Creative Archaeology

(1)

9 789088 903502 ISBN 978-90-8890-350-2

ISBN: 978-90-8890-350-2

Sidestone Press

‘Fernweh’ is a collection of essays on archaeological heritage management issues dedicated to Professor dr. Willem J.H. Willems.

Willem Willems (1950-2014) was one of the most prominent and influential Dutch archaeologists. He directed three national archaeological and heritage organizations, and played a major role in the development of both national and international heritage management systems. His professional passion was threefold: Roman archaeology, archaeological heritage management and international collaboration. This volume is a tribute to him, his passions and the provocative discussions he loved so much. It holds contributions by people who worked closely with him. The essays originate from various contexts across the globe; from governmental organizations to museums, from private sector companies to universities. Some are contemplative, others offer refreshing visions for the future.

The essays contribute to contemporary debates in archaeological heritage management. They concern the various dimensions and consequences of current policies and practices and address the meaning and use of the world’s legacies from the past in and for society, at present and in the future. The overarching theme is the question of whose heritage we are protecting and how we can better valorise research results and connect with society.

The book is organised into three parts. The first part, ‘Time travels’ covers the major challenges the archaeological heritage discipline is facing while heading towards the future. The second part, ‘Crossing borders and boundaries’, consists of essays that consider the international organizations and projects Willem Willems became (directly and indirectly) involved with. It reflects his trans-disciplinary interests and endeavours. In the third part, ‘Home sweet home’, the contributions discuss prof. Willems’ involvement with and dedication to Dutch archaeological heritage management, from the implementation of the Council of Europe’s Valletta Convention, to the engagement with people from all walks of life.

CROSSING BORDERS AND

CONNECTING PEOPLE

IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL

HERITAGE MANAGEMENT

edited by

Monique H. van den Dries, Sjoerd J. van der Linde

& Amy Strecker

Fernweh

Sides

to

n

e

Essays in honour of prof. Willem J.H. Willems

Fernweh

Es

sa

ys in h

(2)

CROSSING BORDERS AND

CONNECTING PEOPLE

IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL

HERITAGE MANAGEMENT

edited by

Monique H. van den Dries, Sjoerd J. van der Linde & Amy Strecker

(3)

Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com

ISBN 978-90-8890-350-2

Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press

Photographs cover: Johan van der Heijden Fotografie www.johanvanderheijdenfotografie.nl

(permission for use also granted by Gemeente Goes)

Also available as:

(4)

This is a digital offprint from:

(5)

Sidestone Press

A new generation of Publishing

*

www.sidestone.com/library

This is a free offprint, read the entire book at the

Sidestone

e

-library!

You can find the full version of this book at the Sidestone

e

-library. Here most of our publications are fully accessible for

free. For access to more free books visit:

www.sidestone.com/library

Download Full PDF

(6)

Creative archaeology

Sjoerd J. van der Linde

*

_{and Monique H. van den Dries}

**

* CommonSites, The Netherlands ** Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Willem Willems was many things, but being traditional was not one of them. Ever since he exchanged his position of Chief Inspector for Archaeology at the State Inspectorate for Cultural Heritage in favour of becoming Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University, he passionately – and with childlike enthusiasm – criticized dogmas, traditional thinking and politically correct

academic waffle. His latest and dearest enemy was the concept of ‘preservation in

situ’ (Willems 2014), especially in the context of heritage discourses that centred

upon unthinkingly preserving material remains for future generations, without any regard for present-day creative, commercial or local alternative values and uses. The fact that he himself had been so fundamental in setting up effective policies and implementing the principles of the European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (Malta Convention, 1992), including preservation

in situ, did not prevent him from criticizing it. On the contrary, he was a strong advocate for exploring outside-the-box options and alternatives for a sustainable archaeological practice before former useful legislative concepts and tools would become political dogmas implemented by bureaucrats.

As colleagues within his chair-group on Archaeological Heritage Management, Willem always encouraged us to question the obvious and look for other directions. Accordingly, in this discussion paper we set out some possible directions to search for elements that embody a new form of archaeology, which may help to deal with present-day public, academic and political challenges. In our view, such an

archaeology will be based foremost upon its social values, and upon a spirit that

creates shared value, while actively exploring opportunities – an archaeology that is not primarily concerned with providing compliance and academic publications, but rather with creating narratives and public benefits. In contrast to prioritizing preservation and conservation values, we like to call this mode of practice and thinking ‘creative archaeology’.

What is wrong with Malta?

(10)

52 fernweh

with legal and physical protection, integrated conservation and the financing of activities) were faced with moderate to serious challenges – in effect, this hints at

problems encountered during implementing different forms of in situ preservation,

preventive archaeology and the polluter-pays principle. When asked about the implementation of articles 7-12 (dealing with issues such as the dissemination of knowledge, exchange of skills, public awareness and outreach activities), the

respondents stated that there were no significant problems encountered. If you look

at the responses to the question of how effective the implementation of the different articles have been, we see a similar distinction in articles, albeit rather disturbing; whilst respondents stated that the implementation of articles 1-6 had yielded quite significant achievements, the implementation of articles 7-12 were said to have little to no significant achievements at all. There are probably many interrelated and good reasons for this, and we admit that the EAC survey only provides a very basic benchmark, but strengthened by our own experience, observations and analyses, for instance of the results of the Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2012-2014 project concerning the degree to which public engagement activities are embedded in the profession in Europe (Van den Dries 2015), we feel confident to say that this basically means the following: we have not encountered any problems in the Malta articles dealing with the implementation of public outreach, and dissemination and exchange of knowledge, simply because we have not bothered all too much with them in the first place.

We feel however that this is a serious problem, both from a moral perspective, as well as from a perspective about the sustainability of our profession. These days, our profession is faced with several serious challenges, especially where it concerns the workings of ‘Malta archaeology’. Current critiques on the different forms of this type of archaeology include recurring statements about the poor level of knowledge production, a lack of quality and synthesis, the high costs involved in financing the polluter-pays principle, and the lack of real value for money and effective communication. Whilst the validity of some of these statements can be questioned (see Van den Dries and Van der Linde 2012), what matters here is that our profession is challenged with political and public critique that, in combination with a possible prolonged economic crisis, could form a serious threat to the survival of Malta archaeology as we know it – especially if we loose public and political support.

Co-creating social value

In order to tackle this, we feel that our profession needs to explore the opportunities that an implementation of articles 7-12 might yield – both academically, professionally and even commercially. We believe that an archaeology that focuses

on creating output in the field of social value could offer a guideline – that is, if

(11)

transparency and demonstrable impact. What such a creative archaeology might entail, first of all, is that we start to see the public (and that includes developers and commercial parties other than clients only from the traditional development industry), as serious ‘partners’ or sometimes even as ‘customers’ of our work. This is because if we take their needs seriously, we might be able to turn the practice of ‘delivering heritage compliance’ in advance of development as our core product, into a practice that places creating ‘social value’ for society to the fore.

One example of this type of archaeology can be seen in current examples of archaeological practice that are being supported and funded not out of academic or commercial funds, but rather out of development and even aid funds. Our work with the Palestinian Authorities in Tell Balata (West Bank) for example (Van den

Dries and Van der Linde 2014), was supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs not because of the archaeological scientific knowledge and publications they would yield but because the proposed archaeological and heritage work

could be seen as a tool towards creating social benefit for and with the Palestinian

Department and with local communities, in the areas of tourism development, identity building, educational practice, and intercultural understanding. The

raison d’être of archaeology here was to be found in the social value it would create – supported and fuelled by the narratives, stories and scientific interpretations (Taha and Van der Kooij 2014). Placing archaeology firmly within a discourse that sees cultural heritage as a human right, and demonstrating the social impact of the work, opens-up budget streams that would otherwise remain unavailable (Van der Linde 2012).

Another example of a possible form of creative archaeology that places social value at its core can be seen in a small public archaeology project that took place in Oss in The Netherlands. The inclusion of the neighbours in a typical development-led excavation reveadevelopment-led that both the participants and the local authorities expected and experienced all kinds of social benefits from the project. These varied from an increased social coherence in the neighbourhood to learning new skills and a feeling of happiness and well-being (Van den Dries, Boom and Van der Linde 2015).

A third opportunity worth exploring for a creative archaeology that is based on social value, lies in the fields of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and creating shared value (CSV). Traditionally, archaeologists and heritage professionals have been looking to the banking and development sectors for securing financial donations and support, but this in effect overlooks a huge base of potential CSR partners from other industries (Groot, forthcoming). While it is true that once cultural heritage (or access to cultural heritage and the freedom to interpret one’s

(12)

54 fernweh

history) is recognized on a global scale as a human right, this might open up new streams of seeking CSR support, we should not forget that many policy discourses such as ‘social inclusion’, ‘sustainable cities’ and ‘intergenerational equality’ already provide many opportunities for finding support for our work. However, simply asking for philanthropic support is not ‘creative’ – rather, our discipline needs to think proactively about how we align our work in such a way that it creates shared value for commercial partners. Examples of creating such shared social values might well lie in providing companies and CSR agendas with the right stories, identities and engaging field practises that fit their brands, products and consumers’ needs (Groot, forthcoming). This would not only create exciting new partnerships and, admittedly, challenges, but also new opportunities for alternative funding.

Playing to our strengths

The above just touches very generally on some opportunities that a creative archaeology, and an emphasis on social value, might yield. The simple fact of the matter however is that we do not know for sure if this is a direction worth following until we try, and until we support our archaeological work with research into the social impact that we have. We need more empirical data about the impact of our work, not only to gain public, commercial and political support, but also to improve our engagement with society in a way that goes beyond mere rhetoric and good intentions. It is in this context that we for instance aim to measure the social and economic impact and return on investment of various archaeological outreach and participation activities (www.nearch.eu).

It is important to state clearly that we do not believe that there is no value or place for sound, scientific archaeological research and fieldwork – on the contrary. We will never be able to create social value if we do not have archaeological research to draw from and be inspired by. However, our argument is that instead of focusing on creating academic publications, grey literature and policy compliance, we should think more creatively about what exactly archaeology can and should bring to society. We believe that the solution lies hidden somewhere in articles 7-12 of the Malta Convention, and that it has to do with valorising the narratives and enthusiasm of our work. Making these elements the core product of our discipline not only makes sense from a sustainable political, financial and moral sense, but also from a professional and personal sense – making the thrill and experience of archaeology the core product is simply more fun, and it allows us to start playing to our strengths again.

References

Groot, B.M. forthcoming. Selling Culture. Private sector partnerships and the value of cultural heritage. Leiden: Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University (unpublished dissertation). Olivier, A. and P. van Lindt. 2014. ‘Valletta Convention perspectives: an EAC survey’, in

(13)

Taha, H. and G. van der Kooij (eds). 2014. Tell Balata: Changing Landscape. Ramallah: Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project.

Van den Dries, M.H. 2015. ‘From Malta to Faro, how far have we come? Some facts and figures on public engagement in the archaeological heritage sector in Europe’, in P.A.C. Schut, D. Scharff and L.C. de Wit (eds), “Setting the Agenda”: Giving new meaning to the European archaeological heritage. Brussels: Europae Archaeologiae Consilium (EAC Occasional Paper no. 10), 45-55.

Van den Dries, M.H. and S.J. van der Linde. 2012. ‘Twenty years after Malta: archaeological heritage as a source of collective memory and scientific study anno 2012’, Analecta Prehistorica Leidensia 43/44: 9-19.

Van den Dries, M.H. and S.J. van der Linde. 2014. ‘Introduction to the promotion, awareness raising and education strategy’, in H. Taha and G. van der Kooij (eds), Tell Balata: Changing Landscape. Ramallah: Publications of the Tell Balata Archaeological Park Project, 127-132.

Van den Dries, M.H., K.H.J. Boom and S.J. van der Linde, 2015. ‘Exploring archaeology’s social values for present day society’, in C.C. Bakels and H. Kamermans (eds), Analecta Prehistorica Leidensia 45: 221-234.

Van der Linde, S.J. 2012, Digging holes abroad. An ethnography of Dutch Archaeological Research Projects Abroad. Leiden: Leiden University Press (Archaeological Studies Leiden University 27).

Creative Archaeology

Sidestone Press

CROSSING BORDERS AND

CONNECTING PEOPLE

IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL

HERITAGE MANAGEMENT

Monique H. van den Dries, Sjoerd J. van der Linde

& Amy Strecker

Fernweh

Fernweh

Sides

to

n

e

Essays in honour of prof. Willem J.H. Willems

Fernweh

CROSSING BORDERS AND

CONNECTING PEOPLE

IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL

HERITAGE MANAGEMENT

This is a digital offprint from:

Sidestone Press

A new generation of Publishing

*

www.sidestone.com/library

This is a free offprint, read the entire book at the

Sidestone

e

-library!

You can find the full version of this book at the Sidestone

e

-library. Here most of our publications are fully accessible for

free. For access to more free books visit:

www.sidestone.com/library

Download Full PDF

Contents

Creative archaeology

Sjoerd J. van der Linde

and Monique H. van den Dries

What is wrong with Malta?

Co-creating social value

Playing to our strengths

References

_{and Monique H. van den Dries}