Heritage in danger. The collapse of commercial archaeology in Spain

Abstract

As in most European countries and elsewhere, Spanish commercial archaeology is a business model based on the theoretical and technical principles of safeguarding heritage that thrived during the 1990s and 2000s. However, nearly half of the Spanish archaeological companies closed by 2014, stressing the drama associated with the redundancy of its workforce in a mere five-year period and the threat to heritage protection and management. The current context of global crisis has impacted this sector, which is on the brink of extinction. This emphasizes the need for a new paradigm of archaeological heritage management in the 21st century. This breakdown calls into question the extent to which archaeology can generate initiatives of sustainable heritage management. By analysing data derived from an empirical study of Spanish archaeological companies between 2009 and 2017, this paper explores the underlying factors behind the collapse of commercial archaeology. In doing so, it contributes to the current global debate about the future possibilities of heritage management in a post-industrial context.

The Swedish Apparatus of Contract Archaeology and its Entanglement with Society

“…While a translation from goals into practices is needed, it could be argued that the Swedish CA system, as a traditional apparatus, has fared reasonably well in the twenty-first century -despite the economic crisis of the first decade and the pandemic at the end of the second. This is especially the case when compared to other parts of Europe, like the Mediterranean countries and Ireland, where the emergence of a large commercially based CA sector was driven by newly established EU-legislation, neoliberal politics and an economy on steroids (see Hamilakis 2015;Novakovic et al 2016;Parga-Dans 2019). Originating in the US and UK, this fragmented system of commercial CA units, in which increased competition is expected to bring higher quality and cost-efficiency, has gradually spread to CA systems in Northern Europe.…”

Uppdragsarkeologiska möjligheter

“…Exemplen lyfter en variation av förslag, som alla på sina sätt har potential att bidra till arbetet med angelägna samhällsfrågor som rör ut bildning, social hållbarhet, tillväxt, vård och ett framtida inkluderande samhälle. I jämförelse med hur uppdragsarkeologi är organiserad i andra länder, är förut sättningarna i Sverige goda för att skapa en sådan utvecklad uppdragsarkeologi ( se diskussion i Bofinger & Krausse 2012, Florjanowicz 2016, Kristiansen 2009, Orange & Perring 2017, PargaDans 2019, Ravn 2013, Schlanger & Aitchison 2010, Stefánsdóttir 2019, van der Linde et al 2018, Watson 2019, Webley et al 2012, Willems 2014. Det har aldrig funnits så många högutbildade arkeologer inom svensk uppdragsarkeologi som nu, forskning har aldrig tidigare präglat så stora delar av verksamheterna och styrdokument har tidigare inte så tydligt som nu förankrat uppdragsarkeologins verksamheter i relation till nationella kulturpoli tiska mål och målen för kulturmiljöarbetet.…”

Confronting the Present: Archaeology in 2019

“…There is still, for example, a continued questioning and reconfiguring of epistemological dichotomies, such as nature/culture (Cipolla and Allard 2019), urban/rural (Garrison, Houston, and Alcover Firpi 2019), body/object (Miniaci 2019), and human/nonhuman (Recht 2019). There is still a rise in archaeological scholarship that addresses contemporary politics and heritage (e.g., Apaydin and Hassett 2019; Brown, Liuzza, Meskell 2019; Kurnick 2019; Parga Dans 2019). Digital technologies remain on the front lines of methodological advances in the field (e.g., Cobb, Earley‐Spadoni, and Dames 2019; M. Douglass et al.…”