More tales from heritage hell: Law, policy and practice of archaeological heritage protection in Austria

The Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz (heritage protection law) aims to give total protection to all archaeological heritage. To achieve this, it takes a 'finds-centred' approach: chance finds are protected by some provisions in the law, searching for archaeology is restricted severely, and exclusively to archaeology graduates, by others. Yet, what has been completely forgotten is that most archaeology, and particularly the most threatened archaeology, is the one that has neither been found yet nor is being searched for. The reasons for why this approach was taken are both historical and rooted in archaeological prejudices and self-interest. The law was first passed in 1923 and has since only been revised in ways that served to give archaeologists greater legal control (or in other words, ownership) over what is archaeology and what should happen to it. Yet, significant changes to the way farming, forestry and development works in the contemporary world were completely missed, and no serious attempts made to identify where archaeology might be actually threatened. In this paper, I examine how the Austrian archaeological heritage hell came to be and what lessons can be learnt from it

The Freedom of Archaeological Research: Archaeological Heritage Protection and Civil Rights in Austria (and Beyond)

Archaeologists like to think that heritage protection laws serve the purpose to protect all archaeology from damage. Thus, provisions like that of § 11 (1) Austrian Denkmalschutzgesetz or Art. 3 i-ii of the Valetta convention are interpreted as a blanket ban on archaeological fieldwork ‘unauthorised’ by national heritage agencies, and a general prohibition against archaeological field research by non-professionals. The Austrian National Heritage Agency, the Bundesdenkmalamt, interprets the Austrian law in this way. Using the Austrian example as a case study, this paper demonstrates that this interpretation must be wrong, since if it were true, it would revoke a fundamental civil right enshrined both in the Austrian constitution and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union: the unconditional freedom of research, which applies to archaeological field research as to any other kind of academic research, and extends equally to every citizen

Archaeological Responses to 5 Decades of Metal Detecting in Austria

Since metal detecting started in Austria in 1970, the National Heritage Agency (BDA) has focussed too much on prohibiting metal detecting. The strategy chosen, increasingly restrictive legislation, has turned out to be a failure. Rather than improving the protection of archaeological heritage from ‚unauthorised‘ metal detecting, the ‚hobby‘ has grown steadily. Yet, the changes to the law have made protecting archaeology more difficult and are restricting civil liberties, quite possibly making the law itself illegal. Five decades on, Austrian archaeology isn‘t better off, but considerably worse, and it is mainly our attempts to prevent metal detecting that are to blame