During the years of expansion following World War I1 which culminated in the 1980s, the problems of preserving and maintaining the archaeological heritage became increasingly apparent within the memberstates of the Council of Europe. Ancient monuments and sites were being disturbed or destroyed by vast development schemes for roads, gas pipelines, urban centre renewal, intensive exploitation of natural resources, etc.

For over a century there have been arrangements in England for the “scheduling” (i.e. identification for protection) of ancient monuments. Central government consent is required for any works to Scheduled sites or monuments. Essentially sites and monuments have to be of national archaeological significance to merit scheduling; nonstatutory criteria have been defined for that purpose and over 13,000 have so far been scheduled. These represent only a small proportion of known archaeological sites, the total of which in England is currently put at over 600,000. English Heritage are currently engaged on a comprehensive survey programme, known as the Monuments Protection Programme, which is expected to result in a significant increase in the numbers of monuments qualifying for scheduling, perhaps raising the total to some 60,000 by the end of the decade.

This adaptation of Hamlet’s soliloquy describes a "dilemma’: to study and thus destroy or to preserve and thus severely restrict study. And, just as Hamlet was not expecting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to choose for him the alternative of "not to be’, so we cannot expect a simple right or wrong solution.

The ICAHM Charter for the Protection and Management of the Archaeological Heritage was developed to serve as an international statement of principles and guidelines relevant to archaeological resources (Lund 1989: 15-17]. The need for such a document is great: even a brief survey of archaeological heritage management systems throughout the world (e.g. Cleere 1984; 1989) reveals that no nation currently offers adequate protection to its archaeological heribage. To varying degrees, all nations fall short of realizing the ideals espoused in the Charter. The United States of America, despite having highly developed preservation legislation, regulations and procedures, a full-blown archaeological bureaucracy and more than 20 years of experience in cultural resource management, is no exception.

Volunteer associations in the field of heritage conservation, and particularly their international platform, the European Forum of Heritage Association, must concentrate on communicating with the general public, to heighten public awareness of the value of the archaeological heritage and the risks of its extinction, more than they have done so far. I will argue for a reinforcement of this lobbyist side of our programme with the help of a number of arguments.