Before any individual, organisation or discipline contemplates its future, it is prudent to know where it currently stands, where it has come from and what the world around it is like. Thus to start a conference on ‘Current Trends and Future Directions in Archaeological Conservation’, it is surely prudent to consider, if briefly, what we understand conservation to be i.e. the concept of conservation, and something of the history of conservation to show how we got here. We also need to understand the reality of the world in which conservation exists, what others expect from conservation and conservators
