This issue of The Historic Environment Policy and Practice represents something of a departure. We have done many special issues devoted to single themes before, but this one is different in that we are taking on the issue of Brexit. On 24 June 2016, the United Kingdom electorate made the fateful decision that the U.K. should leave the European Union. The consequences of this decision are reverberating still, and will do for many years to come. (For me it feels as if the country has jumped off a cliff and the bungee rope is still unwinding. Will the rope cause a bounce, or will we hit the ground first?) Archaeologists and historic environment professionals are, like the rest of the population in the U.K., impacted by this decision and its consequences, but like everyone else we are in the dark as to what it actually means for us. Negotiations are underway, but we don’t know their outcome at the time of writing, nor are we likely to know the outcome for at least 18 months. In time, all will become clearer and we will look back on this period of uncertainty with the benefit of hindsight, but what is it like to live in a time of uncertainty? A good parallel might be the publication of archaeological and other journals during wartime and while it may be slightly frivolous to compare the uncertainties of Brexit to the dangers of war, there is a same sense that things will not be the same at the end of this process. As in war, there will be winners and losers, and as yet we don’t know which category we shall be in, or even if we will be able to tell the difference between winning and losing.
The core of these papers are those given at a session of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists conference held in Newcastle upon Tyne in April 2017, and I am extremely grateful to the organisers of that session, Rob Lennox and Nick Shepherd, for agreeing to publish the resulting papers in this journal, and to the contributors themselves for having the courage to publish what are snapshots of this moment in time. The papers were written in the following couple of months and were finalised in mid-July of the same year. They thus capture what the current perceptions were at this early stage of the Brexit process, very soon after the triggering of Article 50 and yet before and immediately after the unexpected outcome of the June 2017 election.
My idea in commissioning these papers was to capture in a mainstream journal, as opposed to more ephemeral newsletters or bulletins, what it was like to live through this time, and what it was that concerned archaeologists and others during this moment of uncertainty. I do this with a conscious nod towards the future, in other words, knowing that this time (whatever the final outcome) will be a seminal moment in our generation. What are our hopes and fears during this process? What does the future hold for us? None of us knows, and inevitably the papers that follow are very personal, almost journalistic, takes on Brexit. There are few official voices to be heard here. Instead, we get the reflection of British archaeologists and European Archaeologists, peering through the fog of uncertainty and seeking to clutch onto something solid amid the morass. There is hope here too, though, and the kindness of strangers and friends who wish us well whatever the outcome. I would hope that the optimism, and above all the humanity of those writing here will serve as a testament to the spirit of this time, despite those who would seek to follow a darker path. Whatever happens, as a U.K. archaeologist I am optimistic that our friends and colleagues in Europe, and for that matter elsewhere in the World, will remain just that: friends and colleagues.
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Given the inevitable brevity of the Brexit papers, there is still room in this issue for three papers that fulfil the more normal brief for the journal. First is a substantial paper by Tolina and Vesselin Loulanski on the management issues surrounding the numerous burial mounds in Bulgaria associated with the Thracian people who inhabited this area. Appropriately, given the theme of this issue, the area now known as Bulgaria was the location of the original Europe, before that name expanded to encompass the whole continent. As is explored in this paper, the rich and abundant legacy of the Thracians is under the rampant threats of greed and poor regulation that have followed from the collapse of the Soviet bloc more than 25 years ago. Such situations remind us of the major issues still to be resolved from that collapse, and how the path to self-governance and protection of heritage assets is rarely accorded the priority that we might wish. The other major paper, on the management of Taiwan’s industrial heritage by Chao-Shiang Li, offers a timely perspective on how the management of heritage assets are often tied in with a nation’s identity, and that management priorities are rarely defined by the needs of the assets but are rather more often determined by political and social priorities. Lastly, Tom King and Judy Feldman offer an assessment of some of the more intangible, and less tractable, issues of the management of heritage sites in which protection of assets means that the very purpose of the protection of that monument is undermined. Whatever the political situation, it is evident that there are never any easy or quick solutions to the management of our historic environment.
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