April news update: busy times at EAC!

In March 2026, the EAC held its 27th Annual Meeting at the Altamira Museum and National Research Centre, Santillana del Mar, Spain. Our thanks to the Ministry of Culture of Spain and its partners for generously hosting the event. The symposium topic was 'Bridging Borders in Heritage Protection: best practice against archaeological crime' and the event provided two days of thought-provoking talks and discussions on this complex and important topic.

We welcomed two new members to the EAC Board in Altamira, Marta Arcos García (Spain) and Eszter Kreiter (Hungary). Agnieszka Oniszczuk also accepted an honorary board membership in acknowledgement of her dedicated support to the work of EAC.

In Altamira, we launched the Proceedings of the Gdańsk symposium in 2026, on the topic of 'Life after life of archaeological archives – accessibility and re-use of archaeological collections in heritage management’. Links to the full papers in Internet Archaeology and the PDF download of the Archaeolingua extended abstracts can be found on the Proceedings Page.

The final guidance in the 'Making Choices' initiative was also launched in Altamira, on the topic of 'Articulating the Significance of Archaeological Sites' (EAC Guidance 11). The guidance provides principles, context and a toolkit of varied approaches that may be drawn upon to assist in the assessment of significance. It provides a philosophical and historical background to the concept of archaeological significance and its use in heritage management, and case studies of legal systems and assessment projects to provide inspiration and useful examples. This document accompanies a shorter key concepts document on the same topic published in 2025. All the EAC guidance can be found on the Guidance page.

In the coming weeks, the EAC will be issuing a communications survey to its members, and the Archaeological Archives group will issue a survey to managers of archives as part of their next phase of work... The EAC/ EAA working party on Farming, Forestry and Rural Land Management will hold a discussion session at EAA2026 in Athens (#94) ‘Land-use Change (LUC) and archaeological heritage: Key concepts and considerations; working towards guidelines for best practice'.