Inventory and recording are rarely mentioned in the international comparative literature of ARM (see, e.g., chapters in McManamon and Hatton 2000; Layton et al. 2004; Messenger and Smith 2010), and, where mentioned, they are glossed over or combined with other activities such as survey (e.g., chapters in Cleere 1984a). They are also rarely given their proper status in reviews or discussions of national systems of ARM (see, e.g., Sebastian and Lipe 2009; Smith and Burke 2007; although for an exception see Fraser and Newman 2006), and there are occasional explicit international approaches to the topic (e.g., National Museum of Denmark 1992). However, even where inventory and recording are mentioned among other aspects of ARM, they are frequently given rather short shrift (see, e.g., Schofield et al. 2011, 83–4) and are therefore assumed to be unproblematic in nature. The most common location for an explicit discussion of inventory and recording is in the field of applying computer systems to archaeology (e.g., Lagerqvist and Rosvall 1991; Kerrel et al. 1991; Fitz 1991; Corazzol 1991; Stancic and Veljanovski 2001; and other proceedings of the Computer Applications in Archaeology conferences), which separates them from the field of ARM and locates them in other sub-fields of archaeology.

The process of recording the heritage is nevertheless a key function of archaeological agencies at every level of organisation. The justification behind inventory is that no decision about the future of the archaeological resource can be taken unless there is clear knowledge of what it comprises (Thornes and Bold 1998, 1). As emphasised in Chapter 3, it is one of the roles of laws in the field to determine what particular characteristics heritage objects and places must have. Accordingly, the task of inventory is to match objects and places with that list of usually legally approved characteristics. Table 4.1 sets out the difference between the archaeological record and resource in this respect: whereas the archaeological record (the object of research activity) is identified by survey, the resource (the object of management) is identified by a process of categorisation. This involves, in particular, the matching of objects and places with the particular and predetermined attributes they need to have in order for them to be classed as archaeological objects. Such inventories of ‘approved’ ARM objects exist at every level of organisation. The UNESCO World Heritage List promoted and managed by ICOMOS is an inventory of those sites and places considered by individual nation-states to be of particular importance (Askew 2010). Similarly, at the national level in every state of the world certain sites are marked as being of particular importance or significance (an issue to be addressed in Chapter 5). However, in order that sites and places can be separated out as special, there also needs to be a general background inventory of all those things and places which fall into the remit of ARM.

It will be obvious that only those sites that have been preserved – whether deliberately through archaeological intervention or simply because neither humanity nor nature has caused them damage – can be offered for presentation to audiences of various kinds. It can be considered a duty of archaeologists to make their material available to others, since they claim to perform their work on behalf of those others. Not all archaeological material is, however, considered appropriate for this purpose, and this may say more about us as archaeologists than it does about the material or its potential audience, an issue to be developed throughout this chapter. The institutions through which material is made available also vary in terms of type across the world, reflecting the structure of archaeological organisation in each territory, although some types of institution, such as the museum, are represented universally. The forms that presentation can take will also vary, depending on the material itself, the institution responsible for it and its intended audience, among other factors. This chapter is titled ‘Presentation’ because that is the form of public engagement which most involves the archaeological resource itself: other forms of engagement are much more about the people involved (Carman 2002, 118–44; see also papers in World Archaeology 2002; Skeates at al. 2012; Jones 2013). To limit the concern of the chapter to matters of museum display and outreach – the major forms of presentation – will be to deny the increasing trend towards engagement and the democratisation of archaeology noted by commentators cited in Chapter 6 (especially Oliver and Clark 2001; Willems 2010; Kristiansen 2012), and on which there is a growing international literature.

The concluding chapter to Cleere's (1984a) seminal collection of papers on archaeological heritage management deriving from his overseas travels makes it clear that the educational and interpretive purposes of archaeology – the subject of this chapter – are central to the purpose of ARM, even if frequently inadequately supported (Cleere 1984c, 128–9). Interestingly, it makes less of an appearance in the One World Archaeology volume of five years later (Cleere 1989) and even less in Messenger and Smith's (2010) more recent collection. Instead, the engagement of archaeologists with others has become the topic of a separate branch of the literature, generally described as ‘public archaeology’ (Merriman 2004b; Skeates et al. 2012; Dalglish 2013) or ‘community archaeology’ (Moshenska and Dhanjal 2011) because of its focus on relations between categories of person using archaeology as the topic of discussion, rather than placing a focus on the material of archaeology itself. It can be argued, however, that the purpose of archaeology is to provide the material for debates about a range of issues, using the past to inform the present rather than limiting ourselves to a mere antiquarian interest. As previously noted in Chapters 2 and 6, Harrison and Schofield (2010, 146) take a particular view of the role of archaeology in the modern world.

The management of the archaeological resource – that is, the globally applicable practices of recording, evaluating, preserving for future research and presenting to the public the material remains of the past – currently employs more professional archaeologists than any other branch of the field worldwide. It is particularly a field of increasing importance in archaeological education: specialist courses in archaeological resource management (ARM), archaeological heritage management (AHM), cultural resource management (CRM), cultural heritage management (CHM) and public archaeology (all synonyms for the same sub-field of archaeology) proliferate in universities across the globe at both the undergraduate and (especially) postgraduate levels. Almost all countries have a system in place, usually grounded in a body of legislation, for the preservation and professional management of archaeological remains. The principles upon which the management of the archaeological resource is conducted are held to be universally valid; accordingly, the basic practices of its management are also similar the world over, although specific local circumstances make for differences in approach to these common functions. Using this fact as a basis on which to start, this book offers a critical approach to the specific professional practices deriving from those agreed principles to outline how archaeological resource management is done under different conditions in different parts of the world and what these practices may mean.

This book is in some ways a companion to my earlier volume Archaeology and Heritage (Carman 2002), and the two can be read and used together. Whereas that book took a more ‘theoretical’ perspective on issues in ARM, this book addresses the common practices of ARM across the globe. In its approach it is perhaps no less ‘abstract’ than the earlier text – at least, in that it does not aim to offer advice or prescription on how ARM should be done – but it differs significantly in its structure, focus and content. Nevertheless, both books derive from teaching aspects of the management of archaeological remains over a considerable number of years, and I am sure former students may recognise in this book much that they were introduced to in lectures and seminars from 2003 (and indeed before) to the present. The justification for turning this material into a book is that there currently exists no single text providing a critical international overview of the functions of archaeological resource management. This book therefore seeks to provide what students of the field currently lack and to be a source of comparative and hopefully thought-provoking material for practitioners.

If inventory is a vital first step in managing cultural resources, then giving a value to those resources is the central practice of ARM on which all subsequent practices depend. Debate concerning the ways in which values adhere to archaeological material and the kinds of values that are relevant is currently (late 2014) going through a period of revival. It is a topic to which archaeologists and others regularly return, but not constantly: it was a matter of considerable interest in the mid- to late 1980s, then dwindled until 1996, which saw a series of key publications (see, e.g., Bruier and Mathers 1996; Carman 1996; Carver 1996), with a revival of interest in 2005–6 (e.g., Mathers et al. 2005a; Clark 2001; 2006), followed by something of a hiatus until from 2010 a series of further publications (e.g., Smith et al. 2010) and the entry of economic ideas have maintained impetus (Carman forthcoming).

Within periods of interest concern alternates between practitioners, who seek or suggest methods of valuation, and academic commentators, who may suggest their own schemes, which are frequently at odds with those of practitioners. The primary difference between the kinds of valuation preferred or required by practitioners and those offered and discussed by academic commentators is that the former represent a value to be applied to particular components of the archaeological resource – individual sites, places or objects – to allow comparison and decision-making, and the latter represent more generalised concepts to be applied to the archaeological resource as a category. As a consequence the term ‘evaluation’ carries two distinct and separate meanings: for the academic commentator it refers to a primarily analytical process that seeks to understand the phenomena under scrutiny, especially in their capacity as ‘archaeological resource’; for the practitioner it is a primarily descriptive process that seeks to identify the specific characteristics of an individual site or other object. For the former, evaluation is a process worthy of study in its own right and concerned with the kinds of values being applied; for the latter it is a technique that provides data for the future management of particular places. Darvill (2005) conveniently labels these differences as the distinction between ‘value’ systems and ‘importance’ systems: the former are ‘holistic, … have general orientation, largely relate to the production of archaeological resources [i.e., the initial selection of things as “archaeological”], and are conceptual, widespread within the population, and generated with reference to past experience’, while the latter are ‘atomistic, … have specific orientations, are generally pragmatic, relate to the consumption of the resource [i.e., future uses and treatment] … look to the future, have local relevance, and are created and administered by specialists’ (Darvill 2005, 37).

It is clear from Chapter 1 that archaeological resource management does not cover all activities anywhere at any time related to the retrieval, collection, storage and presentation of material from the past. Instead, these activities – however similar in form to those of modern archaeological resource managers – must be understood and appreciated in their own ideological, social, political and economic context. It will also be evident from that chapter that systems of law and regulation are considered central to any system of ARM and that, indeed, they underpin and in many ways can be considered to define the parameters for any ARM system. However, there is more to ARM than a system of laws, as any practitioner can tell you: as a former employer put it to me once, ‘There is the law, and then there is the lore.’ This chapter will therefore outline how the key elements of ARM have come together in recent years by focusing on three of the areas of practice central to most modern systems of ARM.

The first of these is the rise of professionalism in archaeology. This in turn relates to the role of archaeologists in dealing with threats to the archaeological resource from more invasive systems of land use, such as industrial development, housing provision for larger and more diverse populations, intensive agriculture and the like. The first section will chart the change from ‘reactive’ systems of rescue and salvage archaeology to more proactive systems. It will also compare developments in anglophone territories with those elsewhere, where the consequences of the ideological differences seen in legal regimes outlined in the next chapter will become evident. A consequence of increasing professionalisation is a concomitant diversity in archaeological specialisms. This is evident in academic archaeology as the differences between ‘cultural’ archaeologists and archaeological scientists of various kinds (palaeoethnobotanists, archaeozoologists, geoarchaeologists, etc.). It can also be seen in the realm of ARM at the ‘gross scale’ as a perceived division between ‘academics’ based primarily in universities and ‘field archaeologists’ who ply their trade at the service of others, either as agents of government or as private contractors. More particularly in ARM it can be seen in the divisions recognised in the UK between ‘contractors’, ‘consultants’ and ‘curators’ (Schofield et al. 2011, 100–5) – all of whom are largely concerned with mitigating the effects of activities on the archaeological resource – and further in the separation from all of these of ‘public’ or ‘community’ archaeologists, known by various names, whose primary interest is in engaging with the wider community they serve (Dalglish 2013; Skeates et al. 2012; Waterton and Watson 2011). These in turn reflect the wider division between ‘mainstream’ archaeology – concerned with research into the past as a worthwhile endeavour in its own right – and ARM, where decisions about those remains are made. Some of the implications of this divide will also be evident.

Every country in the world has some form of law relating to its cultural heritage. These range from the draconian (and sometimes relatively ineffective: Cleere 1984c, 130) to the more loosely formulated and generally respected. In between lie the majority, more or less complex and more or less complied with. Some are ‘home-grown’ and reflect particular local circumstances; others elsewhere are copied from neighbouring or more distant places; others again have been adopted from past rulers but remain in place nonetheless. We saw in Chapter 1 how important the passage of law has been to the development of the idea of preserving material from the past: in every case, laws proved a key means by which that preservation was effected. Laws, as the next section will discuss more fully, also serve to legitimise the idea of that preservation.

This chapter will conclude the thrust of this part of the book by looking at the different kinds of law that apply to the material heritage in different parts of the world and how they operate. As before, it is an exploration and celebration of difference rather than similarity. The common thread, however, lies in the adoption of law – of whatever kind and however written – as the key method of dealing with the cultural heritage. As has been seen in Chapter 1, it is the promulgation of laws to preserve old things – whatever the motivation driving it – that turns a mere private or sectional interest into something like ARM as we know it. In the current state of ARM, laws are even more crucial to the preservation of our heritage: without them, it can be cogently argued, there is no ARM. At the same time these laws need to be overseen and put into effect by appropriately empowered agents, whether of the state or independent. These agents too have their powers and duties defined by the laws that govern them and the material on which they act. Accordingly, even in so-called ‘non-statutory’ systems of ARM, law is the underlying mechanism and the ultimate repository of authority.

The sections of this chapter will offer introductory outlines to some of the forms which laws in this area can take, how they are organised and to be interpreted, and the relations between laws at the national and international level. The opening section will examine some of the justifications for laws in this area, a truly global discourse. A section on interpretation of laws will expose the clear differences that exist between legal systems, and which necessarily affect our understanding of them and any attempt at international comparison: these include the legal structures of federal versus unitary states, laws derived from traditions of Roman (and other) law and those grounded in English ‘common law’. An overview of international regulation – global in nature but subject to interpretation at the national level – follows. The laws of national territories will then come under scrutiny, representing different systems of laws: those assuming the state to be the proper owner of material versus those where private ownership is held to be the ideal, those favouring direct intervention and control versus more indirect and administrative mechanisms and so on. Overall, the paradox of the ubiquity of laws to achieve the same ends that take a remarkably diverse set of forms will become clear. A final section will review the effect the promulgation of legislative control has had on the field in terms of the development of professional agendas and associations, both national and international, and the ways these too regulate the practice of ARM.

A definitive – or indeed reasonably complete – history of archaeological resource management (ARM) that goes beyond the specifics of individual territories has yet to be written. So far as broader histories of archaeology are concerned (e.g., Daniel 1978; Daniel and Renfrew 1988; Trigger 1989; 2006; Schnapp 1996), the management and preservation of remains generally form a minor element in a broadly evolutionary intellectual history. ARM appears more prominently in national stories of archaeological endeavour as well as forming the content of more focused research. Useful – albeit brief – overviews often preface discussions of national ARM practice (see, e.g., papers in Cleere 1984a; papers in Pickard 2001b; Pugh-Smith and Samuels 1996, 3–7) and occasionally form complete contributions in others (e.g., Boulting 1976; papers in Hunter 1996; Fowler 1986; Knudson 1986). Where specific papers are written on aspects of the history of ARM, they either tend to focus on particular moments (e.g., Chippindale 1983; Saunders 1983; Twohig 1987; Chapman 1989; Murray 1990; Evans 1994; Firth 1999) or are designed to support a particular view of archaeology (e.g., Carman 1993; Kristiansen 1996).

This chapter and the two that follow do not claim to offer the definitive global history that the field perhaps requires and deserves, but they do hopefully represent the first outlines of what such a history might look like. The history of ARM is interesting: more interesting, perhaps, than previous attempts at partial history have often made it appear. The aim of this chapter is therefore to provide not only a narrative of key moments within the emergence of the ARM idea but also a rough outline of a Foucauldian ‘archaeology’ (as in Foucault 1970; 1972; 1977) or a Nietzschean genealogy (as in Nietzsche 1899) of the notions that came together to create the global system of ARM that we see today. This is approached from the perspective that ARM as we know it was not necessarily the intention of those who first created mechanisms to preserve objects from the past; indeed, it proceeds from the idea that this is exactly what they did not intend at all.

In contrast to much of the rest of the book – which will focus inevitably on what is common across territorial boundaries in the practice of ARM – this chapter will celebrate the diverse origins of what is now ARM in different countries, under different regimes and at different times. Although organised roughly chronologically – with the earliest instances of ARM-like practices first – it is, more importantly, organised thematically, to show the different ideologies and contexts within which the idea grew, and some of the historical processes that have contributed to its rise. The culminating section of this chapter is not the emergence of a universal ARM, because the emergence of a large measure of global agreement on how we should preserve our material pasts is more properly the topic of the next chapter, which brings us to our own time, but instead consists of one distinctive contribution to the rise of the idea that we should do so. This in turn has become one of the most influential national ‘strands’ of ARM – one that has contributed much to the field – but it is doubtful that this was intended at the time. This inherent ‘nationalism’ of the field is itself an important element in ARM as it has developed, and derives directly from its diverse historical origins, but it is still a potent force in the way ARM is practised, despite the global acceptance of common practices and principles.

The practices of ARM are the primary form of engagement between archaeology and the wider world. This is reflected in the earliest use of the term ‘Public Archaeology’ (McGimsey 1972) to mean what is now referred to as ARM, CRM or CHM, defined as a professional preservationist agenda grounded in law. In attempting to take an international perspective on these practices – an approach that contrasts with the more conventional approaches which describe the specific practices of ARM in individual countries (e.g., Cleere 1984a; Hunter and Ralston 1993; 2006; Smith and Burke 2007; Messenger and Smith 2010; Schofield et al. 2011) – this book ultimately emphasises two key aspects of archaeology. While neither is entirely absent from consideration in the literature, they are rarely considered together and given the status they perhaps deserve as distinguishing features of the discipline.

The first is that archaeology is a practice that takes place in the present. Although related to the past – as an effort to identify and understand material evidence of past lifeways – archaeology is nonetheless a set of activities and ideas that are rooted in modernity (Thomas 2004) and take place in the present, as reflected in discussions of archaeology as a ‘craft’ activity (Shanks and McGuire 1996). An opening focus on the historical development of ARM systems led to the main focus of the book – discussion of the universally recognised core activities of ARM practitioners. In doing so, consideration was given to the kinds of institutions involved in ARM and, by implication, the different kinds of power relations inherent in such professionalised practice, an issue that came to the fore in discussing our relations with various categories of ‘other’. As a contemporary phenomenon, archaeology is deeply implicated in the workings of the modern world, with ‘modernity’ defined as:

Archaeology reflects these by: providing resources – to the state and its institutions, to educators who mould understandings and to others to construct their own world views – that allow the transformation of the world; offering a systematic and professionalised means for investigating the past; and its status as a state-authorised activity.

While there is a widespread assumption that the preferred option for archaeological resources is their protection from degradation and destruction, there is in reality very little in the literature of ARM to justify this. It is of little help in understanding what this imperative to preserve means and involves that a range of different terms are also used to describe it: preservation (this volume; Carman 2002; Lozny 2008), conservation (Clark 2001) and protection (Cleere 1984; Messenger and Smith 2010), among others. In addition to this, there are the different forms of preservation that are offered: preservation in situ (Corfield et al. 1998), preservation ‘by record’ (Wainwright 1989, 168–9) and reconstruction, a very specific form of archaeological presentation (Stone and Planel 1999), all of which may have different names in different territories. The issue of preservation, of course, also assumes its opposite, destruction, and it has long been held that excavation is itself destructive (Wheeler 1954, 15). However, there are now arguments being made by archaeologists that what we have thought of as a bad thing is merely another form of transformation, something of which we are guilty whatever we do to components of the archaeological record (Lucas 2001b, 40). Holtorf (2005) and, elsewhere, I (Carman 2013, 750) argue that both preservation and destruction ultimately serve the same purpose: that to preserve or to destroy something is respectively to destroy or preserve something else, be it another object, an idea or a way of life. In the case of preserving or destroying, the question is not about the rightness of the action in itself, but about what thereby is being preserved or destroyed instead.

These are the issues that this chapter will address from the perspective of the role these various practices play in the archaeological project but also the regulatory and institutional contexts in which they are located. The next section will return us to concerns that first appeared in Chapter 3, with how preservation is reflected in laws that govern archaeology. The following section will examine how it relates to issues of ownership and custodianship, issues that underpin so much archaeological work. The section after that will look at the practical means of preservation that may be applied, and a final section will review the work that the preservationist project does in the world, what it means that we preserve our material in these various ways.

Legal mechanisms

As indicated in Chapter 3, every country in the world has laws that relate to its archaeological resources, and these generally cover a range of topics that relate to how these materials will be managed. A shared principle that lies behind their existence is the belief that archaeological remains are (a) important and (b) therefore the responsibility of public (usually equated with state) institutions.