Editorial

It is in the nature of a journal such as The Historic Environment Practice and Policy that individual sections throughout the year reflect a variety of issues and research projects in different parts of the world. On occasion, an issue will represent a particular theme for example when papers originate in a Conference or are grouped by a guest editor. It is rare that coincidence produces a themed volume. Nevertheless this volume, 9.2, has as its common themes the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) and stewardship. Familiar from the work of Laura-Jane Smith, AHD has been instrumental in constructing the discourse which focusses on the management and conservation of heritage sites.¹ It is a based on four key principles: that archaeological evidence is a finite and non-renewable resource, that archaeology is a matter of public concern, governed by legislation and subject to assessment of signficance. Its operation has led to the regulation of work in the historic environment by professional codes of conduct.² These have been recognised at least since the 1980s as the principal means of regulating professional activity within the AHD.³

The papers in this volume which look at practice and policy in Wales, England, Austria and Belgium are complemented by a short review looking into the future of conservation practice. Each author, however, has taken a quite different approach to their subject matter. For Ray Karl ‘Judgement day in Heritage Hell’ is the third narrative of a personal odyssey aimed at correcting official attitudes to the interpretation of heritage law in Austria. The changes that Karl’s efforts have brought about, the recognition that the Austrian National Heritage Agency, the Bundesdenkmalamt [BDA] no longer has jurisdiction over surface finds or survey, has important implications for community archaeology and metal detecting. Important too are the implications for professional practice and here the impact of deregulation there is a fear that standards may fall in the absence of a strong professional association of the type represented by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. Ray Karl is a leading academic in this particular field of expertise, and as a result of this research, in January this year submitted new archaeological provisions for the Austrian Monuments Protection Law to the Austrian Minister of Culture. This proposal suggests significant changes to the law to address many of the issues identified in the current paper.

Steve Trow’s paper is a position statement by the retiring Head of Research at Historic England drafted in a time of Brexit and confronted by political uncertainty. He has emphasised evolving policy in areas where Historic England should have a role in helping to address those challenges that the commercial sector cannot itself resolve. As well as confronting damage wrought by processes outside development, increasing deregulation, decreasing resources, the need to resolve short-term practical issues through the ‘21^st-Century Challenges in Archaeology’ initiative and the challenge represented by the increasing scale of archives, a key theme to emerge is the maintenance of public value. In this Historic England support, the conclusions of the Reflections on Archaeology report by the British Academy that the impact of archaeology at the macro level should contribute to answering societal ’big questions’ but demonstrate public value at the local level through engagement, question setting and the generation of new understanding.

In Wales, new legislation, enacted in 2016 is the subject of Paul Belford’s paper. Director of the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust, Belford’s review provides a brief introduction to the evolution of the Welsh system of heritage practice over the last century, the roles of CADW,⁴ the Welsh Royal Commission (RCAHMW, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments in Wales), conservation officers and the Welsh Trusts. He identifies five key changes brought in by the 2016 Act: widening the definition and scope of Scheduled Ancient Monuments, limiting the ‘defence of ignorance’, extending the state’s powers to act in case of damage to Scheduled Monuments, placing Historic Environment Records on a statutory footing and introducing the concept of Heritage Partnership Agreements. Yet in confronting the future, Belford argues the system remains vulnerable to declining resources which at a time of austerity and confronted by the challenges of Brexit has meant that culture and heritage are given a lower priority.

Jeremy Cenci, at the University of Mons, has approached the nature of the AHD through the medium of industrial heritage. In a short reflective essay grounded in the transformation of once dynamic centres of heavy industry into resilient centres of industrial heritage, he has drawn attention to the prevailing attitude of the Wallonian government, whose predilection it is to sweep away the behemoths of the past to create landscaped sites of quasi ‘natural’ heritage. Acknowledging the tensions brought by the potential profitability of redeveloping tabula rasa, there is evidently a ground swell of alternative options some of which Cenci has illustrated. The paper is a further contribution to the collection published by Oevermann and Mieg in 2014 and should be seen as a case study of conservation management in a much wider environment; one that is responsive to EU regional policy such as the ‘Second Chance – From Industrial Use to Creative Impulse’ initiative for the re-use of sites in Nuremberg, Venice, Krakow, Ljubljana and Leipzig.⁵

A common theme which emerges from the four papers is a concern with stewardship, with the future and the relationship between archaeological and conservation practice with the public. These are key themes in Ioannis Poulios review of ‘The Archaeology of Time Travel’. Distinguishing between conservation practice, seen as freezing the past in restoration or through excavation and consolidation, and the trend to enliven the past through interpretation, he acknowledges both approaches encapsulate a desire for authenticity. However, whilst one relies on a knowledge-orientated and critical approach to the past, the other is a past which doesn’t need to be genuine, but credible as an authentic experience which could have happened. These are familiar terms of reference from the early stages of the heritage debate characterised by Hewison and Wright which pitted authenticity and scholarly interpretation against heritage and gave rise to the charge of heritage as bogus history.⁶ What gives Poulios’s review and the emphasis of Trow, Karl, Belford and Cenci on both stewardship and our relationship with the public, particular weight is the recent Demos report.⁷ Not only has this shown the ‘pervasive extent’ to which language that plays up the security and simplicity of the past has infiltrated political culture⁸ but revealed the extent to which nationalist politicians

benefit from citizens’ anxieties about change [and] are those peddling the promise of ‘control’, not just over immigration, or laws, or even whether the national flag is displayed with gusto, but over time itself. Time is presented as a wild and unruly force, which can be secured, regained, and tamed.⁹

As heritage practitioners have moved towards ‘enlivening’ the past through policies as varied as heritage led regeneration or enhancement¹⁰ it is evident that stewardship is far from value free. In a value laden environment in which policy and practice acts in an uneasy relationship with political and societal expectations, Poulis’ observation that no criteria have yet been developed to assess and prioritise between such policies and practices acquires a real sense of urgency.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Smith, Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage, 6–43.

2. Carmen, Valuing Ancient Things, Archaeology and Law, 5–6.

3. Green, Ethics and Values in Archaeology.

4. CADW, a Welsh noun meaning to preserve, is the title of the historic environment service of the Welsh Government.

5. Total investment for the project ‘Second Chance – From Industrial Use to Creative Impulse’ is EUR 2,892,336.32, of which the EU’s European Regional Development Fund is contributing EUR 2,275,611.86. Based on the Operational Programme ‘Central Europe’ for the 2007 to 2013 programming period [http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/projects/germany/a-second-chance-for-disused-industrial-sites accessed July 25, 2018].

6. Hewison, The Heritage Industry. Britain in a Climate of Decline, 95–97.

7. Gaston and Hilhorst, Home in One’s Past, Nostalgia as a Cultural and Political Force in Britain.

8. As reported by Philip ‘Nostalgia has Stolen the Future’.

9. Gaston and Hilhorst, Home in One’s Past, Nostalgia as a Cultural and Political Force in Britain, 20.

10. In England, enhancement is a key principle of the revised NPPF 2018 and Historic England (2017, 14) indicates this can be achieved by actions including: removing or re-modelling an intrusive building or feature; replacement of a detrimental feature by a new and more harmonious one; restoring or revealing a lost historic feature or view; introducing a wholly new feature that adds to the public appreciation of the asset; introducing new views (including glimpses or better framed views) that add to the public experience of the asset, or improving public access to, or interpretation of, the asset including its setting.