THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE RESCUE OF OUR ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE

Archaeology has never been independent of the society where it is practised. In France, for example, as the archaeology of the national territory never played any role in the construction of national identity, preventive archaeology only really started in the 1980s, long after it did in other European countries. In any event, since 1992 all European countries (and not just the European Union) have been subject to the Malta Convention (also called the Valetta Convention), even though not all have ratified it entirely a quarter of a century later. In any case, the Con-vention says nothing about the actual organisation of preventive archaeology. In reality, in Europe today there are two opposing conceptions: one where the state should be responsible for the entire organisation of preventive archaeology, the other where, in the context of economic liberalism, this should be left to private initiative and commercial competition. Between these two extremes, there is a whole range of intermediary situations, often in constant transformation, although not always in a positive manner (as the recent case of Hungary has shown). It is not enough to say that it is just the quality of research that counts, since these legislations have a direct effect on the organisation of work and on the scientific results; hence, this paper will try to make a provisional assessment of the various archaeological policies implemented in Europe and draw some conclusions, also from the perspective of a possible modification of the Malta Convention.

Видео THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE RESCUE OF OUR ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE канала European Association of Archaeologists