Context

Pathways to Thessaloniki

This year, the 8^th annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) took place September 24^th to 29^th in Thessaloniki/Greece. As usual quite some of our members participated in this great event for European archaeology. The conference in Thessaloniki turned out to be the biggest in EAAs history: more than 850 participants enjoyed the numerous sessions, round tables and working groups - and of course Greek weather, Greek food and drink and Greek hospitality. The chair of PCL was specially active in this years conference, co-organising and speaking at three round tables: on information networks in archaeology (as speaker), on European legislation (as speaker and board member) and in the Committee for Professional Associations (as co-organiser and speaker). At two of these round tables he could present our project and related matters.

At the round table for information networks in archaeology, which was specially well attended, he could present PCL as an informative network and the work on GIS as an information platform, done by our project. As a result of the presentation at this round table, and a lot of lobbying for the project outside, a number of projects expressed their interest in a future co-operation with the PCL. Our snow and ice loving chairman was specially delighted by a very serious interest from Iceland, but the more sun loving member will be delighted to hear about Gibraltar, which also is a very likely candidate for future co-operation.

At the round table on European legislation (a classic) he presented the European Landscape Convention of the Council of Europe and spoke for a greater interest of archaeologists, historians and cultural heritage managers in the cultural landscape in general and in implementing the new convention more specifically. This was due to PCLs new gained status as a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) involved in the implementation process of the Landscape Convention. As a result the board of the EAA and the members of the EAA decided at the annual business conference, that the EAA should be presented in all future proceedings on the Landscape Convention. As the EAA is a registered NGO with the Council of Europe this is technically easy to achieve. But it is difficult to find board members who can travel to the next conferences at short notice. As Gerhard and Harald will travel to the next conference on cultural landscapes in Sofia from October 23-24, the board of the EAA has decided that our chair Gerhard shall also represent the EAA together with John Williams. This is a great sign of trust in PCL expressed by the EAA and we are quite proud about it.

So Thessaloniki can be claimed as a great success on our road to an international standing for our project - and the EAA annual meeting has again proofed to be the best stage for gaining partners and fostering interest in archaeological projects. We look forward to another exiting meeting in St. Petersburg in 2003 - and a number of our partners are preparing round tables, sessions and lectures for this event.

Programme

Impressions