RESCUE ARCHAEOLOGY:

COMPROMISE OR OPPORTUNITY?

Paul Barford

Introduction

The ephemeral traces of past human activity which form archaeological evidence are a valuable record which can be read in accordance with current archaeological practice to create a vivid picture of multifarious aspects of the lives of our predecessors, and as such form the only record of the story (the hopes, fears, aspirations, successes and failures) of countless generations of inhabitants of individual regions. They are the only way that we can recreate the lives of whole communities, societies and populations of forgotten generations stretching back in an unbroken chain to the first settlers of Europe after the retreat of the glaciers. These traces form their material, tangible, heritage, containing a multitude of messages that can be read into our times from it and forming a major element in the creation of the cultural identity of the peoples of Europe.

All historical sources become historiography only by means of the selection and interpretation of the raw facts and their amalgamation into models of the past. With the increase of the quantity and quality of the information (brought about by the introduction of new techniques and research questions), previous models of the past are modified. While the number of known written records of many periods of the past is finite and can never be increased, the archaeological record is capable of revealing new ‘facts’ (at least while there is still enough well-preserved material in the soil to act as a resource). It is the specific characteristic of the archaeological evidence which gives it a specific character and makes archaeology such an interesting discipline.

This archaeological heritage is however fragile and finite. It consists not only of material objects which we see in museum exhibitions (and the larger proportion which we do not), but also – and particularly - of their context in the stratification of the soil on an archaeological site which contains the record of human activities in a certain point in time in a certain part of the past cultural landscape. Without the information provided by this context, the majority of the objects left by these activities are little more than intrinsically interesting curiosities from the past.

In the push to create better conditions for present and future generations by redevelopment due to the present expansion of the central European economy, we are having to impinge on the hidden heritage of the past. Any changes in land use and especially movement of the earth on an archaeological site have the potential of damaging or destroying the archaeological evidence contained in the soil. Any earthmoving operation exposing and penetrating the subsoil will irrevocably destroy any archaeological evidence which may have been there and in the overlying topsoil. With the destruction of this evidence, whole pages of the unwritten history of our continent will be erased unread. Each page is unique, and once they have been damaged, these records can never be recreated. Archaeological evidence is thus a non-renewable resource and should be jealously guarded and protected. Recent decades have seen an enormous increase in the type of earthmoving which leads to the destruction of archaeological sites, this ranges from the insidious effects of deep ploughing (which can affect over 90% of sites in lowland Europe), to the redevelopment of urban plots, the construction of new roads, the laying of pipelines and quarrying of raw materials. The economic boom of the last decade in many parts of central Europe has already had a disastrous effect on the archaeological heritage (e.g., Prinke ed. 1997; Barford and Kobyliński 1998; Kobyliński 1998).

Many European countries have specialist services in the framework of state or local administration the task of which is to protect not only the visible monuments of the past, but also that part of the nation’s heritage hidden below the surface of the ground. These conservation services have the difficult task of managing the pace of destruction of the archaeological record and to balance the need for the future economic growth of their country with the need to understand and interpret the past and to pass on to future generations the evidence which will allow them to reach new understandings of the past. The notion of stewardship is an important one, it recognises that we cannot “own” the past nor willingly or unthinkingly destroy the cultural legacy left by past generations. We accept that we only hold these things in trust for society, present and future, to whom we are accountable.

Increasing European unity brings observation of national differences in quality of heritage protection, but at the same time the postulate that the European archaeological heritage does not 'belong' to any one nation, people or state, but to all of the people of Europe. This constrains each European state to do its utmost to ensure the protection (‘for the common good’) of the portion of that heritage which is on its territory, entailing the organisation of efficient archaeological heritage management (AHM) policies, organisations and legislation. In a period when the pace and scale of developments are likely to increase, it is clear that archaeology in many central and eastern European countries in particular will need to undergo changes in order to meet the new challenges which the new situations will bring.

Archaeologists and the public in most countries have only slowly awoken to the scale of the threat to the archaeological resource in the modern world. Nineteenth century development was accompanied by “watching briefs” by antiquaries, interested only in somewhat superficial elements of the sites being destroyed by the spades of navvies. Archaeology later took on a more active role. Rescue excavations were conducted on a number of sites even before the Second World War, but these were often isolated examples prompted by the research potential of individual sites and often funded by the state or academic institutions.

The 1960s was a period when there was increased European public concern about anthropogenic changes to the natural environment, and by extension some of these concerns began to affect the way we perceived the historic environment. Empowered by these new concerns, archaeologists increased their efforts to cope with the destruction of the resources of data (i.e., sites) on which their discipline depended. The reaction to the newly-perceived extent of the threat was pressure to mount programmes of “rescue excavations” on an increasingly larger scale (Rahtz (ed.) 1974). The name itself reflects the reactive nature of the conservation envisaged at this time, the RESCUE ethic saw all archaeological site threatened with destruction as worthy of “saving” (usually by “rescue excavation”). In this situation the role of the archaeologist was to step in to save (“rescue”) the threatened past after planning decisions had been taken which would have the result of obliterating archaeological sites. From the beginning of this movement however voices were being raised that this situation was far from ideal.

Much was gained in the years of domination of approaches common to rescue archaeology

-                The concept of the role and obligation of society as a whole (and thus the state) to the heritage was more firmly  established,

-                the public became aware of what would be lost if the archaeologists were unable to react and the cultural gains their work can bring,

-                through this in a democratic environment the politicians were encouraged to pass new heritage protection legislation,

-                and administrators were persuaded to assign considerable quantities of state funds to support the infrastructure of rescue archaeology,

-                this in turn encouraged the study on a national scale of the scale and nature of the problem and different ways of coping with it.

These changes also had the effect of making a profession out of archaeology (which had previously been seen as an elitist preserve of a limited number of academics and the somewhat eccentric hobby of a number of interested amateurs). New types of organisations were set up (relying in part or a great measure on state funds) to employ archaeologists involved in rescue work At the same time, several problems began to emerge:

The scale and precise nature of the “rescue” phase of the development of archaeological heritage management has varied in each country, and the potential advantages listed above have not been achieved to the same degree in all of them. In some countries (such as Poland) where is regrettably still a relatively low level of public concern about the historical environment, and politicians seem to be less attentive to public concerns of this type, the organisation of rescue archaeology will not develop on the same path as in other states (for example Great Britain) where there is a quite different social climate. Despite these national differences, it would seem however that the same problems as those listed above have been experienced  in all European countries.

Archaeology is a rapidly-developing discipline. Each decade brings new techniques, new ideas and new questions, new ways of examining the relationship between the material traces of the past and their context. The methodological advances of the past decades have been astounding, and there is no sign that the pace of methodological development will decrease in the foreseeable future. This means that data recovered by the up-to-date techniques of half a century ago are no longer regarded as fully reliable. In all probability our methods will be regarded with a patronising but forgiving smile by the generations of archaeologists who will come after us. It is this fact which creates the greatest problem for those responsible for the management of the archaeological cultural heritage. There is no doubt that if archaeological evidence can be left in the ground, untouched, future generations will be able to draw new information from it by techniques of research still unthought of and in answer to research questions not yet posed. For this reason numerous international documents such as the revised European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage recommend the protection of the archaeological heritage untouched in situ whenever this is possible. This has thus become the ‘Prime Directive’ of much of European heritage management doctrine (the PARIS ethic: Preservation of Archaeological Remains In Situ). This argues that the threat from development must be mitigated where possible by amending engineering design to reduce damage to the existing archaeological evidence to a minimum. This is best achieved of course by moving the development to another site, unencumbered by archaeological remains, or modifying the project design to cause the minimum of archaeological damage. The application of the PARIS ethic also means the achievement of the desirable practice of taking archaeological remains into account in the early stages of the planning process.

While the general tendency has been for increased acceptation of this premise, it should be noted that in recent years there has also been some debate about some of the assumptions lying behind the PARIS ethic (e.g., Schofield, J. (ed.) 1998). It may well be that sites covered by concrete rafts or motorway embankments have been made as unavailable for (cost-effective) future investigation as surely as if they had been destroyed. It is difficult to predict changes in burial conditions of a redeveloped site with archaeological remains sealed beneath layers intended to protect them. Other measures taken to preserve sites in situ may be rendered ineffective with (for example) unforeseen drops in water table created by later unassociated human activity etc.

In addition, if the presumption for preservation in situ were to be rigorously applied to all situations where the archaeological heritage was threatened, it would have two undesirable effects:

-           the first would be the pushing of new development to undeveloped marginal lands which never saw human activity in the past (and often less desirable from the developer's point of view), this would turn the majority of Europe into dead historical reserves (and probably conflict with environmental preservation concerns), and secondly,

-           it would stunt the growth of archaeology as a discipline by effectively preventing it from obtaining new data about the past.

In such a situation, archaeological heritage conservation has to acknowledge the impossibility of saving all archaeological sites and evidence from obliteration in the march towards progress. This has prompted a change from the utopian “conservation” ethic towards one geared towards management of the exploitation of the archaeological resource. These are more than just terminological differences, they represent different philosophies. Conservation argues for the retaining (conservation, preservation) of all remains of the past which are classifiable as “cultural Property”. Heritage management recognises that it is impossible to halt the decrease of the archaeological resource base, but that the process should be effectively controlled in a planned manner, after deciding which remains can be sacrificed after full documentation and which must be preserved at all costs. The current state of the resource should be monitored and the significance of individual elements assessed from differing viewpoints. Such studies should form the basis of management strategies created in the framework of current academic priorities and projected future research needs as well as the needs of the public. The process should be well-documented and subject to public scrutiny.

Both conservation and heritage management reluctantly allow the possibility of a compromise, where destruction or damage to a site cannot be prevented, the site can as a last (and for several reasons unsatisfactory) resort be “preserved by documentation”. In this approach a site is seen only as a source of archaeological data, these data are recovered from the soil by controlled excavation and fully documented. The site ceases to exist, except as a series of documents. These records (notes, drawings, photographs of the three-dimensional relationships between the various components of the archaeological record) thus serve as a second-rate substitute for the site itself. Second-rate because we are aware that - however carefully we work - our records can only reflect a selection of the potential information which the soil contains at any given place and time. While we can recover many artefacts, sometimes in extremely large quantities, their context is irrevocably destroyed by the mere process of taking them from the soil, and it is this all-important stratigraphical, depositional and post-depositional context which can only be reconstructed from the records we make at the time of the site's destruction.

This raises the question of who should pay for this type of operation. In most normal circumstances an unthreatened archaeological site left alone will survive in much the same form as it survived previous centuries. It follows from this that if developers wish to destroy or damage such a site (in order to later make a profit from the land it occupies) they should bear the financial burden of the archaeological work necessitated by their interference in its existing state. The principle, the “polluter pays” has for several decades been well established in natural environmental conservation management, and is becoming one of the leitmotifs of the modern approach to conservation of the historical environment. (Graves-Brown 1997).

In a situation where this principle is rigorously applied (together with an insistence on the highest possible technical standards of recording of the endangered remains before development takes place), the choice of another development site - unencumbered by the condition of previous recording of archaeological remains - may well be cheaper for the responsible developer, thus satisfying the PARIS ethic. In order for this policy to operate as an effective means of protecting the site, it has to be quite clear to the developer at an early stage of the planning process whether a given site is likely to contain any archaeological remains (and if so, of what nature and what mitigation is likely to be necessary), so that the cost of dealing with the problem can be considered in the initial financial calculations of the development.

“Preservation by Record” takes place as the result of a kind of deal between the conservation services and the developer. This allows the destruction of a site (or large part of a site) in return for the compilation of a detailed record of as much as possible of the information which the site contained.  Seen from the viewpoint of the PARIS ethic, each rescue excavation thus represents a sort of failure of the conservation services.

For this reason, the ethics of conservation are somewhat at odds with the academic ambitions of the institutional archaeologist who sees each excavation for which there is adequate funding as a source of new knowledge. From this point of view the existence of funds to do an excavation is often more important than the source of those funds. The fact that archaeological excavations of unthreatened sites are usually known as “research excavations” should not obscure the fact that conservation archaeology makes an important contribution to research. Indeed in a period when generous cash handouts from the state budget to support archaeological programmes is unlikely, developer-funded rescue work may seem to be at first sight the ideal solution for the financial troubles of many central European academic institutions. In addition we recognise that the search for understanding in the archaeological record creates new knowledge at the expense of the destruction of the sources of that knowledge. In the light of the number of sites being threatened by destruction and the slim resources which can be brought to bear on the problem, it is now being increasingly accepted that the decision to excavate an unthreatened site has to be taken very carefully and justified. Only in the case of sites threatened with unavoidable annihilation by development can the two aims more easily be combined.

The recent changes and moves towards the principles of developer-funding in central Europe have created new opportunities for institutional archaeologists and many archaeological firms, who see developer-funding of rescue archaeology as a means of supporting their research. These changes have necessitated altered attitudes in the academic community, and especially the need for a realistic approach to the costing and planning of fieldwork which requires new management skills on the part of archaeologists formerly used to state cash handouts. Developer-funding requires from  archaeologists the ability to honestly, realistically and reliably predict not only the costings of their work at all stages of the excavation and post-excavation process, but also the timetable of its individual stages. In the event of the excavation producing results which exceed the initial estimates, the archaeologist must be able to convincingly argue the need to increase spending. These negotiations often necessitate walking a tightrope between developer mistrust and archaeological disaster.

While removing a considerable financial burden from the state sector, developer funding creates new problems concerning bounds of the rights and responsibilities of the developer (and the ability of the conservation services to dictate terms of work which they are not financially-responsible for). It also represents a transfer of “ownership rights” to that particular portion of the past to the developer, which some have seen as a dangerous tendency (Graves-Brown 1997).

The understandable tendency for the investor to seek the archaeological contractor offering the “lowest cost per cubic metre of excavated deposit” must not be allowed to lead to corner-cutting and reduced standards. The method by which we explore a site has a direct effect on the quality and reliability of the documentation. It should be remembered that the information with which we replace a site destroyed as the result of a heritage management decision must be of the highest possible quality, or otherwise there is no point in collecting it. If the principle of “preservation by documentation” is to have any sense, it is imperative that the research design, type and quality of investigative and documentation methods used in these excavations are well defined preferably by an external body responsible for upholding standards, and that the work is monitored to see that these standards are being adhered to. These controls may be operated by external consultants employed by the investor to ensure value for money, or by the conservation services.

We should especially beware of the conviction – current in some circles a few years ago – that in the face of the total destruction of an archaeological site that “better some information than none at all” and that rescue excavations could be conducted to less stringent quality than research excavations. This has led for example in some cases to the adoption of the use of machines to take off “less interesting” later archaeological levels, rapid but stratigraphically-insensitive methods of digging by arbitrary levels by unskilled labourers, the rapid exploration of negative features with spades and similar aberrations of the archaeological method.

It is particularly important for the archaeologist, the developer and especially the archaeological heritage that archaeologists can begin work as far in advance of the beginning of the development to allow the work to be carried out at a suitable pace. Archaeological excavations cannot be carried out in a hurry. They cannot be carried out effectively if the team does not contain sufficient numbers of well-trained and skilled workers. Good archaeology cannot be done on a shoe-string budget. The uncovering and reliable recording of archaeological evidence is, and must be perceived to be, skilled scientific work, and cannot be the subject of methodological short-cuts due to pressure of time. No self-respecting archaeologist should accept a contract which requires him to lower the standards of the work done. Those standards should be jealously guarded by the archaeological community as a whole, which should strive not just to maintain a status quo, but to improve the standards of excavation and documentation.

 In order to protect the fragile archaeological resource, archaeological conservation, like nature conservation, needs to be strictly linked with the planning process and based on reliable knowledge of the location and characteristics of the resource which we are trying to protect. This is essential if the developer and archaeological world are not to be 'surprised' by developments taking place in archaeologically-sensitive areas necessitating rapid and costly rescue investigations. It allows the possibility of negotiating manners of avoiding archaeological damage or mitigating its effects well before the work is scheduled to start. This principle has long been recognised. Thirty years ago in November 1968 the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation published recommendations concerning the preservation of cultural property endangered by redevelopment ('public or private works'). A decade ago (April 1989) the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe produced its recommendation concerning "the protection and enhancement of the archaeological heritage in the context of town and country planning operations", and in January 1992 the revised European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage was produced, with its emphasis on the incorporation of the needs for archaeological heritage protection in the planning process.

 In order to attain this ideal, the heritage management services must be intimately involved in the planning process. A second requirement is that they must be in possession of reliable and continually revised data about the presence or absence of archaeological sites on a given piece of land which is the subject of a planning application, and of information which allows the assessment of the cognitive and other potential of a given archaeological site. Databases of this type are an essential part of any conservation planning strategy.

In Poland for the past twenty years a massive government-sponsored programme (presently run by the State service for the Protection of Monuments) has been in operation to locate all known archaeological sites from archival research and simultaneously to discover new ones by systematic fieldwalking of the entire country (Jaskanis 1987; 1992; Prinke 1999, Barford AZP article on this website ). This so-called Polish Archaeological Record (its Polish abbreviation is AZP) documents all known archaeological sites and monuments and at present covers about 70% of the area of the country. Recently new evidence from aerial photography has been amalgamated with the record. The AZP record thus acts as an inventory of the archaeological resources of the state and serves as the basis for heritage management decisions such as determining which sites are selected for statutory protection. Other archaeological sites can be included in local planning documents as conservation zones. As the size of this database expands, its use as a conservation tool relies on ease of access to the information it contains. This can be achieved only by various forms of computer access interactively linking the archaeological database with the geographical bounds of proposed areas of redevelopment and other destructive activity (Prinke AZP article on this website). The existence of the AZP allows the conservation services to conduct desk-top assessments of the archaeological potential of the areas of proposed developments, and allows decisions to be taken on the conditions under which the development may proceed.

Systems like this are very useful for taking heritage management decisions where the coverage of the ground has been thorough and carried out under suitable conditions. Where however these conditions have not been met, there is a risk that archaeological sites may lurk undetected on land which is affected by potentially destructive changes of land-use. A weakness of the Polish system is that there are many areas where the AZP survey has not yet been conducted or the ground visibility was low at the time the survey was done (e.g., occupied by buildings or permanent grassland), and there is at present no consistent mechanism in Poland for demanding that the developer finance the conducting of preliminary environmental impact assessments as part of the planning process (here, the deciding role in the organisation of this process is played not by archaeologists, but by the politicians).

If the principles laid down by international conventions and good practice in other countries with long experience of careful managing of archaeological resources are ignored, the failure to conduct detailed environmental impact assessments before planning developments will (upon the discovery of an archaeological site or sites at a late stage of the development work) ultimately lead to unnecessarily high costs paid by developers and unnecessary pressure on the resources of archaeologists, with the risk of damaging the archaeological heritage. Archaeologists were not consulted during the planning of a new network of motorways in Poland, and thus in effect effectively without taking into proper account the impact of their construction on the historic environment. The requirement to conduct environmental impact surveys was written into the legislation concerning the construction of the motorways at quite a late date, and in the majority of cases carried out only after the precise lines of the motorways had been fixed. Not surprisingly it was found that these roads were going to cut across an unnecessarily large number of complex archaeological sites, sites which could have been saved by correct management decisions taken as a result of close co-operation of the planners and developers with the conservation services from the very beginning of the planning process. The result of this oversight was the extremely high costs of the rescue excavations necessitated by the construction of the motorways, and the attendant problems of the storage and study of the records and material evidence recovered. The meeting of these costs is beyond the means of the developers who will be tendering for the concessions on the Polish motorways, and thus the Polish taxpayer is having to meet the cost of removing “the archaeological hazard" from the predetermined routes of the motorways.

A similar situation arose in advance of the construction in the 1990s of a transcontinental gas pipeline which runs east-west through the centre of Poland from the Jamal peninsular in Siberia to western Europe. Here however as a result of conducting the environmental impact survey after planning the route, the developer bore the full costs of the archaeological investigations necessitated by the (from the point of view of the buried heritage) arbitrary choice of one route at the cost of others less archaeologically-damaging. Here the developer, and not the state, lost out through the adoption of an inappropriate planning procedure. Once the line had been fixed, the process of moving the pipe even a few metres to one side of the planned line to avoid an important obstacle is astronomical, and has only been decided on only in the face of extremely important remains (such as diverting it around the foundations of a post-medieval country manor house at Stawiec near Włocławek). While the archaeological heritage has had a thirteen-metre swathe cut through it wherever this line crossed an archaeological site, the archaeologist has much to thank the developer for, the results of the work on the rescue projects this entailed have been very gratifying (Chłodnicki and Krzyżaniak eds. 1998).

These experiences demonstrate clearly the value of the careful identification of the zones of potential occurrence of archaeological sites and from an early stage of the planning determining the least damaging location of developments which can be in the best interests not just of the archaeological heritage, but also those involved in the redevelopment.

In order for environmental impact assessments to have any validity as a basis for decision making, they have to be conducted in a standardised and mutually-agreed manner. In the interests of accountability the results of the assessments themselves and justification of management decisions made on their basis must be made publicly and permanently available. They are as much a part of the research and conservation strategy as the excavations themselves.

 Another management decision which has to be made in the planning process is which sites to excavate and to what degree. Many heritage managers practice selection of sites or parts of sites for excavation (and thus commit the rest to destruction with only a minimal record made of their full information content). Such cost-cutting decisions are undoubtedly popular with the developer, and are usually justified with reference to a more or less precisely-formulated “research design” (local, period-specific, project-specific or national). Selection of sites in archaeological rescue work in any form is however a dangerous and risky practice, and thus in a responsible programme of heritage management must be subject to the strictest standards and very closely controlled.

It may well be that a site has data which would have answered questions fashionable decades ago, but now regarded as no longer worthy of serious interest or where sufficient quantities of data have already been gathered, it may well be that a site has to offer data on questions as yet unposed. In these cases, the excavation of such sites does not fit any current research programmes (and should the opportunity to conduct a rescue excavation on the former group of sites be passed-over and research strategies modified to bring sites of the second group under scrutiny?).

In some cases of course the threatened sites may be of a nature (for example repetitive types of nineteenth century site or features, extremely damaged and disturbed sites of greater antiquity) that for several reasons the cost of their full exploration may not be regarded by the archaeological community as a whole as compensated by the amount of significant new data produced. In such cases, where no justifiable research needs (either present or perceived future) can be demonstrated to exist, it seems unreasonable to expect the developer to fund a costly but pointless excavation.

Such clear-cut cases are not however typical, while there are sites which can easily be perceived as of little cognitive value, and at the other extreme sites which clearly have considerable cognitive value, there is a grey area between into which the majority of sites would seem to fit (at least on the evidence known previous to their fuller exploration) where the case is by no means clear-cut. In this grey area, the taking of heritage management decisions can be risky, and justifying them difficult. There are several reasons why it is difficult to condone the selection of sites in this manner:

-         Firstly, despite several decades of debate and a number of propositions, there are as yet no reliable criteria by which the "significance" ("archaeological value") of a site can be assessed (and thus compared with the financial cost to the developer of their full exploration).

-         It is very difficult, indeed almost impossible, to judge precisely what a site may contain from the evidence of a preliminary environmental impact assessment (and the full value of the data from a site is only revealed by their detailed processing).

-         It is thus impossible to say that one site is more important/valuable than another before they have been examined and the evidence they have produced fully assessed. The selection of sites on the basis of a preliminary assessment is rather like judging a book by its cover; the book has to be read if it is to be judged.

-         Someone has to take full responsibility for such management decisions and has to be accountable for these decisions. It is difficult to decide on what basis such decisions are made, and how the process is to be documented.

Selection of sites before their proper investigation is thus like Russian Roulette, and strategies involving an (unquantified) element of risk cannot be contemplated in our discipline. Recent cases warn us of the possible results of ignoring this problem - such as two (in)famous English cases: the near-loss of the unique Coppergate helmet from York found in an area of the development site which had not been fully excavated and the narrowly-avoided destruction of the remains of Shakespeare's Rose Theatre in London. In Germany the unrecorded destruction of the Lohrstrasse (Hilton) site at Mainz (see Barford 1996) is a notable recent case. These important sites fell victim or nearly so to mistaken planning decisions to under-record sites in the face of development. The examples can surely be multiplied - except in many cases we do not know precisely what has been permanently deleted from the archaeological record by the destructive forces of redevelopment in the cases negatively selected, since in many cases there was nobody there to take notes as the evidence contained in the site disappeared.

These comments have mainly been addressed to the problem of large earthmoving projects occurring in a rural background, huge areas of landscape are turned over and the generally shallowly-stratified and plough-damaged sites and the ‘blank’ areas between them are (on a theoretical rather than practical level)  relatively easily dealt with. The main problem is identifying the where the sites are and deciding on the nature and scale of the mitigation process. The situation in the centres of historic towns is more complex. There are regions (easily identified by a study of the topography, iconographic, cartographic and historical evidence) where one can hardly disturb the ground without potentially damaging deeply-stratified archaeological deposits. These complex layers are perceived as of great value for several reasons, among them:

-         they demonstrate continuity of occupation of an existing human settlement in a way few other archaeological sources are able,

-         they amplify the historical evidence and give the town’s history tangible form, bringing to life the earlier inhabitants who earlier walked the town’s streets and used the public buildings which may survive in the modern topography,

-         these layers contain rich stratified assemblages of finds of types not often preserved in other types of deposits,

-         these finds can be studied in stratified sequences, allowing their seriation and establishing dating sequences,

-         the archaeological evidence from urban sites can be used with other types of information (e.g., the topography, iconographic, cartographic and historical evidence) to give time-deep information on sociotopographic aspects of life unattainable on other sites.

For these reasons, (which include objective [archaeological], as well as subjective [sentimental] factors) as well as its sheer visibility, archaeologists and the public find it harder to contemplate destruction of archaeological evidence in towns. It is however the intensity of occupation in these areas which is the main threat, new buildings take the place of old, foundations are underpinned, underground car-parks are constructed, streets are resurfaced, service trenches dug and redug, cellars extended. All of these activities will disturb the evidence of earlier human activities on that spot. Here more than any other type of site, knowledge is cumulative, we can rarely examine more than a small portion of the hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of archaeological deposit under our historic towns at any one time. Because the evidence so rich and the range of questions so extensive, it is equally difficult (unless we have good reason to suspect that the area had already been destroyed in earlier development) to predict areas within a historic town centre which have little or no archaeological or research potential. Each piece of information, no matter how minor, has to be seen in the context of the whole and has something to add to that holistic picture.

Town centre sites are often very desirable for developers. Despite problems with parking and access, the centre of a historic town is a good place for shops, boutiques, services, offices etc. Town centre land commands relatively high prices in most parts of the developed world. Yet it is precisely these building plots which are often underlain by the most complex series of archaeological deposits, the potential destruction of which cannot be ignored.

It was in precisely this environment that the ideals of developer-funding were first formulated, the archaeological potential of town-centre sites was obvious to all, social and political pressure could often be brought to bear on reluctant developers, a modus vivendi  developed between archaeologists and developers. In order to benefit financially (and in terms of prestige) from the town-centre location, the developers learnt that they were most likely first going to have to invest in mitigating the threat to the archaeological heritage on that site. Faced with the probability of refusal of planning permission if these conditions were not met and perhaps negative publicity, many acquiesced to the demands of the heritage lobby.

It was in effect town archaeology which fathered developer-funding, apparently to the benefit of the archaeologist and the “heritage”. We can see now that even (or maybe especially?) in these heady early days, compromise was more often than not the bedfellow of opportunity. It was here also that the drawbacks of developer-funding  first became obvious, the ability of the developer to dictate archaeologically-unfavourable terms of work, the drawbacks of competitive tendering, the problem of what to do with finds and records once the site had been “cleared” of the “archaeological hazard”. Here also the importance of research designs first raised their head, to good and bad effect. In some cases the value of the work being paid for could be demonstrated to the developer and the public, by the demonstration of concrete research results rather than (or rather in addition to) the usual woolly statements about the value/importance of the “discoveries” and a few newspaper photographs of bikini-clad girls brushing exposed foundations. In other cases however a more faustian bargain would be struck between archaeologist and financer, costs could be cut for example by accepting a research strategy in which the origins of towns were seen as more important than studying the history of a plot of land in a more holistic manner, in which later (“modern”) layers could be machined-off. It was found that the whole collection of finds and samples from a site would not need to be closely studied at the developer’s expense, what mattered was spot-dating and the processing of certain “key” (or “primary”) deposits, the rest being archived for a hypothetical future archaeological “never-nevertime” when the rest of the material will be pulled out of storage and closely studied.

The fact that a town has an historic centre has often tended to direct attention away from the fragmented remains of the less obvious buried landscape beneath concrete and tarmac in suburban areas. It is precisely in these areas of desolate urban landscapes however in which new shopping centres, depots, factories, urban bypasses etc and the infrastructure to support them are now being built. The lack of information about archaeological potential of these areas should not prevent us from demanding archaeological impact assessments here too.

Since (like any scientific endeavour) archaeological investigation is a continuum from the formulation of research questions to the synthesis and publication of the results, the obligations of the investor should not end with the removal of archaeological data from the ground which allow earthmoving to begin. Another feature stressed by the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (article 5b and 6b) is the need for full publication and study of the findings from rescue excavations. The needs of preservation by record are not met by several tonnes of artefacts removed from the line of a linear development and packed in hundreds of boxes in a storeroom and folders full of notes, plans and photographs in a locked record cabinet, while the selected "choice" finds are placed on public display. The results must be processed, interpreted, summarised and presented in a digestible and usable form (Barford 1998). It must be recognised by all involved in rescue archaeology - including those who finance it - that this process is an integral part of the archaeological investigative process. An excavation cannot be considered finished until the results have been properly studied and synthesised. While it would be unreasonable to delay the inception of the developer's earthmoving activities until the production of the final report, each developer must be prepared to support the so-called ‘post-excavation process’ (concurrent if need be with the completion of the other parts of the development process). This entails financing a team of archaeologists to continue work on the accumulated documentation and finds after the digging is done and the subsequent publication of the results.

 An additional and increasingly important problem is the cost of storing the materials removed from the area of the developer’s activity. It seems reasonable to expect that the developer will participate in this expenditure. Modern excavations generate huge quantities of material which due to its nature can never form the basis of a museum display. This does not mean that the material has little value for the archaeologist; often well-recorded and well-stored material in museum storage from sites long destroyed can be found to have fresh importance when restudied and reinterpreted in the light of new knowledge. In the planning stages of any archaeological project, great thought has to be given to the question not just of the space in which to store such material, but also the ways in which such material will be maintained in optimum condition and most effective accessibility in the future. This almost certainly will involve extra financial outlay. These costs may also need to be borne many years after the completion of the development, and are often difficult to estimate before the excavation is finished.

The role of Archives

The ideals of “preservation by documentation” assume that the buried archaeological resource (in the form of sites and monuments) is transformed into a different type of archaeological resource, an archive of information (synthesised site records and finds) recovered from the ground. The records made during mitigation excavations are an integral part of the archives of the archaeological heritage manager.
The compilation and preservation of the archaeological heritage management archive is the most important tasks of the staff of heritage management organisations. The definition and improvement of common standards of and improvement of access to such archives is a pressing need in many regions.

The archive will contain a complete inventory of known sites from past and current fieldwork, and as a minimum will detail a common set of items of basic information (for example as suggested by CIDOC). It must include information on the history of not only archaeological investigations and assessments but also the nature and justification of management decisions (site inspections and the results, copies of planning restrictions or management agreements, protocols of site meetings detailing management decisions taken concerning individual sites etc.). Ideally, in the interests of both research (for example into historical landscape development) and public accountability, the archive should provide easy access to permanent publicly-accessible information about the activity (or lack of) of the archaeological heritage manager concerning every portion of the cultural landscape affected by any form of potentially damaging change (or changes which - while not in themselves threatening - lead to the masking of archaeological sites). If archaeological heritage management is to have any justification, this ideal should be treated as the minimum acceptable.

It should be remembered that the subject of AHM is no longer just individual sites which provide  isolated gobbets of information about activities in particular places, but the cumulative study of a developing landscape. The AHM archive should be constructed to allow the accession of information from these (and other) viewpoints..

The AHM archive should contain, or be cross-linked to all the various individual pieces of evidence retrieved from the various archaeological sites in the area concerned, and thus not only to the Sites and Monuments Records (which should in any case form its basis) but to all the administrative documents concerning the site, photographs or videos of the present (and past) state of the site, mentions of the site in the literature, finds, samples and other items in museum collections, the complete and synthesised documentation of any archaeological investigations  (excavation – whether for “pure” research or mitigation,  fieldwalking, environmental impact assessments, aerial photography, geophysical survey etc.). Any unsynthesised archaeological documentation from unpublished excavations should also be made available through the archive. It should also be possible to reconstruct from the same archive locations, areas and circumstances surrounding situations when no administrative action took place before a development. Sites cannot be seen as just defunct relics lying passively in a landscape, but as sometimes taking an active part in their creation, the archive should have the facility allowing accession of information (oral, pictorial, anecdotal, fictional) allowing the user the means to gain a ‘sense of place’ of individual sites (or, indeed, the excavation of a site which in itself forms an important part of the history of a site).

In the context of “preservation by documentation”, it must be stressed that the information recovered by rescue excavation and stored in these archives must be of the highest possible quality, recovered by recognised methodology in conditions as near to ideal as possible. If this ideal is not met, this should be made very clear in the paperwork of the archive.

No Developer- No archaeology?

The logic of the “polluter pays” principle is as simple as it is compelling to archaeologists and heritage managers who see it as a way out of the financial difficulties which have plagued many sectors of the European archaeological milieu since at least the 1960s. There is however a major problem to dampen euphoria. The move towards developer-funding has concentrated on arguments involving capitalist investment by for example large multinational consortiums in profitable redevelopment projects, from which the developer may expect considerable financial gains. The argument is logical in the case of prime land in town centres for office blocks or luxury accommodation. It applies equally well to land on urban peripheries where potentially profitable factories and services (such as supermarkets) are to be constructed. It can be extended to rural sites threatened by the construction of toll-paying motorways or the quarrying of saleable raw materials. The same principles are much more difficult to apply however to construction work which is not so much profitable as for the public good; the improvement of urban and rural infrastructure, construction of hospital extensions, schools, council housing, the construction of granny-flats and providing space for burial in cemeteries for example. In regions with a low public awareness of the needs of conservation (and the aims of archaeology), the demands of conservation in such cases may well be difficult to defend against political and social pressure. This is often a situation where if no state subsidy is forthcoming, archaeological heritage management is compromised.

The switch to developer-funding of “Preservation by Record” (i.e., rescue excavations) preceding major developments has freed, it is argued, scarce state resources for meeting exactly such needs, and to some extent this is true. It still requires however an increase in government spending commensurate with any increase in the needs of this type, the avoidance of which was initially the whole basis for government support for the ideals of developer-funding. While more money is available for archaeological research, it is still at the same cost to the taxpayer. In part some of the costs can be ‘hidden’ by awarding developers faced with mitigation costs different types of tax-relief for abiding by the terms of management agreements. Some archaeologists have suggested application of an “archaeological tax” on all redevelopments to pay for the costs of archaeological mitigation on land where the developer is unable to meet (or should not be made to meet) the costs of mitigation, but such calls ignore the needs of the PARIS ethic which requires only the decision to destroy an archaeological site to be a costly option for the developer.

There is another very important issue which is often ignored. Many archaeological sites in Europe are being damaged not by redevelopment but by insidious but no less damaging agencies such as ploughing. Over 90% of all known archaeological sites for example in Poland are under the plough; until recently many peasant farmers in a several regions of the country used horses to plough relatively shallowly, while on the large state farms mechanised ploughing was already doing much damage. In recent years the number of hectares ploughed by horse has dropped drastically and the pace of plough erosion of archaeological sites is on the increase. This problem has been virtually ignored by the Polish conservation services, which have not yet gone as far as to even collect statistics to allow the quantification of this damage, or to institute research (of even existing foreign literature) into the effects of ploughing on the preservation of archaeological sites. The PARIS ethic would require the cessation of destruction on such sites. The ethos of developer-funding would require the farmer to bear the financial consequences of continued profit-orientated agricultural use of land which happens to contain an archaeological site. The situation is however somewhat different in the majority of cases from a developer who acquires land in order to develop it (and who has the option of checking for the presence or absence of constraints – including archaeological – prior to the transaction)

There is no easy answer to this problem.

-         While earthwork sites can (in theory at least) be protected by inscription in the Register of Monuments (which allows the conservation services the possibility of dictating the terms of use of the site), this is not a realistic option for the vast numbers of “flat” (ploughsoil-covered) sites.

-         One cannot routinely stop ploughing on huge expanses of fertile soil and turn it over to pasture just because there is a pottery or flint scatter in the ploughsoil (often in areas of poor soil, the occupation debris in the ploughsoil gives a noticeably better crop than surrounding areas).

-         One may attempt to introduce a landuse agreement restricting the types of activities allowed on the site If even shallow ploughing continues however it will progressively erode the site and lead to damage (and further disrupt the distribution) of the finds in the ploughsoil. There may be difficulties making farmers stick to the agreements, which is usually reliant on their integrity and goodwill. Such measures may in future perspectives be seen as relatively short-term measures.

-         On the other hand, one can hardly excavate all of these sites (many of them are of huge extent, and many already heavily damaged).

Even in the case of the sites most deserving of excavation for their cognitive value and/or degree of perceived threat applying the “developer pays” principle could be difficult from a moral and practical point of view in the case of small-scale peasant farmers (and even larger scale agriculturalists). Market forces would ensure that farmers affected cannot recoup the outlay by selling their produce at a higher price. One cannot therefore realistically expect farmers to bear the cost of reduced profits (real or imagined) due to the restrictions placed on their use of the land, nor can one expect them to bear the costs of the excavations required to mitigate the effects of their continued unchanged usage of the land in a destructive manner (this is quite apart from the lack of archaeological resources to cope with such excavations).

In many states, the only recourse is the reaching of management agreements for individual sites with an appeal to higher ideals and some form of compensation to encourage farmers to restrict their exploitation of their farmland. If such systems were to be applied on a country-wide scale, the amount of compensation would be enormous, but without any immediate archaeological gains. The ploughland sites can neither be exhibited to a postulated culture-hungry public for their enjoyment and edification, nor does such a financial handout in any way increase our archaeological knowledge. It is simply extremely expensive passive conservation, but also  for its long-term effectiveness to a large extent reliant on the integrity of individual farmers and difficult to monitor. If it were to be applied to even a selected fraction of the sites presently under the plough, compensation of this sort would be a huge drain on the financial resources available to the state for conservation.

In many cases the problem is dealt with by partial measures, a token number of ploughed sites are excavated annually (often though on too small a scale), a number of management agreements are made with individual farmers and compensation is awarded and resources are spent attempting to ensure that the agreement is being kept and taking the appropriate action in cases of breaches of the agreement. The vast majority of sites under the plough are however being left to their fate and exposed to progressive erosion.

The same applies to vast areas of former wetland which are now drying out as the direct and indirect result of land reclamation and drainage schemes and other factors leading to a drop in the water table. In many cases there is little monitoring of the archaeological effects of these processes, still less attempts to mitigate them.

Public Archaeology

It has long been realised that the results of rescue archaeology are not just for the satisfaction of academic curiosity. If archaeological research is to have any meaning whatsoever, it must be presented to the public in a meaningful manner. It is the public (which or course includes individual developers and would-be developers) who pays for much of the archaeological research in most European countries, and it is their past which is being studied. The public has therefore a right to be able to access the results of the latest research into the “patrimonium” of its “ancestors” (rather, in most cases “predecessors”), and furthermore at a number of different levels, according to its needs. Archaeologists, working in the name of society, have to make the public aware of the aims and results of their work; this is expressed in article 9 of the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage. This obligation to society is no altruistic idealism, but a political necessity. Public opinion is an important preventative measure in heritage management. Only through public awareness and wholehearted support of the aims of archaeology can one expect there to be a switch to developer-funding over parts of Europe previously characterised by state-supported archaeology. The public cannot be expected to support - or demand - costly delays in development programmes, nor the developer expected to fund these investigations if the public can see no sense in such activities. Such measures include the presentation of sites and the display of selections of the archaeological materials. To this one may add texts explaining the sites and finds, the way the archaeologist works, and the threats to the archaeological heritage, as well as the rationale behind the heritage management decisions taken in each case. This in turn entails deep-rooted changes in some countries in the way archaeologists see and present themselves in the public eye.

The scientific significance of spectacular individual finds has recovered during rescue excavations has commonly been presented to the public as the most important results of the archaeological work on a particular site. This only encourages an “antiquarian” approach to the past, and archaeology as merely a hunt for buried treasures and a romantic quest to solve the “mysteries of the past” (though one sometimes suspects that many archaeologists see themselves in the mould of Indianna Jones or Lara Croft). In the final analysis what counts from the point of view of heritage management is not the spectacular finds or information such as the "oldest/largest/only something-or-other in the area", but the fine detail of the entirety of the record which forms a kind of 'replacement' of the site, and the way it is made available for further scholarly and public use.

* * *

It has been attempted here to highlight some of the pros and cons connected with the present European trend towards developer-funding of archaeological research. While undoubtedly freeing the state from supporting all archaeological work, several new restrictions are placed on the discipline as a result.

September 3 1998

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This article undoubtedly owes much to discussions with Zbigniew Kobyliński (who read a draft of this paper), but in its final form also heated e-mail correspondence on some of these issues with Andrzej Prinke. They should not be construed as sharing the views expressed here. Author’s address: pbarford@pro.onet.pl