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As a result of a trend that began in the 1990s, the greater part of archaeological fieldwork in Hungary is currently conducted as part of preventive archaeology. Due to the archaeological tradition and the legislative background in Hungary, excavation activities involve museums, universities and research institutes as well as private companies. The Institute of Archaeological Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) has played a key role in this process from the very beginning, including the creation of a standardized archaeological protocol. According to the legal regulation of excavation activities, the excavation, documentation, primary conservation, and storage has to be financed by the developer ("polluter pays"). However, this regulation does not provide resources for publicity, either academic or public, even though Article 6 of the Valetta Convention (in force in Hungary since 2000) stipulates "public financial support for a scientific summary record as well as for the full publication and recording of the findings". In this situation, the scientific assessment of the finds can only be undertaken from other, scarce sources of funding, in which academic institutes were able to play a greater role than museums. In our presentation, we briefly review how, despite these difficulties, the vast amounts of information and finds that have been uncovered can nevertheless be academically utilised. The role of ELTE will be discussed at greater length. We have been able to integrate the assessment of at least a part of the excavations into our teaching/research activities. Several BA, MA, and PhD theses are based on these excavations and several major ongoing research projects have grown out of them. We certainly consider it useful to have been involved in these development-led archaeology.

EAA 2023: Abstract

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