Retention in situ of archaeological remains has become one of the ideological cornerstones of archaeological heritage management in much of Europe, particularly so in Austria and Germany. The highly restrictive legal regimes of the 16 German and the Austrian heritage protection laws aim at prohibiting any archaeological excavations wherever possible. Legal commentaries even go as far as referring to proper research excavations as ‘vanity excavations’. These, it is argued, must be prevented because they destroy archaeology which would be preserved if it were simply left in situ. Some commentaries go even further and claim that the state has a research privilege, while any ‘private’ (nonstate) research is inherently damaging and socially unacceptable.
Preservation requires active measures to monitor and counteract potential loss of archaeological substance, whether this substance is finds, or features, or both. Yet, of the c. 50,000 archaeological sites known, and the c. 1,000 sites scheduled in Austria, hardly a few handfuls are monitored, and even fewer actively managed; and the situation in Germany is hardly any better. What is presented as ‘preservation in situ’ on paper, is mere retention in practice. It does not protect the archaeological heritage from anything other than being researched, while it is lost unnoticed and unrecorded to degradation and erosion.
In this paper, I will present future projections, based on past empirical data, on the general rate of attrition, and the rate of preservation by record, of the archaeological heritage. These projections demonstrate that by just retaining, rather than preserving, archaeology in situ, much more of the archaeology is lost than if there were no restrictions on archaeological fieldwork whatsoever. They also show that if we would excavate as much as we could, as soon as possible, much more of the archaeology currently still retained in situ would be preserved.