European Elections 2019 – Benchmarks for Archaeology and Heritage Protection

EAA Annual Meeting Maastricht, Round Table 164

Wednesday 30.08.2017, 9:00 – 11:30 am, MECC Room 2.7

by Sophie Hueglin (s.hueglin@web.de), Raimund Karl, Marc Lodewijckx and Jean-Olivier Gransard Desmond



Election benchmarks are an instrument to bring archaeology and heritage protection to politicians and voters. They are a formal tool through which interest groups can neutrally communicate with political parties and voters during upcoming elections. The process is as follows: a short specific catalogue of relevant questions is formulated and sent to the parties. The politicians are requested to reveal how they intend to act – e.g. regarding legislation or financing of archaeology and heritage protection – during the next legislative period. The answers of the parties are collected and published in order to provide voters interested in archaeology with criteria for their decision. 

EAA intends to develop benchmarks for the European elections in 2019. This year at the Round Table in Maastricht, the most urgent concerns in European archaeology and heritage protection shall be short-listed with the help of EAA Working Parties, Committees and partner organisations. By the Annual Meeting in Barcelona, the short-listed questions will have been translated and distributed to the election candidates and their parties and responses collected. The politicians’ answers will then be summarized at EAA Barcelona, commented on and widely published, so that politics, the media and the public will become aware of issues concerning archaeology and heritage protection and voters will be able to make informed decisions.

We have invited Frank Siegmund from the German Society for Pre- and Protohistory (DGUF) to report DGUFs experiences with election benchmarking (“Wahlprüfsteine”). Since 2009, DGUF has used the instrument five times in federal and national elections. Originally, “Wahlprüfsteine” were developed by nature conservation organisations, but are used much more widely now to raise awareness of themes considered to be important by special interest communities and to turn attention from political personalities to subject-matters. If repeated, election benchmarks can be used to hold governing parties accountable for promises they made during past election campaigns.

This Round Table is especially interesting to:

  • EAA Working Parties and Committees who want to inform voters about their concerns and use election benchmarks to influence European politics at elections
  • Partner Organisations of EAA who want to join EAA in setting up benchmarks for the European elections or who are interested to use the instrument themselves on federal or national level
  • EAA members who would like to get to know the instrument and help to create the list of concerns. Their support would be needed especially in 2018 and 2019 to translate and distribute questionnaires, collect, summarize and comment responses received, and publish the election benchmarks in the individual member states
Please follow updates under EAA Political Strategies Committee. If you intend to come, please write directly to Sophie Hueglin (vicepresident@e-a-a.org), Raimund Karl (r.karl@bangor.ac.uk) or Marc Lodewijckx (secretary@e-a-a.org) so that we can identify your concern and organisational background(s). If you come back to us until 17.07.2017, we can include you on the list of expected participants.

Go back to top

Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) offers to found CIfA Deutschland

by Sophie Hueglin (s.hueglin@web.de), quoting the DGUF Newsletter from 6.7.2017

The necessity of a professional association for archaeologists in Germany was the main topic in Mayence at the conference of the German Society for Pre- and Protohistory (DGUF, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte e.V.). The topic had already been discussed online with more than 200 participants in a web-based pre-conference. At the conference on July 4th, representatives of all stakeholder groups and organisations with similar functions had been invited to give position papers.

There, CIfA Board member Gerry Wait presented the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA UK) to the participants. During the following evening reception, he renewed CIfA’s offer from June 1st to support a German working group that would establish this large international professional association with currently 3200 members in Germany. The intention is to found a German association according to German law and German needs and not to become a copy of CIfA UK, but CIfA Deutschland, created from an adaption process to German surroundings and specific requirements. By the end of this process the German group would have to decide for itself whether it would want to become a branch of CIfA UK or to form an independent organisation – developed from the model CIfA UK, but separate. The advantage CIfA UK sees in this partnership would be to widen its base for common lobbying with regard to professional issues. Apart from CIfA Deutschland,  CIfA Netherlands is in preparation, too. In order to have a point of contact in Germany, CIfA UK is providing initial financing to create a part-time position for German archaeologist Michaela Schauer M.A. Her primary task is to assist first applicants with their accreditation at CIfA UK and also to help adjusting documents and the existing system of CIfA UK to the requirements of German archaeology. That evening, more than 50 persons already signed the list of interest; among them the Head of Archaeology at the State Office for Cultural Heritage Bavaria, Sebastian Sommer. This group will form the core of CIfA Deutschland.

For the coming twelve months, CIfA Deutschand has the following aims:

  • translation of application forms for individuals, institutions and companies
  • creation of a German CIfA webpage
  • translation and adaption of the CIfA Code of Conduct and Standards
  • planning and research of necessary legal steps to adapt to the German legal framework and the specific situation in the individual federal states
  • search for the seven foundation members
  • translation of the disciplinary processes and guidelines

According to Gerry Wait, this list shows that a lot of hard work is waiting ahead. Achieving the aims, however, is possible with the cooperation of many. The more colleagues are prepared to volunteer, the better and faster the work will be accomplished.

At the conference and during the evening reception, the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) was represented by Vice-President Sophie Hueglin. In the name of EAA President Felipe Criado-Boado and the EAA Executive Board, she welcomed the founding of CIfA Deutschland. The creation of a Europe-wide roof of national professional organisations is – facing transnational worries about the working conditions of archaeologists in Europe – a very necessary step and the organisation an ideal partner for the EAA, which understands itself as the non-governmental organisation of European archaeologists.

DGUF, who has been instrumental in making the debate on the necessity for a professional organisation in Germany possible, supports CIfA’s offer to create a group in Germany. DGUF will help the project, for example by regular reports in the DGUF Newsletter, because CIfA has of yet no strong communication network in Germany. DGUF President Diane Scherzler, Vice-President Frank Siegmund and several members of the DGUF Advisory Board signed the list of interest – as private persons – and are therefore among the first to apply for membership with CIfA Deutschland.

There will be monthly updates on the progress of CIfA Deutschland in the DGUF Newsletter in German and also information on possibilities to join. The DGUF Newsletter can be ordered independently of DGUF membership here: http://www.dguf.de/49.html. Personally, I would encourage Austrian and Swiss archaeologists to get involved in the project CIfA Deutschland now in order to make it an association of not only German, but German-speaking archaeologists. This transnational association could be called CIFA DACH – D for Deutschland, A for Austria, and CH for Switzerland – and a make it an inclusive European rather than a solely national project.

References

Go back to top

4th Central European Theoretical Archaeology Group CE TAG 2017

Conference date: Monday 16th – Tuesday 17th October 2017
Conference venue: OREA, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Hollandstraße 11–13, 1020 Vienna, Austria

Disciplinarity in Archaeology

Recent years have seen an increasing integration of natural science approaches in archaeology, so much that one could argue that the nature of the discipline is shifting from a historical-philosophical subject towards a natural science one. This brings with it a change in the discipline’s epistemology – in which ways knowledge is generated. 

This conference aims to explore where archaeology stands as a discipline. Do we waver uneasily between subject groups, or are we integrating different kinds of knowledge? Archaeology is inherently cross-disciplinary, borrowing from art history, computer science, geography, biology and other subjects. Many projects today are multi-disciplinary, bringing in experts from different fields. Working in this way has become standard practice in archaeology, but how is this actually done? In what ways do the paradigms of different disciplines influence the questions explored and the knowledge generated? Is it appropriate to talk about inter-disciplinarity? How are multiple disciplines integrated within actual research? These questions provide the framework for understanding Disciplinarity in Archaeology

The official language of the conference is English. The following themes outline the general focus of the conference:

1. Reflections on Inter-disciplinarity
Is the discipline of archaeology cross-, multi-, inter-, or trans-disciplinary? Have archaeologists defined our discipline well enough to even ask these questions? Or are we too fragmented between historical, processual and post-modern epistemologies to have even intra-disciplinary conversations? There is also a strong belief that science approaches generate “hard knowledge” – indisputable facts that are beyond questioning. And yet, the value of scientific knowledge is increasingly questioned in politics and society. What kinds of knowledge does archaeology generate, and is the public right in believing it?

2. Practicing Inter-disciplinarity
How is multi- or inter-disciplinarity practiced in ongoing archaeological research? Most of archaeologists recognize the need for incorporating the results of “hard science” analyses in our work. This includes everything from DNA to remote sensing to chemical analyses of artifacts, with scientists supplying reports, and often collaborating on publications. We are perhaps less open to asking whether disciplines like geophysics or chemistry are objective or subjective, or what the limitations of scientific methods are. Do archaeologists over- or underestimate what strontium isotopes or electron microscopy can prove? Alternatively, are our scientific collaborators aware of the limitations of archaeological data? In this section, presenters will focus on the practice of inter-disciplinarity in their own case studies and projects.

Organizing committee: Roderick B. Salisbury, Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Estella Weiss-Krejci
Contact: Roderick.Salisbury@univie.ac.at
More information: http://www.orea.oeaw.ac.at/veranstaltungen/event-detail/article/ce-tag-2017-disciplinarity-in-archaeology/

Go back to top