At the Round Table discussion in Zadar different understandings of what the phrase ‘a European archaeology/an archaeology of Europe’ stands for were brought to the table, so to speak. Several nuances may be discerned, and within these there were differences that could lead to substantially different claims. The proposition may thus refer to the question of whether a European archaeology as a distinct practice of interpretation (and presentation) exists – in essence this is an epistemological question: do we think and argue in a distinctly European way? The phrase was simultaneously used to refer to whether there is an archaeology of Europe solely based on it being a geographical region; Philip Kohl's response to the precirculated paper by Kristian Kristiansen was largely concerned with the legitimacy of this claim. Finally, another important point of departure was whether the claim was seen to refer to coherence in terms of prehistoric cultures, i.e. is the ‘European’ in our work a direct response to characteristics and qualities of the past that we study? Surely these understandings overlap and fuse but it is nonetheless important to appreciate that the proposition under debate may be understood to refer to different matters.

While not a formal comment on Kristiansen's discussion paper, this brief note was written and submitted to Archaeological dialogues by a participant in the discussions between the Zadar Round Table speakers and the audience.

When I agreed to present the article as a vehicle for discussion at a session at the EAA's annual meeting in Zadar, Croatia, I decided to approach the question of a European archaeology from what I considered to be the three organizing pillars of archaeological practice: heritage, theory and publications. Heritage is the dominant organizational/legislative framework for archaeological practice, and it is where most of the money is spent. Theory, on the other hand, organizes most of our interpretations of the past, while publications are still the most common way of presenting the results of both heritage work (mostly excavations) and interpretations of that work. In this way I hoped to have encircled the dominant parameters for a diagnosis of the archaeological landscapes in Europe. I assumed that there might be some correlation between the three, and that such observed common trends within two or more variables would strengthen the argument, to paraphrase processual jargon.

The concept of value increasingly fills archaeological debates. An examination of how value works within the diverse practices of archaeology (reconstructions of the past, heritage management and self-reflexive critique) provides an integrating factor to these debates. Through a genealogy of value in the management of material heritage, I highlight how ‘significance’ has been institutionalized from contingent forms, and the ‘the past’ rendered an object. Moreover, I follow the translation of these management procedures from the national to the global stage to highlight the emergence of economic significance in international heritage management. Providing an alternative approach to significance, the anthropological work of Weiner and Graeber locates value within practices that manage material heritage. These theories provocatively suggest that archaeological practice and heritage management are one and the same, both capable of producing value. This requires archaeologists to reconsider their discipline, and the contemporary contexts and situated ethical conditions of their work.