large-scale fieldwork projects combined with museum work were compiling detailed settlement maps for several macroregions (e.g., T. Wiślański's work on the Neolithic of northwest Poland, J. Kruk on the Neolithic of the loesses of southeast Poland, Z. Kurnatowska looking at Early Medieval settlement in west-central Poland). While these were concentrated on problems of settlement in particular periods in specific areas, they revealed the increase in our knowledge of the picture of the distribution of settlement and number of sites which could be attained by detailed fieldwalking of large areas. The detailed fieldwalking of the Pruszków area just to the west of the capital by Stefan Wojda (between 1966-1975) led to the discovery of considerably more sites than previous records had suggested (for example the survey increased the number of sites known in the region from 80 to over 1000, including the discovery of a previously unknown massive complex of hundreds of iron-smelting sites).

The history of the development of the project is summarised in Polish in several articles in Konopka (ed.) 1981 (especially Konopka 1981, 28-37), see also Jaskanis (1992, 81-2 ). The fundamental principles seem to date back to a tersely-formulated article of one of the father-figures of Polish archaeology, Józef Kostrzewski (1950, 19). He stated the need to involve many people in a long-term project which would collect information not only from archives and museum collections, but also landscape features (strongholds, barrows, cemeteries) but also the collection of surface finds and oral information as a result of fieldtrips. This vision was only to be achieved on the scale of small regions until the mid 1970s. An early project of the AZP was compiled in 1975 by investigators from several institutions (the so-called "Project 1975" - Kempisty et al. 1981) but its realisation had to wait another few years of detailed preparation. This scheme contained the main elements of what was later to become the AZP project. A "rival" project was compiled by the Poznan branch of the State Conservation Workshops in 1977 as a basis of the fieldwork that was being conducted by them in advance of major industrial developments. As a result of lengthy consultations, a common standpoint was reached on many issues, the Ministry of Culture undertook to finance the venture, and the AZP project was born.

It was at this stage that a number of decisions had to be taken which were to form the basis of a long-term joint enterprise. The aims and methods had to be very carefully thought-out. Experience has shown that (despite several problems) this basic groundwork was extremely well-conceived and executed. According to the initial conception the AZP project had (and still has) three main aims:

 
1. Scientific (accumulating evidence of the real numbers and locations of settlements in the landscape),
2. Conservation (rationalising information about the location of sites to allow planning of actions taken to combat future threats),
3. as an educational tool (adding to public knowledge and appreciation of the early history of Poland). 

The 8000 contiguous search modules into which the country was divided were rectangular areas 7.5x5 km (a sheet of the 1:25000 base-map of A4 size). The boundaries of the modules were originally determined by the central co-ordinator in conjunction with geographers from Warsaw University in 1978. The areas to be examined and the contractees who would do the archival work and fieldwalking were chosen by the regional (provincial - vojevodship) inspectors (Conservators) of archaeological monuments (if the search modules contained areas of adjacent administrative provinces, the provincial monuments inspectors agreed between themselves how the area was to be examined and how the resulting archive was to be duplicated). Overall meritorial control of the project was exercised by the Centre for the Documentation of Monuments (ODZ) the archaeology section of which was set up - under the directorship of Danuta Jaskanis - in February 1978 primarily to service the project. A central archive of the folders containing the results (supplementing that in regional centres) was created in the ODZ office in Warsaw. During her years as national co-ordinator of the project, Mrs Jaskanis made sterling efforts to maintain high quality of both fieldwork and recording and to standardise methodology. 

The requirement for as complete compatibility with a common standard as possible is met primarily by careful checking from several points of view. The director of the field team has to accept responsibility for and sign all the cards, then a group of specialists who are responsible for the execution of the AZP in specific regions examine the finished results. The cards then go to the regional archaeological monuments inspector who examined the cards from the point of view of method and compatibility with the standard of completion of the record, and signs all the cards. One set is then sent to the central archive, where they are checked a fourth time and only when they have passed the fourth examination is the team paid for their work. The original team may be requested to correct or alter the manner of documentation at any time in this process. Occasionally where doubts arise concerning the quality of the original fieldwork, certain areas may be selected for re-fieldwalking by a different team to verify previous results. If there is more than a 10% difference in the number of sites in part of a selected area, the survey module would have to be re-surveyed at the cost of the original team. 

The information from the AZP survey and archival work is held on the Documentation Card of Archaeological Sites (KESA) produced by the ODZ in 1978, which is the basic form of the archive, to which other elements can be added as needs dictate. This card is to be completed in at least two copies (one for the regional conservation services, the other for the central archive in Warsaw). These cards are numbered (1-n) according to the search module to which they refer. These search modules are therefore the basic grid within which the survey was conducted, they themselves are numbered according to the 124 horizontal and 96 vertical axes of the grid (Fig 1). Each series of cards in a folder together with a copy of the base-map and a summary report forms the basis for the paper archive. At the very beginning, the final result of the project was envisaged to be a computerised database. In the 1970s and 1980s however for a number of economic and political reasons, computer technology in Poland was very primitive and there were problems with access to the hardware. Only in the past decade or so therefore have any useful advances been made with the compilation of a usable computerised database (see below and A. Prinke on this website).

In the latter years of the 1980s, with increasing economic problems of the Communist state, the project was less well-financed by the central conservation service and was slowly grinding to a halt (Jaskanis 1996, tab. I). An improvement in the financing is visible after 1995, since the attempt to finish as many AZP areas as possible in the next few years was seen as an urgent priority. In the year 2000 all local government development and land-use plans in Poland were due for revision, and the incorporation of the Sites and Monuments records into them is one of the most effective ways of controlling the rate and process of destruction. [1]
 
 

The archaeological site

The basic unit of the AZP survey is the archaeological site, and it seems worthwhile exploring this topic in a bit more detail here. The nineteenth century development of the concept of "archaeological site" had a fundamental significance for the way that European archaeology was to develop. Most definitions of a site however revolve around a central concept that it is "an area where archaeological data (read: "artefacts") are found in association, and surrounded by an area from which such data are absent" and this has in turn affected our perceptions and research schedules. What has been thought to have been worthy of investigation and preservation are places where the relicts of the past have been and can be found. 

In conceptual terms at least, archaeological sites represented by scatters of artefacts in ploughsoil seem relatively problem-free. They are usually the scattered remains of archaeological deposits which have been shattered by the destructive action of ploughing. Observations and experiment have shown that the degree of scattering of finds and erosion of the negative features of the site is dependent on the variety of factors. The AZP project however at its very beginning had to face problems caused by several different kinds of findspot in the ploughsoil. In a textbook on fieldwalking techniques related to the development of the AZP project (Mazurowski 1980a, 13-19) the ploughsoil archaeological site is treated as a result of several processes. [2] Settlement points" and other traces of human activity are fragments of what is termed the "cultural space" (that is the original spatial arrangement of cultural activity) which is the object of study. What we observe however is not the data in its original form (the "Pompeii premise"), but they become archaeological sites as the result of postdepositional effects, usually a process of destruction and degradation, which leads to the formation of “points” (archaeological sites) in the "relict space". It is the arrangement of the points/sites in the relict space which is the subject of study, and by implication, the key to understanding the living culture. The AZP project also had to face the problem of single finds found loose on the surface of a ploughed field (or molehill in an area of pasture), do they constitute a site? This conundrum was resolved by introducing the concept of a trace site (Trace of settlement/occupation - ślad osadnictwa). This would be a single find such as a sherd or flint (or a few - up to three) which despite further searching were unassociated with other material. This may be a lost axe or arrowhead which certainly imply that someone was doing something in the area, but need not imply any long-term activity associated with a specific location. The differentiating feature (Konopka 1984, 28-30) between a “trace’ and a “site” was whether the area where the finds occur could be defined by an unequivocal boundary. 

Another problem concerning the definition of sites is the relatively frequent occurrence of material of different dates in the same restricted area of the landscape. A scatter of pottery signifying a settlement of the Iron Age may produce a few Neolithic pits and a few flint points of Mesolithic type. Do we have then one site, or three (a Mesolithic camp or kill-site, a Neolithic farmstead and an Iron Age settlement)? In terms of our definition the area where these three types of evidence occur together and surrounded by a blank area where this material does not occur is "a site", and features of different periods may intercut. This is also a good manner of dealing with material which cannot itself be dated (burnt daub for example) found on a multiperiod site. On the other hand - unless the boundaries are defined by some landscape features - the spatial distribution of the material of different periods will differ, the Neolithic pits may cover only a third of the area of the Iron Age village, and extend to the west further beyond the edge of the Iron Age features. The Mesolithic flint scatter may occupy only a few tens of square metres in the centre of the south side of the later scatter of features. One site or three?

Another class of site which appears frequently in the AZP survey is a whole series of earthwork monuments, such as burial mounds and strongholds. The AZP card should in such cases be supplemented in the SMR by detailed contour surveys of these earthworks. In contrast to for example the English school of landscape archaeology, which studies the whole cultural landscape in entirety, in Poland minor earthworks such as lynchets tend not to be noted, and are rarely the subject of AZP records, even though they may be reflections of significant episodes of landscape history. Standing architectural monuments such as town houses and churches tend not to be included in the AZP records (but are listed as such elsewhere in the archives of the ODZ), but inconsistently masonry castles tend to be considered as archaeological sites.

One problem which until now has received far too little attention from archaeologists is the question of the definition of the boundary of the "site", i.e., one of is defining elements - the opposition between a culture-element-bearing area from the "blank" zones. The problem of boundary definition of archaeological sites is of no mean importance, for if one wishes to protect the site by scheduling it (including it on a regional or national register of protected sites), one has to be able to define the area protected. In cases where this action restricts the rights of the owner to use his property as he wishes, one has to be careful to define the extent of the area which has to be treated differently from the rest and to be able to defend such a decision in court if need arises. In such cases however archaeology seems less than fit to deal with the situation. Intuitive line-drawing even backed by scientific standing often have little status in a court of law. A major problem caused by diffuse artefact scatters is the question of definition of the boundary of a site. Is the boundary of a site appearing as an artefact scatter on the surface the area within a line joining all the furthest-scattered finds ? Such a technique could lead to the designation of huge areas where in point of fact large areas of the subsoil are devoid of any traces of human activity. An alternative technique would be to use as a site boundary a line drawn to join areas of the scatter with a specific (specified) finds density, beyond which the density drops off. Which is correct ?

Another problem is the definition of the quantity of sites. This is caused by a simple practical consideration. The costing of the work depends on the number of sites discovered, thus it was in the interest of the fieldwalking team to multiply the quantity of sites found. A scatter of pottery cut by a field boundary or road may thus appear on the survey map as two or more separate scatters. A favourite ploy is to define multiple sites on the basis of scatters in different fields of post-medieval pottery which may be due to ploughing-in midden material (Jaskanis 1998a, 18). Such distortions are usually fairly easy to detect in the final record if one knows what to look for.

The question of visibility is a major problem. Not all areas of a site may be equally visible. Part of a ploughed site may be covered by deep hillwash and undetected by fieldwalking. The Roman-period settlement at Kryspinów near Cracow was scheduled [included on the list of sites protected by law] on the basis of the evidence of fieldwalking during the AZP project, but when the owner wanted to build on it, it transpired that the actual extent of the settlement under deep and archaeologically-sterile hillwash was much greater than anticipated, and since that part of the site had been omitted in the scheduling, the subsequent excavation had to be funded by the state and not the investor. Similar problems arise with the detection of archaeological sites under more recent alluvium in valley bottoms. These invisible parts of the buried landscape may well be much better-preserved and more informative than other areas, and yet are difficult to detect by standard archaeological survey techniques. When it comes to the construction of linear investments for example, such sites are seldom detected in the initial desktop surveys of environmental impact and (unless measures are taken to search for them in the evaluation process) are often revealed only late in the construction process during earthmoving.

A final subject of discussion which should be mentioned here is that of the upper chronological limit of the survey. In Poland, post-medieval archaeology has not always had the popularity it has achieved elsewhere in Europe in recent decades. At the beginning of the project there were very few archaeologists who were willing to take seriously scatters of post-medieval pottery found in ploughwalking surveys (in fairness, it must be said that much of this did result from manuring with midden material, and that similar pottery was in use in some rural areas into living memory). Nevertheless the upper chronological limit of the survey was initially set at the eighteenth century (the period of the Partitions of Poland). In some regions of Poland, especially in the mountains and some wetlands, there is little evidence of settlement before well into the post-medieval period. In the 1984 instructions however the time range of the AZP record was extended to the nineteenth century inclusive. This marked a break with the emphasis of the AZP as a tool for investigating prehistoric and other ancient settlement, to a landscape-history based project. 
 

Archival Work

An important element of the AZP project (and one of course on which most other SMRs are based) is that before the fieldwork is begun, a full literature and museum storeroom search has to be done for each area, showing where sites had previously been found. In the course of the fieldwork, these sites are to be verified and re-located on the ground and recorded in the same manner as the sites newly found by fieldwalking. In many cases the conservation services already had archives, where (in theory at least), many of these sites were already included. There are however many complications in fully documenting pre-1945 discoveries in the areas which Poland received from the Third Reich or of material discovered in the years before 1918 when Poland had quite different borders (for example much material from the work of the Tsarist Imperial Commission from several areas now in Poland, but held in St. Petersburg is still unstudied by Polish archaeologists). Not least of these problems are name changes, and the loss or poor cataloguing of old archives. Although much information has been retrieved, some of these problems remain unresolved by the initial work under the AZP and still require further study. An unexpected revelation was that many of the sites known over a period of years in the literature by a variety of names and numbers transpired on closer examination to be in fact the same site, and sometimes the opposite occurred, several sites close together had been assumed to be the same by subsequent investigators.
 

The Fieldwork

The fieldwalking element of the project was intended to recover all archaeological sites within each search module, and the resultant picture was thus intended to reveal an "objective" picture of the location of settlements, and to produce a picture of the dynamics of settlement processes (in order to obtain such a picture it was important therefore not just to reveal where sites were present, but also to provide information on areas where such sites were absent). 

The project is realised by almost all archaeologists working in Poland, regardless of their place of employment. Over 500 archaeologists have taken part in this work (but after initial specialised schooling).[4] The fieldwalking is done by teams of archaeologists who covered the whole area of the search module in detail, documenting all their observations. The teams are paid according to a fixed price-list which contains precise guidelines which takes into account the area actually walked, and the number of sites recorded. In general, conducting the AZP survey has been seen by many archaeologists as a relatively lucrative venture, a useful way of eaking out a meagre academic salary which has no doubt been part of the reason for the continued interest in the project.

The fieldwork was generally conducted by small teams of several archaeologists often from the same institution. Usually 3-5 people took one area and usually did it in about eight days (this number of people was often dictated by the size of the car used to reached the search module from the base). The fieldwalking is carried out at specific times of the year, in the early spring and in the autumn, when the ground conditions are ideal for the detection of sites on ploughed land. The same search module would be searched in these two different seasons to take advantage of different soil and vegetation conditions to recover as many sites as possible. Once a site had been located on the ground, it was walked-over to define its size and shape and to recover as many artefacts as possible. These were bagged and the site described in note form. The KESA card was later filled-in by typewriter in the base. A key element of the first years of the project was the creation of a well-defined methodology for the project. This was formulated by several editions of "instructions" and the fieldwork schools.

In the specific socio-political situation in Peoples' Poland, few farmers paid much attention to small groups of people walking all over their land (as long as they caused no great damage). There were huge state-owned farms for which gaining permission to walk was often a mere formality. Most of the small farmers had received land from the state in the land reforms, and ownership rights were understood somewhat differently than in western Europe. As a result of this most teams felt it enough to inform the local council or parish priest of their intention to conduct the survey. This very comfortable situation only caused problems in the changed social conditions after 1989, with increasing privatisation of former state-owned land. Attitudes to landownership are changing among the small farmers too, there has been a case when the lack of formal consent by the landowner to conduct fieldwork has recently been used to overthrow decisions on the scheduling [legal protection] of some sites based on the fieldwalking evidence of their extent. Even so, few fieldworkers relish the prospect of having to obtain permission to conduct fieldwork, the specific situation of post-War Poland have ensured that the question of the precise present ownership of many pieces of land is still an open one and tracing the owners (as opposed to users) of the several hundred small strip fields into which some areas of the country are divided can sometimes seem to be an almost impossible (or at least extremely time-consuming) task. Since however the majority of the peasant farmers can be counted on to still hold the old attitudes, most fieldworkers at present understandably tend to avoid the problem and carry on fieldwalking until challenged (which relatively rarely happens).
 

The KESA

The KESA index card filled in as a result of the archival and fieldwork is the key to the whole system. It has ten main sections (Fig 2) arranged in the form of a questionnaire. It is arranged in such a manner as to provide a common scheme of recording of all sites, whether known from archives alone or located in plough-walking. The card is constructed so as to involve the minimum of writing, many observations being noted by placing an 'x' in the right box. While this simplifies the recording and speeds eventual computerisation, it has one major disadvantage in that it does tend sometimes to force the investigator to make sometimes arbitrary decisions with no space to justify them. 

Since the KESA is a standardised tool for recording sites across the whole country in a long-term project, it was recognised at the start of the project that it should not undergo modification, thus the design of the questionnaire was given much thought and was widely-consulted. Nevertheless after the first four years of practice, certain minor changes were made and the original card and instructions (Konopka 1981, 40-48) were replaced by a new set (Konopka 1984). The main difference was the insistence on the use of a 1:10 000 map on the reverse of the card locating the site in relationship to the modern land-divisions and topography. In the original instructions it was possible to use a field sketch for this purpose which (practice showed) was often done in an unsatisfactory manner. Another improvement was increasing the attention paid to the bibliography and referencing of archives of previous work. A further addition to the original scheme was the provision of drawings of datable finds recovered from various sites in the summary report. 

The 44-page booklet (Konopka 1984) which lay down the principles of the recording-system has now been further enlarged in the form of a commentary by Danuta Jaskanis (1998a) which explains several misunderstandings and misconceptions in the light of her experience and problems as former national co-ordinator of the project. 

Some of the search modules which were investigated in the early years of the project were done to a lower standard than those of later years, drawing on experience gained. Not only has the quality of the fieldwork increased, but also the quality of the presentation of the results. The latter is important not only from the point of view of aesthetics, but also in cases when the basic documentation may have to be used in court to convince an appeal judge of the need to protect a particular site from the intentions of the landowner.

It may be of interest to describe the KESA card in some detail here. Each findspot or site has a separate card. The card has two sides, the front is the more complex in form (Fig. 2). At the top is the heading - on the left the abbreviation (ODZ) of the name of the institution (Centre for the Documentation of Monuments) set up to pilot the project, and in the centre the title of the card. In the top right-hand corner next to the heading is the nature of the information about the site (A= archival, T= fieldwork - among which are differentiated: W= excavation, P= ploughwalking, L= loose find or accidental discovery; the new version of the card has two other symbols: Z = information heard from local inhabitants, and R = reconstructed original location of a site known only from archival information). Section 1 concerns the location of the site on the base map and in the field the first three headings detail the placename and administrative details of the location site. In the first field is the possibility of giving a more precise local designation, “Hilly Fields”, "Old Castle", "Swedish Graves" etc. In the box below them is the number of the AZP search module ("Nr obszaru"). Then is the number of the site within the place (Biskupin site 15). In order to save confusion, this number has to be assigned in consultation with the regional monuments inspector, and is a continuation of a traditional system of numbering of previously known sites within the communes (gmina) the smallest administrative districts (which of course overlap the AZP module boundaries). During the fieldwork, each site is also (first) assigned a separate consecutive number within the bounds of the AZP module by which it is generally referred. This dual numbering system is the result of an attempt to marry two systems, since an important feature of AZP is the ordering of existing data on sites known from the previous literature. The next data are the co-ordinates of the site (see below). The next field is for the museum inventory number of the finds from the site. 

The second group of information fields concerns the geomorphology and the POSITION of the site, the description of which was felt to be one of the most important elements of the scientific part of the project. The categories of physiographic form of the terrain are based on those defined by R. Mazurowski (1980a, 104-130). In the first block are fields for showing the location:

SHORE: (in the sea, on the beach, on a spit, on a cliff, on sand dunes),

LARGE VALLEYS: (in water, terrace at river level, flood plain, higher terraces, edge of uplands),

SMALL VALLEYS: (base of valley, side of valley, edge of valley),

AREA BEYOND VALLEYS: (plateau, hummocky ground, mountain country).

The second block of fields deals with the exposition of site:

EXPOSED POSITIONS: (edges of valleys, valley sides, slight, strongly differentiated promontories, ridges, promontories, exposed rise)

SHELTERED POSITIONS: (base of slope, negative landscape features caused by erosion, negative landscape features with no outlet, caves)

The third block of fields deals with the DEGREE OF SLOPE AND ITS DIRECTION:

The first five fields refer to the difference between the height in metres of the site in exposed position (only) and the adjacent terrain. The sixth field refers to the degree of slope (expressed as a percentage - difference in level of a slope over 100m). The seventh refers to the direction it faces (an interesting sideline is that in Polish archaeology for some reason which is quite unclear, the cardinal directions are quite frequently referred to, as here, by their initials in English and not Polish). In this box, one or more directions can be indicated. 

The third block of fields refers to the ACCESSIBILITY OF THE TERRAIN. This refers to the present landuse affecting accessibility to the site.

The first field notes whether the site is unbuilt-up/ somewhat built-up/ built-up.

The second and third fields note whether the site is in forest/ orchard/ park/ ploughed fields/ meadow-pasture. The fourth field asks whether agricultural land is in private hands or is communal (the latter category was much more common in the Communist period than now). The fifth field denotes the area is industrial (which includes raw material extraction). The final box is for a written explanatory free comment.

Block 4 describes the CHRONOLOGICAL-CULTURAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE FINDS from the surface of the site or known from previous investigations. The first vertical column is for a number of group of material. The second vertical column is for defining the function of the site by categories (settlement, camp-site, trace of settlement, cemetery, hoard - these can be further qualified), the third vertical column refers to the culture to which the finds belong, filled in using a series of previously-defined abbreviations. Where chronology can be defined more closely, it is given in the fourth column usually as the letter of a particular typological phase and sub-phase of one of several standard schemes used for certain periods. In the next column the material is quantified (sherd/fragment count). The sixth column is for noting "small finds". This information can be supplemented on the reverse of the card. Thus an example might read for example:

“(1) trace of settlement Stone Age, , 2 flint flakes,
(2) settlement, Lusatian Culture, HaC, 8 sherds of pottery, fragment of fired clay loomweight,
(3) settlement, Early Medieval, 9th to 10th century, 9 sherds of pottery
(4) ...............................................................6 fragments of burnt daub”

The fifth block of data fields refers to the SOIL type (sandy/ clayey/ peaty-wetland) the fourth field allows the stoniness of the soil to be noted (slight/medium/high). The next box allows a specialist specification using a standard pedological code to be given where available. 

Block 6 describes the CHARACTERISTICS AND SIZE of the site:

The first data field describes whether the observation of the site is made difficult by some factor (weather, state of vegetation, crop) at the time of its description.

The second field concerns whether a site is 'closed' (i.e. all the boundaries of the site are visible and can be defined on the ground) or whether the extent of the site is 'open', some of the boundaries were not located, for example a scatter of sherds on a ploughed field disappears on one side under pasture or forest, making its full extent unknowable from surface examination (this terminology is often misunderstood by fieldworkers).

The third field concerns whether finds occur all over the area homogeneously or not. If the latter box is marked with a cross, the distribution of the finds should be described in the fourth field according to three categories (clustered to one centre/ several clusters/or deconcentrated). 

In the fifth area the size of the site should be defined according to six size categories in hectares (one ar is 100m², a hector is 10 000m²).

The sixth data field describes the density of occurrence of finds. The method of determining this will depend on the period and type of site and should be described together with the method of collecting finds in the summary report. As a guide Mazurowski suggests that 10 find per ar is a high density, 3-10 medium, less than 3 low density. 

The seventh field refers to THREATS to the site, an important aspect in the use of the card as a tool for heritage management. The first two fields consider whether important threats exist/do not exist, and whether they are permanent/temporary. The third field considers the agency of threat (human action/natural) and whether the user is a private individual or the land is in communal use (useful for determining who pays for any rescue excavations). The final box is for a short free text amplification of the threat. The eighth block is a logical extension of the previous, it concerns CONSERVATION NEEDS of the site. Its first field concerns the cognitive value of the site (slight/medium/great). The next three boxes are titled "detailed inventorisation necessary" (i.e. intensive ploughwalking with planigraphy of finds), "excavation necessary" and thirdly "administrative action necessary". These are filled in if there is a threat noted in block 7 of the card. The final box is for additional data. 

Block 9 identifies the persons responsible for the record. The first field is for the name of the person directing the field team (and sometimes co-workers) and the date of the fieldwork. The name of the team director is to be referred to whenever the information in the AZP record is utilised in any investigations or publications. The second box is for the name of the person or persons responsible for identification and dating of the finds described on the card (many fieldworkers use specialists for this task). The third box is for the name of the consultant or other person who has examined the records of the fieldwork from a meritorial point of view. 

The final block on the first side of the card is to be filled in by the conservation services. The first field identifies the museum collection where the finds were deposited. The regional inspector signs the card after checking it and noting any further action required concerning the site. The third box is for the catalogue number of the folder in the central archive in Warsaw. The last box is for filling-in information about the further history of the site.

The reverse of the KESA card is much more simple in its layout (Fig. 3). It has three fields, the first is for a location map at a scale of 1:10 000 (or 1:5000 in certain cases). The precise boundary of the site is marked on this plan. This can be supplemented by an explanatory field sketch, for example of earthworks. One function of the field sketch is to illustrate features of the site not visible at the scale of 1:10000, such as concentrations of finds, nature of the boundaries etc.. To the right of the place for the map is a box for additional information. This is primarily to contain information about the literature about the site, and any archival references. This is also the place for any information which does not fit into the boxes on the front of the card. Here also should be data concerning method of collection of finds and also method and criteria for defining its character. The box on the left at the bottom allows more detail to be added about the later history of the site. 

One drawback of the KESA card which has appeared in use concerns the problems met in compiling one card which is to be used in all conditions and environments. These problems arising in the course of their use in fieldwork have been a source of some discussion (e.g., Valde-Nowak 1984). The cards for example have little application in mountainous regions, where completely different questions arise in comparison to lowland sites (Rydzewski 1996, 66-7). The cards are primarily orientated to recording ploughsoil sites, there is however a difficulty in the adequate recording of earthwork sites. Another difficulty has been the extending of the system into the area of historic towns (Jaskanis 1989-90; 1998b). This introduces terminological questions, such as what is an archaeological "site" in the concept of an urban unit (the whole unit, its component parts or perhaps individual exposures of the archaeological fabric of the town?). Another problem is the use of the card in the recording of archaeological discoveries under water (e.g, wrecks or inundated settlements). 
 

The Search Module Map

A copy of the search module map supplied to the field team by the conservation service is returned at the end of the fieldwork with the location of all sites located shown by standardised symbols and labelled (with the numbers allocated within the search module). The consistency and standards of the cartography and numbering must be of the highest standards. The symbols used are as follows (Konopka 1984, 16; Jaskanis 1998a, 23): 

[-] "trace of settlement" - a black dot 1 mm diameter,
[-] site of area to 0.5ha - a black dot 3-4mm diameter,
[-] site of > 0.5ha - boundaries shown at a scale of 1:25000,
[-] previously-known site 
position located in field
but boundaries not definable - black equilateral triangle 3mm high
[-] previously-known site
not located in field - open equilateral triangle 3mm high 
shown on map next to place-name.

[-] In addition to these, widely-distributed modern (to nineteenth century inclusive) finds "occurring over wide areas of fields around an existing village can be marked as zones without defining the boundaries exactly" (Konopka 1984, 10). The method of showing these zones was not originally specified but this has now been clarified (Jaskanis 1998a, 23) as being defined by a neat dashed line. 

One important modification introduced by a few fieldworkers, most notably Stefan Wojda from Warsaw, one of the initiators of the project, is the indication of areas where sites could not be located (pasture, built-up, not searched) on the module maps (which Wojda marks in yellow). This practice, which apart from a hint (Konopka 1984, 9) was not sanctioned by the original Instructions was introduced in the 1998 commentary (Jaskanis 1998a, 21), is an improvement on the basic record and enables heritage managers and investigators to assess the potential of blank areas on the module maps. No negative result can be treated as definitive (i.e., that a given area is proven to have no archaeological potential), but there may be several reasons for the blank on a map. 

The most serious difficulty with the current form of the AZP project is the inadequacy of the original map base. When the scheme was set-up, in the specific conditions of the late-Communist state, the only maps available were already outdated 1:25 000 maps. The main difficulty was the sociopolitical situation characterised by a pathological cold-War compulsion for making a state secret out of basic topographical data. These maps are now an extremely inadequate representation of the current situation, not only with regard to anthropogenic elements of the landscape (buildings and roads and of course military installations), but also natural features such as forests and watercourses. If this was not enough, these maps contained deliberate distortions of the position of certain landscape elements (apparently including the insertion of triangular areas of non-existent countryside to distort the grid to make impossible its use for tactical targeting of nuclear missiles). Another ploy of military origin was to exaggerate the steepness of some slopes (Z. Brzeziński pers. Comm.). There is of course no need to point out that from the 1950s such precautions had been rendered completely pointless by the vertical coverage of western spy planes and later satellites - if it had not been even earlier compromised by the seizure of Luftwaffe photos by the Americans in the War. (It would be an interesting project some day to catalogue these deliberate changes in the topographic maps.)

All large scale (above 1:100 000) maps were treated as secret documents, even in somewhat milder political climate of the 1970s and 1980s. The possession of such maps was regarded as a privilege and the institute in receipt of such maps was (in theory at least) obliged to keep them locked away when not in use. In the Communist state, the very act of walking across the countryside with a map and taking notes could be regarded with suspicion. Anecdotal accounts exist of a Polish archaeologist who spent the night in a police cell for being seen making pencil corrections to a field map which during fieldwalking he found had contained mistakes. [5]

Another problem was the lack of a national grid on the original sheets which forced the investigators to use an unsatisfactory system of location by measurements within the search modules. This would have been acceptable were it not for certain inaccuracies which crept into the location of the edges of adjacent modules with respect to each other. As it happens, when seen in the field, for some reason some of them overlapped, and some were separated on the ground by several tens of metres - these differences were not always regular in shape, and in part some were caused by the deliberate distortions in the base maps. This has caused problems in the definition of the location of sites in general, but in particular those falling on or near the boundary between two sheets. 

The introduction from 1981 of the location of sites on a fragment of the 1:10 000 map (which was not subject to the same distortions) on the reverse of the AZP card was a way in which these problems could be resolved. In the late 1980s, 1:25 000 maps with a national grid became generally available, and the long process of translation of the original measurements into national grid references could be begun. This process is of course fundamental to the process of computerisation of the data. 
 

The Report

As in the case of all archaeological fieldwork, the basic record (the KESA cards and map) should be introduced and summarised by a written report (Konopka 1984, 17-19). This should characterise the area studied, form a commentary to the map and cards, highlight some of the results (concerning concentrations of sites for example). It should begin by defining the geographical background of the area (physiology, geology), the scope and results of the archival research and literature search is also described. There should also be a section addressed to the conservation needs of the area, drawing attention to the information on threats to the sites noted on the cards. The report ends with an index of sites correlating numbers in the search module with those of the sites within administrative districts, and a second one where all sites of the same period are grouped together. The report should be supplemented by drawings of all datable or small finds found in the fieldwork. 
 

The Collected Material

When a site is identified in the field, material is collected from its surface. In the AZP project, the site is not excavated. Usually an attempt is made to collect a relatively large sample of the material from the surface of each site, but without collecting all of it. The manner of collection of the finds is to be described in the written report of the fieldwork. The washed and marked material is later examined by the consultants who check its culture-chronological identification, and then packed and deposited in a museum collection as part of the AZP archive. The collection's inventory number is entered on the KESA card. The material is therefore available for later re-examination.

The recognition of the cultural affinities and chronology of a handful of small eroded sherds found loose on the surface of a ploughed field often causes problems. Some investigators and their consultants have showed greater imagination or confidence in such attributions than others. The original identifications of archaeological materials recorded on the KESA cards has thus sometimes caused difficulties. Some later investigators building on the AZP results rely on the original identifications, while other prefer the more time-consuming chore of returning to the original material in museum collections. Sometimes this exercise in source-criticism can produce results which differ from the original ones. As an example, we may quote Professor Michał Parczewski's re-examination of the evidence for Early Medieval settlement in the extreme southeast corner of Poland. He not only verified the Early Medieval sites, but also examined the "prehistoric" pottery, among which he found sherds which he had little trouble in accepting as Early Medieval, which affected the overall picture somewhat (pers. Comm..). In another case the Warsaw professor Jan Dąbrowski examined all the supposed Lusatian Culture (LBA-EIA) pottery from the northeast corner of Poland and found that a number of these assemblages had been incorrectly identified (Dąbrowski 1997, 10-12). Such problems however only emphasise that the AZP is an ongoing project, and cannot be regarded as "finished", they do not detract from the value of the project itself. In neither of these cases however am I aware whether or how this new information was fed back into the project. (Another problem has been with changes in culture names and attributions of affinities over the past few years. Some new cultures have been defined, others renamed and amalgamated.)
 

Computerisation and dissemination

The degree of computerisation of the AZP record is somewhat unsatisfactory. Despite the long running of the project this vital aspect has lagged behind, in part due to the shortage of computers in the People’s Republic of Poland. The original cards were originally read into an "electronic memory" in the form of perforated cards. In more recent years a relatively simple data-management programme "AZP Fox" was produced (Prinke 1996). This is currently in use in the central ODZ archive as well as those of the regional archaeological inspectors. Up to now only 30% of the information has been computerised to varying degrees in different provinces (Jaskanis 1996). In 1997 however a new programme became available, based on a GIS system. The original version was developed in the planning section of the regional government office in Wałbrzych, but a revised and improved version was quickly produced by Andrzej Prinke of Poznan. The value of both systems is that the information can be stored and reproduced in a format corresponding to the layout of the original cards. Another interesting feature of the system is the possibility of overlaying vertical aerial photographs with data from map or the SMR (Prinke on this website).

The full computerisation of the results will make the Polish Archaeological Record considerably more versatile both for research and as a conservation tool. Theoretically the production of a computerised version will make the original paper record obsolete, and the question of the disposal of the central archive will have to be faced. 

A related issue is that of publication of the results of the AZP survey. Some investigators have already published the results of the survey of single areas as though they are integral pieces of scientific research in their own right. It is difficult to see what the actual scientific value of such individual papers is, bearing in mind that there are over 8000 areas in total and only a handful has been published. Indeed it is difficult to see the sense of publishing the raw data of the Sites and Monuments record. The idea of publication of the AZP data is linked with the mistaken concept of the first stage as a final finished stage of work (instead of as a stage on the way to a fuller knowledge). Another major drawback would be that the publication of the results would invest them with some form of "finality" - and a developer charged with the financing of an excavation of a site which (like many) was not found in the initial AZP fieldwalking may well justify his refusal by reference to the publication in which the site does not appear - and such a plea may well be upheld in Polish courts. 

There is also another problem, the danger that detailed location maps may allow the location of specific sites by looters which have become a specific threat to sites in the last few years. On the other hand it was one of the basic principles of the AZP project at its inception that a project paid for - as it was and is - by the whole community should be made accessible to the whole community. The public have a right to the data if they need it - but should this ideal be justification for the releasing of information which the unscrupulous looter (who however are also members of the society with their own specific interests) may use to cause the destruction of sites? In what form should these data be made available? 

The discussion of publication of AZP data seems from its present state to have however fallen into the trap of equating dissemination of information with only a paper publication. This disregards the potential of the computer and for example tools like 'Internet' as means of dissemination of data. There is at present a lack of discussion on what information to make available and in what form. Discussions on this topic seem likely to continue. 
 

Scientific Potential of the Record

It is worth noting that the various editions of "Instructions" for the scheme concerned themselves mainly with the construction of the database, without going into much detail of how it was to be used. The AZP project however clearly represents a significant break with the earlier type of fieldwork restricted to particular periods or restricted areas, and replacing it with fieldwork aiming at a more comprehensive view of the development of the landscape itself. The AZP project supplies us with a unique database which will allow us to approach some of the problems concerned with the development of the changing patterns in the manmade landscape and its relationship to the natural environment. One of the main features of the results has been the linking of site locations with the geographical and environmental background. While some of the categories of landscape form and soil type defined in the 1970s may now be felt to have been too simplified, the basic data recorded on the AZP card may be a starting point for future more detailed studies. 

As a result of the AZP survey, we are beginning to have a new picture of the distribution of sites in the landscape which is shedding new light on our picture of the past. The landscape was more densely-occupied than was thought, which will have important repercussions on for example palaeodemographic studies and research on anthropogenic impact on ancient landscapes. While this may have been predicted, a less expected result of the project has been the realisation that our picture of the pattern of settlement has been substantially altered by this new work. Some areas which on the basis of earlier work were thought to have been devoid of settlement traces transpire to have had settlement as dense as adjacent areas. As a result of the work done so far, about 300 000 sites have been documented, if this rate continues, it seems that the result of the initial stage of the AZP project will produce about 500 000 sites from the whole of Poland. This figure is however a minimum, and does not take into account the largely as yet undiscovered sites lying under meadows (about 10% of the country's area) and forest (28% of Poland's area). The densities of sites range from around 95 sites per search module (the former vojevodships of Bydgoszcz, Cracow, Poznan) to around 15 (former vojevodships Bielsk Biała, Ciechanów, Elbląg) [6]

A particularly interesting phenomenon however is a relatively widespread failure by archaeologists to utilise the results of the AZP work in the discussion of settlement patterns. The distribution of Roman-period settlement in Poland is still based on the distributions of dated cemeteries, the discussion of Early Medieval settlement is still rarely based on the AZP data. This failure to fully utilise the potential of the AZP data is difficult to explain. There is little doubt that when eventually this will take place it will effect an overturning of many previously held beliefs, and one awaits with anticipation these changes. 

In the inception of the AZP project, data from fieldwalking was to be treated as "objective data" in the positivist tradition seeking the hidden truths underlying the revealed pattern. There is a drawback in this approach in that these data are not as objective as has been thought, due to the factors of destruction and recognition involved in their exposure and recording. Although the AZP project is a great advance on previous approaches to registering ploughsoil sites, it must be admitted that not all distorting factors can be eliminated. We cannot escape the implications of the fact that the sample which fieldwalking produces is certainly incomplete and maybe biased. One of the ways which this bias can at least be reduced is by the systematic repeated fieldwalking of previously-examined areas using the same (and also other) techniques and manner of recording, processing and assessing the results. The results of initial studies and reflections contained in the volume edited by D. Jaskanis (1996) lend support to this assumption. 

It also has to be stated however that the AZP project is still firmly based in the conceptual framework of Polish archaeology of the late 1970s. This was in many ways in advance of much of continental archaeology of the same period, and in particular due to such regional fieldwork surveys of settlement networks. Since the inception of the project however, European archaeology has been developing in new ways still only dimly perceived in the formative years of AZP. In particular there has been increased attention paid to landscape studies. In this AZP was perhaps a forerunner, but because of the poor development of local landscape history or the broader concept of “cultural landscape” in Polish historiography, Polish archaeology does not include the conceptual background essential to this type of research. There is no opportunity to include topographical data (old field systems, tracks of abandoned roads) into the AZP system (such topographic features cannot be called sites, neither can place-names). Surviving rural vernacular and old urban architecture are excluded by definition. There is no possibility for noting natural soil profiles with evidence of previous landuse. Archaeological aerial photography was not practised in Poland at the time of the initiation of the project and the results of recent aerial survey programmes will prove difficult to incorporate in the system as it exists at present. 

In most parts of Europe, the transition from an agrarian and mercantile society into an industrial one in the past 200 years has meant the rapid increase of enormous and irreversible changes in the face of the manmade landscape. In our use of this land, we change it in ways which obliterate that which was characteristic of the landscape in which people of the past lived and worked. Huge areas are deep-ploughed or built over, field boundaries are rearranged, lynchets ploughed out, forests replanted, roads realigned, bogs drained, rivers regulated. These types of evidence are very vulnerable. Slight earthworks of an ancient field system are easily ploughed-away in a matter of a few years completely unnoticed and unrecorded, and yet are a significant episode in the history of the landscape. Such slight earthworks only extremely rarely get included in the KESA cards. Parts of the archaeological database is being destroyed, but ignored because of our intellectual traditions which prevent us from seeing the significance of the data.
 

Heritage Management Tool

It was in the period 1968-1972 that a few voices were raised in several areas of the country concerning the increasing rapidity of destruction of archaeological evidence with economic growth of the country (Konopka 1981, 28). This was to have a considerable effect on the process of creation of the AZP project. Several inspectors of archaeological monuments drew attention to the fact that many of the sites which had been damaged had been previously unregistered and proposed the need for a system of documenting sites under potential threat - and from among them selecting sites for full legal protection.

One early discovery was that even in the best-studied areas, the number of sites previously-known from accidental finds and earlier less systematic fieldwork was a mere 15-20% of the total revealed by the AZP project. This meant that a considerable portion of the archaeological heritage was previously without any form of supervision or possibilities of monitoring or protection.

The conservation needs of the sites revealed by AZP was one of the key notes of the original project design. In the "Principles of the Realisation of the Archaeological Field Record of Poland" (a decree issued by the Conservator-General, Prof. W. Zin on 15th Feb 1980), considerable space is given to the uses of the AZP as a tool for the conservation of the archaeological heritage:

"[...] the results of the investigations and their documentation should be analysed by the provincial archaeological inspectors and used in the planning of immediate and long-term activities connected with archaeological investigations and conservation work. These results should be analysed from the point of view of :

a) identifying sites for inventorising in the second phase of the project (surveying, detailed surface collection, trial-trenches, [...] geophysical investigation, aerial photography etc.),

b) identifying sites for inclusion in the list of scheduled sites, for the erection of information tablets, the organisation of monuments wardens for them, or the establishment of archaeological conservation areas,

c) selection of the most threatened sites for rescue and research excavations". [7]
 
 

Another important lack was in the first field of the eighth block, where the field team is expected to define the cognitive potential of each site. The instructions do not however contain any clear guidelines how the fieldworker should define this (quantity and density of finds? Typicality or atypicality? Existence of one phase only? Or alternatively, existence of several phases? Rarity of sites of this type/period in the region? Potential existence of organic remains?). The Instructions suggest that this assessment should be made with the help of the consultants - but does this mean that they would have to take part in the original fieldwork, or is a "desk-top" assessment meant? These doubts remain unresolved by the later commentary (Jaskanis 1998a, 27).

As we have seen, the majority of the sites noted in the AZP project have been revealed by the process of their destruction by ploughing. At a period of widespread site erosion, but also the development of former ploughland, we can see that sites are being damaged or destroyed at an increasing pace. It is the task of the conservation services to determine what actions can be taken to mitigate this damage. An interesting development was the scheme of R. Mazurowski (1980b) to determine the state of preservation of a ploughsoil site by an examination of the state of fragmentation and erosion of the material from the site. There is still a pressing need to design a manner of monitoring the destruction to sites by ploughing. It is interesting to note that this was already one of the proposals of the 1975 working group (Kempisty et al. 1981, 22). Normal ploughing was apparently not perceived as an important threat to the integrity of ploughsoil sites in the 1980s (Konopka 1984, 35), but the original instructions specify (Konopka 1984, 36) that in the case where deep-ploughing is perceived, the site must be excavated.

Copies of the results of the AZP records are sent by the provincial inspectors with explanatory notes to local councils for use in monuments protection during the planning process and the delimitation of conservation zones in local planning documents. Any redevelopment within these zones (of which there are several grades) must be agreed by the regional inspector of monuments without whose acceptance the work is considered illegal. This creates a mechanism by which the results of the AZP project become the basis of regional heritage management plans.

A major difficulty however is the surface non-detectability of some sites. If a site is not found in the AZP survey, it is not included in a conservation zone and thus do not appear in the desk-top assessments in environmental impact surveys in the planning process (indeed the documentation of building-plots outside the conservation zones marked on the planning department's policy map is seldom even seen by the regional monuments inspector or his staff). A similar problem has appeared in the projecting of a motorway system in Poland, where financing has been set aside for the excavation of sites known from past AZP work, as well as new surface surveys conducted along the routes after their planning, but sites which were undetected in both passes will have to be recorded during the earthmoving of the development - when there may not be adequate legal and financial provision for their proper investigation. 

This aspect of the survey has not received as much attention as it deserves. The areas which were available for searching - freshly-ploughed fields with no vegetation or plant rubbish, should be as a matter of course differentiated from areas where searching was impossible. In some cases such details are easily discerned on the maps (forest, built-up areas, railway embankments and quarries), others are not so visible on the map (temporary pasture or fallow, waterlogged soil). In the case of penetration of the forest, we should have an idea of where the fieldworkers looked and where they did not.[8] It is glaringly obvious that the areas searched will affect the picture produced. While the assumption of the AZP project is that all areas were fieldwalked in a detailed manner, practice shows that this is unlikely to have always been the case.[9] Although this was one of the proposals of the original scheme, the areas not available for searching are not generally mapped (with the exception of the modification proposed by Stefan Wojda mentioned above). Such a map would allow future work to begin with the areas not available for searching in the original survey, and act as a warning when such an area comes up for development. [10]

Even if an area has been carefully fieldwalked during the AZP survey, practice shows that desk-top assessments of the sites based purely on the AZP record can sometimes be misleading and used alone cannot always form a basis for detailed stipulations for rescue excavations. Sometimes no archaeological site lies under a topsoil scatter of a few sherds of pottery, while for other reasons some archaeological sites may not have been revealed at the time of the AZP survey as ploughsoil scatters. This leads to the obvious postulate that even in regions where the AZP has been ‘completed’, ideally all areas of potential settlement which are destined for a change in landuse or redevelopment should be the subject of a separate field evaluation of its archaeological content before final cultural heritage management decisions are taken. 
 

The Future

In this paper we have mainly been considering the present state of the AZP project, but a consideration of the long-term value of the Record requires us to at least consider the future of the data bank thus produced. The survey was initially conceived as having three stages (Kempisty et al. 1981, 25-6), later simplified into two (Zin 1980). In the latter scheme, the first of these two stages was the preliminary once-only fieldwalking of all the search modules leading to the recognition and recording of all surface materials, and the collation of archival and oral information. The scope of the second of these two stages was never really defined (and this is one of the principal subjects of the collection of papers presented by Jaskanis (ed.) 1996). According to Zin (1980 - see above), the "second stage of the AZP" was envisaged as a further stage of inventorisation and detailed recording of selected sites by "surveying, detailed surface collection, trial-trenches, [...] geophysical investigation, aerial photography etc.". These sites were to be chosen for the value of the information that could be obtained by minimal-intervention means. 

In the terms of a wider discussion of the AZP in an European context, there is perhaps some justification in returning to the original conception of three stages. This saw the compilation of the SMR from archival data on previous finds and discoveries as a vital first step in the compilation of an initial SMR which is then enhanced by the fieldwalking of the second step. This concept is important in the comparison of the AZP with other European SMRs as these often tend to be constructed in the manner of this first step, but for various reasons further enhancement of the record (as in the AZP - by deliberate and systematic fieldwalking) does not take place. The difference thus between AZP and many other SMRs is the enhancement of the record by the second of three stages. We have seen that the increase in number of known sites that this process could cause might even be - as in Poland - something in the order of 80-85%. The value of AZP may thus be that it shows the way which in future other countries should find the resources to develop their SMRs before the rate of destruction makes such a procedure pointless.

There is some controversy over the nature of the enhancement stage of the AZP however. Some archaeologists seem to think that one detailed fieldwalking session is enough to collect all the data within each module (this is evidenced in the term "action" which is often used to describe it). Practice shows that no matter how detailed this initial fieldwalking is, this is by no means the case. Almost all of the search modules if fieldwalked again will produce a slightly different picture, some sites will not be found again, some new ones may appear. The scatter of pottery on the surface may be of a greater or lesser chronological range or different spatial extent or density. Some 'traces of settlement' detected in the first pass may disappear, others may be revealed at a later date. There can be no absolute objectivity of the data collected from one or two passes over a site or area. This need not discredit the whole scheme, but emphasises the specific nature of data from surface collection. The AZP project should be a continuous process of the examination and documentation of the surface, and should continually undergo expansion. 

In Poland aerial photography has not been used by archaeologists to the same extent as in some other countries. This was primarily due to the same factors as the secrecy generated around cartography, but also economic factors played a role (in the last years of Communism. It is now being realised that a number of sites which produce pottery scatters also produce cropmarks, while some sites appear only as cropmarks. Work has been begun on the aerial survey of parts of the country to supplement the data from fieldwalking, including the invitation to several foreign fliers such as Otto Braasche and Martin Gojda to take part in the pilot project. The incorporation of the aerial photographic data with the AZP fieldwalking data will probably have a considerable impact.

Possibly it might also be worth suggesting a return to some of the basic methodological problems of the fieldwork. It is a major puzzle why such an agriculturally-rich country as Poland has devoted so little attention to the methodological problems of the archaeology of the ploughsoil, both as a survey medium, but also as a subject of excavation. The theoretical (philosophical) background and basic techniques of ploughwalking were set out in the only Polish textbook on this subject (Mazurowski 1980a). This basic and oft-cited work suffers from a heavy style (typical of much literature produced in the Poznan milieu) which makes heavy-going of the subject. It has tended to dominate to the extent that discussion with it is rarely undertaken. The only other substantial piece of literature on the subject published in Poland is de Guio's witty chapter in volume II of Theory and Practice of Archaeological Research. This is written in English in a style which would be extremely challenging to translate into Polish. The translation of some of the booklets and articles written in England several years ago on the subject may lead to an interesting exchange of ideas and enliven discussion on this subject.
 

Conclusion

The AZP project is unique in its conception and scope. Like all long-term projects, problems have arisen in adjusting concepts arrived-at twenty years ago to present needs, but practice has shown that in the case of AZP these difficulties are not in fact as serious as they might have been. This is due to the sophistication of Polish settlement archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s, but also the careful planning of the project, a process involving many individual scholars. One notable fact is the maturity of the decisions taken to reduce the questions asked to a minimum, rather than succumb to the temptation to produce an over-elaborate scheme which would be more difficult to use and standardise. This careful planning and the consistent way that the project has been executed ensures it a permanent place among the chief achievements of Polish archaeology of the twentieth century, and one which will retain its relevance into the twenty-first century. There is no doubt that the Polish Archaeological Record has much to contribute to European archaeology, not only as a source of information, but also as a method which may be worth imitating where resources allow.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 
 

Brzeziński, W. and Kobyliński, Z. 1997; The Polish Archaeological Record
	- a coprehensive programme for detecting and recording archaeological evidence', paper delivered at the European Association of Archaeologists at Ravenna September 1997 (summary on page 184 of conference preprints).

Dąbrowski, J. 1997; ’Epoka brązu w północno-wschodniej Polsce’, Białystok.
 

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Fig. 1: Map of completed AZP survey areas (state in 1993), after Jaskanis 1996. Since this map was drawn, a considerable number of new search modules have been completed. 

Fig. 2: Front of KESA card (after Jaskanis 1992 fig. 2). For translation of main headings, see text. 

Fig. 3: Reverse of the same KESA card (after Jaskanis 1992 fig. 3)

Fig. 4: Fragment of AZP 1:25 000 map (after Jaskanis 1992, fig. 1). The bold line is the boundary of the administrative district.

Fig. 5: AZP survey in progress. 
 
 
 
 

FOOTNOTES

1. In 1995 with the appointment of an archaeologist as a deputy Conservator-General, one of the first things he did was to force the recognition of a special status of the AZP project as a ministerial programme of special significance to the construction of national conservation and research policies. The creation of a special government programme led to a seven-fold increase in the financing of the project with respect to the situation in 1995 [this programme apparently collapsed in 1999, since insufficient safeguards for its future had been established, leaving the long-term future of the AZP project as a whole under some doubt].

2. Ryszard Mazurowski the Poznan scholar who has written several works on archaeological method is not to be confused with the Warsaw archaeologist with the same first Christian and surname whose field of activity is the Late Neolitic amberworking of the Gdańsk region

3. Worse is the case of at least one dishonest investigator who it was later discovered - by matching cross joins - went fieldwalking with a bag of sherds to ensure that he would get paid for the finding of at least some "sites"! Such abuses have been rare. 

4. It is typical that this requirement was waived for archaeologists with post-doctoral qualifications, which led to problems of non-conformity in later years. 

5. I have been unable to confirm this apocryphal story, which was told me in good faith as having happened in the 1980s by a colleague who evidently believed it was not only likely to have happened but also true.

6. Since the article was written, there has been a reorganisation of the vojevodships, but figures for the new ones are not yet available.

7. It should be noted that in this document of 1980 Professor Zin instituted a policy which the conservation services are still having problems getting the Polish academic community to adjust to, the policy that only threatened sites should be the subject of excavations, be they rescue or research excavations. This is in agreement with the principles later laid down in later international conventions.

8. In the case of Poland with huge areas of dense forest with few topographical features, a GPS system would here be an ideal tool for locating survey areas in such areas, but so far is not commonly employed here in such fieldwork.

9. A preference may be noted among investigators for search modules with extensive areas of forest, suggesting that these are treated as easier to search than arable, when in fact if the work is done as well as it should, these areas should be regarded as the most difficult and time-consuming.

10. Unfortunately there is as yet no way that an area from which no sites are known can be designated as a conservation zone "just in case".