Session: #102

Regular session

Archaeology and the protection of cultural heritage often diverge or even conflict with other, equally legitimate interests of the economy or the society. Decisions have to be made about where funds go, how laws are formulated, who receives political and public support - and who does not. In democratic societies, it is common to create attention for one's own interest with the help of campaigns or petitions; to put pressure on decision-makers; to convince citizens and to organise democratic majorities. Archaeology is often not very successful in this; it usually reacts too late and too little to expected crises. Looking back on such initiatives, typical shortcomings of such campaigns - as well as weaknesses of the archaeological community - can be identified on the basis of failures or partial successes. Recommendations for a more effective approach can be derived from the successes. The session does not want to exclude the presentation of (significant) individual cases, but it does want to look at the topic in a more fundamental way, and to compile existing experiences from all over Europe. It will also not be about lobbying, but will focus on campaigns that have cleverly combined several approaches to convince other stakeholders and successfully take advantage of the different roles within archaeology.

campaign, petition, experience, success, politics

no

yes

no

no

yes

Frank Siegmund (Germany) ^1,2

Diane Scherzler (Germany) ¹
Gerry Wait (United Kingdom) ^3,4
Lorenc Bejko (Albania) ⁵