EAA and EAC Joint Working Group on Farming, Forestry and Rural Land Management

Progress Report: March 2015

The Working Group, originally organised under the aegis of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) became a joint Working Group of EAC and EAA in March 2009. This report covers the work of the joint group during 2014-15.

Background

The Working Group has identified rural land uses (most notably agriculture and forestry) as amongst the most destructive of processes acting on the archaeological historical landscape in Europe. It is a particular concern that these processes, in contrast to construction and development, have few or no established mechanisms for archaeological impact assessment, avoidance or mitigation.

Membership

The group continues to reach new professional archaeologists interested in the interface between archaeological heritage management, landscape, rural land use and nature conservation. Group membership is now almost 48 participants or correspondents, representing 17[1] countries.

Business meeting 2014

The 2014 annual business meeting of the Working Group was held on September 13 in the margins of 2014 EAA conference in Istanbul. Karl Cordemans (Flemish Land Agency) was confirmed as Chair of the Working Group. Also both Vice-Chairs were confirmed for the next yearly period: Vince Holyoak (Head of National Rural and Environmental Advice, English Heritage) stays on as Vice-Chair of the Group with responsibility for its position on agriculture / CAP reform and Emmet Byrnes (Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Ireland) stays on as Vice-Chair responsible for Forestry matters.

The Chair and Vice Chair positions are on the agenda for discussion at each yearly business meeting.

Members present gave an update on the situation in their country. Recent relevant developments regarding heritage and agriculture & forestry were discussed.

Developments in relation to the Common Agricultural Policy and Forestry

Most activities and energy of working group members was focused on the developments in their respective countries regarding the operationalisation of the heritage stewardship schemes within the new established Rural Development plan 2015-2020. Successful examples of this are the new Countryside Stewardship scheme in England or GLAS and the complementary Locally led Agri-environment Scheme in Ireland. Both schemes will invest several million euros into the historic environment, including archaeological sites. The Irish Government has also sought EU State-Aid approval for a parallel Forestry Programme for 2015-2020. Whilst it does not contain any dedicated heritage management measures per se it does include a number of new measures to protect known and newly identified archaeological sites and monuments in forest areas, including a commitment to provide either directly or indirectly programmes of further training for Forestry Inspectors and Registered Foresters on the recognition of and procedures for reporting previously unrecorded sites, monuments, or features identified during forestry works.

At European level implementation of the new EU Forestry Strategy 2020 (which was adopted by the Commission in September 2013 with Council Conclusions in May 2014) is progressing. Most recently a draft multi-annual implementation plan was presented by the Commission. One proposed action of particular relevanceis the development of objective, ambitious and demonstrable EU sustainable forest management criteria that can be applied in different policy contexts regardless of the end use of forest biomass, in effect a set of EU specific criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management (SFM) (building upon the six Criteria developed under the Forest Europe/MCPFE Process). This proposal is currently being worked upon by an Ad Hoc Working Group established under the auspices of the Commission advisory body – the Standing Forestry Committee – and which is comprised of representatives of each of the 28 member States.

This EU action is also paralleling an action being advanced in Forest Europe (FE) itself, whereby an Advisory Group has been established to update the FE pan-European Indicators for SFM. This updating was approved during the Expert Level Meeting (ELM) held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in January and the first meeting of the FE Advisory Group was on 11 February 2015.

EAA Conference session 2014

In September 2014, a session was organised on behalf of the Working Group at the 20th Annual EAA meeting, in Istanbul. Karl Cordemans, Jon Humble and Emmet Byrnes organised the Session on behalf of the working group: Is There Reason to Party? 10 Years of the Working Group on Farming, Forestry and Rural Land Management.

This session, looked back at the achievements in the different countries since the start of the working group at the EAA conference in Lyon, back in 2004. Furthermore, an insight was presented towards the next programme period 2015-2020. At the end of the session, Prof. Dr. John Collis of Sheffield University commented not only on the presentations but also at the working group itself.

A more extensive account is published in the winter edition of TEA (issue 42).

EAA Conference session 2015

For the next EAA Annual Meeting to be held in Glasgow, UK, the working group is organising two Round Tables. Both were recently accepted by the EAA scientific comity.

The first one will be organised by Jonathan Wordsworth and Karl Cordemans and is called Archaeology at rural crossroads; towards an integrated approach to Archaeological Heritage Management. The provisional programme is as follows:

  • Rural Europe heritage trends – introduction to current social/economic directions
  • The Burren programme – integrating heritage & environment in Ireland’s special places
  • Nature conservation & heritage
  • Food & landscape – using heritage to sell food & food to sell heritage
  • Communities & heritage – how ownership of heritage confers value
  • Tourism & heritage – using heritage assets to gain tourism resources

The second one is a follow up of a key conclusion of our Istanbul session, notably thattheEAA working groups should seek to share their experiences, and explore the potential for creating a network of overlapping interests and synergies- for example, with common themes such as 'landscape'. This Round Table is organised by Jon Humble and Karl Cordemans and is called Thinking Outside of Our Boxes - a round table for EAA working groups on shared experience, common themes and collaborative working. The three main objectives are:

  • To review the practicalities of operating anEAA working group. What is the collective experience?
  • To consider the overlaps in working group aims and endeavour, thereby identifying common themes
  • To draft a statement of intent on future collaborative working, with recommendations to theEAA Executive Board

Karl Cordemans

Working Group Chair

Archaeologist

Vlaamse Landmaatschappij

[1]
Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Eire/Ireland, England, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Wales