Authority and Subject (in the Archaeological Discourse in Austria and Germany)

Abstract

The primary task of archaeological heritage management is to represent the public interest in archaeology. How this is constituted and determined has changed significantly over the past 200 years. As this paper demonstrates, a modern, egalitarian, democratic approach has yet to be established within Austrian and German archaeological heritage management: the relationship between heritage management bureaucracy and the civic subject is anachronistic, stuck in a pre-1848 Revolution mindset. Due to the lack of a public discourse and the nature of scholarly engagement with archaeological heritage management, the power of (state) archaeologists is not imaginary, but very real.