Minutes of the Two Day Conference of the Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2014

MINUTES OF THE TWO DAY CONFERENCE OF THE DISCOVERING THE ARCHAEOLOGISTS OF EUROPE 2014 (DISCO14) HELD AT THE MANSION HOUSE, YORK, ON 2nd & 3rd NOVEMBER, 2012

Present: Day 1

UK John Walker, Gavin MacGregor, Kenneth Aitchison,

Terry Suthers& Graham Wilford

AustriaRay Karl

BelgiumKatrien Cousserier

CzechRepublicJan Frolik

GermanyMartin Bentz

GreeceGeorgios Alexopoulos (Day 2 Only)

IrelandKerry Cleary

ItalyAlessandro Pintucci

LatviaAndris Sne

EstoniaDoris Pavlov & Nele Kangert

NorwayTine Schenk

PolandArek Marciniak

PortugalFrancisco Faure

RomaniaCorina Bors

SloveniaIrene Lazar

SlovakiaDanica Stassikova-Stukovska

Czech RepublicMonique van den Dries (Day 1 Only)

Apologies:Andrew Lawler (Bosnia)

Efthymia Alphas (Cyprus)

Eva Parga-Dans (Spain)

1.Welcome

Mr Terry Suthers, Chairman of the York Archaeological Trust welcomed the conference delegatesto the beautiful city of York. He went on to stateit is hoped York being the setting stone for the conference it would historically and culturallyfacilitate further discussions on Archaeology in Europe, its challenges and possibilities. Mr Suthers also went on to introduce The Lord Mayor of York, The Right Honourable Cllr Keith Hymen, President of YAT, who addressed and welcomed the delegates firstly to the Mansion House, his official residence, and then to the City of York.

The York Archaeological Trust were hosting this first conference as they were the primary host partner

Mr Suthers and Mr John Walker, Chief Executive of York Archaeological Trust) gave a brief resume of the work of the Trust and its visitor attractions.

2.Introduction

The Chairman, Dr Gavin MacGregor, Project Manager, welcomed all the partners to the first conference of the two year project“Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2014”, involving twenty different European countries. The Chairman stated that it was hoped the first day of the conference would address items 1 – 6 of the agenda, with items 7 – 15, being completed on the second day.

The Chairman introduced Kenneth Aitchison, the European Project Co-ordinator,who would be providing advice and support during the time of the project.

3. Partnership & Roles

York Archaeological Trust are the Project Promoter. Only they have a contract with the European Commission. YAT’s role is to coordinate the work of all of the other partners and to valorise resultstransnationally – YAT will not be undertaking research directly.

All of the other partners are “beneficiaries”. They will receive shares of the Lifelong Learning Programme’s grant via York Archaeological Trust.

With the exception of the European Association of Archaeologists, all of the other beneficiaries will be responsible for undertaking research in their own countries and for valorising the results of their work in their own countries.

The European Association of Archaeologists will solely have a valorisation role, at the European level.

It is possible that other partners from countries not yet represented in the project could join the project later – they would not be eligible for any of the European Commission’s funds, but if they were entirely self-funding they could attend the partner meetings and contribute to the transnational work.

4.Partner Introductions

At the request of the Chairman, all attendees of the meeting introduced themselves, their professional backgrounds and their role in their organisations.

KA informed members that the European Commission were very impressed that twenty countries had agreed to be involved with the project and collating and sharing information within the group. It is hoped that this diversity and strength of the group would allow the project to be completed successfully.

5. Project Review

KA stated that the project seeks to maintain co-operation between the partners following on from the predecessor project “Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe” undertaken in 2006 – 2008, involving 13 participant organisations, seven of which were now part of the new proposal and whom had successfully produced and disseminated labour market intelligence.This projectproduced national reports comparing employment and training across Europe. The project would support the aims of the strategic framework for European co-operation in education and training, specifically contributing to improving the quality and efficiency of education and training.

5(a)Review of Purpose (Why we are doing the project)

This follow on project seeks to expand the network in order to carry out updated research and to re-evaluate the state of archaeological employment across Europe in the light of the last five years economic changes with the effects of the global financial crisis having a major impact on archaeology, in terms of employment and training investment. This is an international project that aims to gather data on archaeological employment in 19 different countries whilst allowing comparisons of how archaeological practice is organised and staffed in each of the partner countries, providing employers, educators and individual archaeologists with information that would support their future training needs and working life.

5(b)Review of Principles (Objectives of the project)

KA outlined the broad objectives of the project which will identify and address changes and impacts caused by the economic transformation of the last five years by collecting, analysing and sharing data about the shape of archaeology today in each partner country by:

• Identifying labour market information and trends, including training investment, recruitment and career progress difficulties

• Identify training needs and skills shortages

• Establish the number and profile of professional archaeologists

• Identifying the range of archaeological employers

• Providing employers with information to aid business planning and improve organisational performance

• Providing individuals with information to help develop their careers

• Supporting VET (Vocational Education and Training) providers with information on employers’ needs

5 (c)Review of Process (How we will do the project)

The overall project management will be undertaken by GM who will have the responsibility for the delivery of the project against the agreed methodology, major milestones and measurable indicators.

All partners will provide information to the project manager as required and he will establish agendas for the partner meetings throughout the project. Issues would be flagged, identified and dealt with to ensure they do not become a risk to the project.

Data will be collected via online, postal or telephone questionnaires (whichever partners feel is appropriate) with the target populations for the survey being organisations employing archaeologists.

A core set of data will be collected in each country – to allow for comparisons to be made – and this was discussed, with twelve areas being agreed. This list of data areas is presented as an Appendix to these minutes.

KA stated that each partner would be in a position to also ask different questions which were more relevant to their country.

Members discussed the definition of who was an archaeologist as this was different in certain countries. It was agreed that anyone who was actively engaged in the field of archaeology should be included in the data but could be defined in different groups of people.

6. Contractualisation

The partners were in the process of contractualisation – individual partner contracts had been issued by YAT, specifying the deliverables that each partner would have to provide, the timetable for these and the payment schedule.

The trigger for the first payment from YAT to each partner was the return of their signed contract.

7.Administration, Project documentation and Internal Evaluation

Overall project administration will be the responsibility of YAT, who will have to collate information from the partners in order to provide reports to the European Commission.

The first of these will be after twelve months of the project, covering activities and expenditure in the period from 1stOctober 2012 – 30th September 2013.

Each partner is responsible for maintaining records of all of their activities and expenditure, and for providing copies of these to YAT when requested.

Copies of documents to be used – such as templates for reports – will be sent to all of the partners and made available on the project website.

Certain performance indicators – contained within the partner contracts – specify which material must be provided to YAT to trigger the payment. This includes copies of the questionnaires to be used, and then of the data received.

Within YAT, progress will be managed by GM, the Project Manager, and evaluated by KA, the European Project Coordinator.

8. Financial Management

A series of important points were discussed and reiterated.

• All expenditure on the project must be recorded – including staff time.
• Only expenditure incurred during the project period -1st October 2012 – 30th September 2014 is allowed to be presented in the expenditure reports.
• All costs will have to be recorded in Euro, but if they are incurred in non-Euro currency (eg UK Pounds) then the expenditure should be recorded in that currency and then converter into Euro at the project’s official rate.
• The official exchange rates for the first part of the project will be those published by the European Central Bank on the day that the European Commission issued the contract to YAT. A copy of these rates will be provided by the promoter to all of the partners. These rates will apply until the European Commission makes its second payment to YAT, after receipt of the interim report which will cover the first 12 months of the project.
• Partners must keep scanned copies of all receipts and invoices, which must be labelled in a way that allows them to be tracked in financial expenditure sheets that the promoter will provide. These will all have to be submitted to the promoter for the interim (12 month) and then final (24 month) reports.
• Payments to the partners will be made on the basis of the contracts between them and YAT. There may be delays when the Commission checks the interim (12 month) and final (24 month) reports. Partners were reminded that they will have to issue claims for payments, but these are not invoices – they are to trigger grant payments, which will be dependent on all of the conditions set out in the contract for each payment having been met.
• The European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme grant is funding the majority of costs for each of the partners, but in all cases national sources of funding are required to cover the balance. These national sources can be provided internally – by the partner – or externally, through other grants.
• In terms of project budget, there is no difference between funds sourced nationally and funds obtained from the European Commission – each partner has a defined budget of, which balances the combined income from the European Commission and the national funds.
• Each partner must aim to spend as close to that budget as possible – and must prove that the money has been spent. If there is an underspend, the European Commission will withhold money from the final grant payment.
• Partners cannot make a profit from the project. Any profit will be deducted from the final grant.
• Equally, if there is a significant overspend, the project will be penalised and this could also lead to money being withheld.
• Indicative travel and subsistence budgets – each partner has a defined, total travel and subsistence budget, which was calculated on the basis of best guesses for travel costs and official European Commission maximum subsistence rates for the countries where meetings will take place. The important figure is the total travel and subsistence budget – partners should not be too concerned if they over- or under-spend on travel and subsistence to attend any particular meeting, as long as the total expenditure returns to budget by the end of the project.
• Subsistence day rates. Some partners are organisations that pay staff a per diem subsistence rate, while others work on a receipted expenditure basis. Each partner should record their subsistence costs according to the system that they use – both are acceptable to the European Commission.

9.Quality Management

The importance of quality management to the success of DISCO 2014 was stressed. The concept of quality management was outlined in terms of delivering the outcomes and products of DISCO 2014 with reference to the quality expected of our customer / client. Two key expectations of our customer is the delivery of the project on time and to budget.

It was explained that to support quality management the project team will be using two tools: a quality plan and quality log. This quality log in particular would be a tool to help focus on the delivery of key products to agreed milestones. These milestones also relate to the release of additional funds to partners.

10.Risk Management

The management of risks to the success of DISCO 2014 was discussed. The concept of risk was briefly explored in terms of management of uncertainty of outcome. This involves us thinking about the probability of certain risks to the project and their potential impacts on our ability to complete it successfully to establish the level of risk (low, medium or high). The management of potential risks can involve a number of responses through prevention, reduction, transference, acceptance or contingencies.

The management of risk would be support by the use of a risk log by the project coordinator and project manager. All members of the DISCO 2014 team were encourage to consider risk, and risk management, in there national context, and encouraged to discuss these with the project coordinator. Fundamental to management of risk is communication between the project team.

11.Environmental Sustainability Awareness

The project will not be formally audited for its environmental impact by the European Commission. However, all partners were reminded that it will be best practice to adopt as environmentally sustainable policies as possible. It was recognised that travel to partner meetings was going to be the component of the project that would have the heaviest environmental impact, but that this was justified in order to ensure the successful delivery of the project.

12.Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright & Commercialisation

KA reported that the results of the project will not be sold but will be given away free and that the final report would also be available online.

Members noted that providing advice based on the results was not part of the project but would be considered as consultancy and could be done separately and after the end of the project.

13.Valorisation

The dissemination and valorisation strategy is designed to address two key objectives:

• Ensuring the widest awareness of the project, and,

• Creating the best opportunities for the results of the project to be acted upon

The process of stakeholder engagement (at an early stage to establish and understand their interests and needs) would be critical to the project with the main aim to achieve dissemination and valorisation of the results of the final report in each partner country. Identification of key stakeholders is essential and is the responsibility of each partner to ensure valorisation across all of Europe.

Dissemination activities are timetabled to last the whole of the project and it is necessary that the partners adopt an agreed strategy. The strategy would set out two phases of activities with defined methodologies and objectives.

1.Promotion of the project’s activities to potential users and making key stakeholders aware allowing feedback to ensure that their specific needs are being addressed.

2.Disseminating by ensuring promotion of developed results by the designing of clear, separate and individual partner dissemination plans.

The project would maintain a website ( allowing partner’s progress to be continually displayed and will be maintained and updated following the completion of the project. On completion reports will be produced and disseminated freely via the website with the reports also being presented to sectoral and training organisations and also the attention of political decision makers.

Programmes of valorisation will have to be shown and this would be achieved by each partner identifying ways this can be communicated most effectively in national and European (international) contexts) to ensure the widest awareness of the project i.e. journals, conferences, social media etc. The project would need to demonstrate to the EU that it has been effective in its dissemination.

Expenditure on valorisation activities outside the Lifelong Learning Programme’s zone (which covers the EU, candidate countries, EEA, EFTA countries) can only be considered with permission from the European Commission. If any partner is going to do this – eg speaking at WAC in Jordan – then a formal request will have to be made through the project promoter.

14.Communication

Effective communication and reporting will be achieved through the series of six partner meetingsand open communication via email and the project website.

The Chairman reported that all communication will be via email with partners communicating with KAbut with providing copies for himself and Anna Stewart with English being the official language of the project.

It was noted that there would be five more meetings each held by a different partner in different countries.

Meeting No. 2 would be held in Romeon 14/15/16th March, 2013 with the main focus of the meeting to discuss data collection and plan the next phase of data analysis.

Meeting No. 3EAA Conference in Plzen Wednesday 4thSeptember. The project will officially form the Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe Committee of the EAA, and will have a day meeting immediately before the conference.We will also propose a regular conference session or round-table, which would bring in other participants.

Meeting No. 4 Santiago de Compostela - Early December 2013.

Meeting No. 5Bucharest - Early April 2014

Meeting No. 6Istanbul before / during EAA Conference, 8th -13th September 2014

15.Any Other Business

KA informed the meeting that he was in discussions with organisations outside Europe about the possibility of Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2014 leading the way in a series of linked projects which would ultimately aim to Discover the Archaeologists of the World, a global assessment of professional archaeological practice. The first of these might be a Discovering the Archaeologists of the Americas, which was being discussed with the Society for American Archaeology and other organisations.