Switching to digital tools. Archaeological heritage evaluation for preventive archaeology in Hungary
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-07-01

In the last decade preliminary tasks for large-scale constructions and archaeological excavations became more and more important: the stakeholders realized that it is remunerative to spend more to the assessment phase instead of paying more due to problems because of an ill-planned project. Thorough knowledge of the size and characteristics of the sites can save cultural heritage, not to mention time and money.
From 2011 Preliminary Archaeological Evaluations should be made as a mandatory part of the permitting process of large-scale constructions (with a total cost of above 1.600.000 EUR). These evaluations consist of desktop studies as well as field data with the cost up to 0.35% of the total construction budget. The goal is to make a precise archaeological project plan, assessing the optimal mitigation process. 
Forster Centre – and its predecessor – is responsible for the coordination and execution of such evaluations since 2013 in Hungary, making it possible to collect data on the same level. In recent years we established and tested a GIS-based method which we find effective in large-scale investments and which – due to financial constraints – relies greatly on non-invasive methods as tools to help our former investigation strategies. 
Our current strategy relies on three interdependent tasks: using GIS-based field survey, closely integrated large-scale magnetometer surveys and targeted trial trenching afterward. We are also free to do supplementary surveys when needed, such as coring, aerial archaeology or GPR survey.  The scale of our tasks is challenging and demanding at the same time: investigating large areas with various methods gives us substantial and reliable data on archaeological landscapes. Accumulating and comparing this GIS-based information on a nationwide scale gives us an opportunity to examine the most effective methods to identify and save archeological heritage. One of the most promising opportunities is the database where geophysical surveys and excavations from several hundreds of hectars are available on a comparable basis throughout the country and constantly growing. Using the results we can make an archaeological geophysics database library, making our prospections more accurate and our methods more targeted. In this paper we will share our experiences and the results of these tasks.

Máté Stibrányi (Hungary)