 We just click here again. I don't know why it's doing that. Let's let's let's test this before. Yeah, yeah things work. All right, um, amidst my night's dream, lovers going into the woods, a strange country, the rude as a area where stings things happen, and they meet someone who is a bit nasty. I don't know who it is in this analogy called Puck. Puck is a fiend. Puck is making life difficult, and Puck is nasty, and one of the lovers has been turned into an ass. And sometimes in these days you can sort of feel in it to be an ass. And he's appropriately named Botund, but luckily for him, the lovely Ticciana is still interested in him, and it all ends well in the end. But then who among us is Botund? And you can feel when an ass, you can feel bereft, you can have a sense of loss with all the Brexit things going on. And I when I read the the paper or the introduction to this session, I have to confess Pete, especially I sort of saw your phrasing in it, and I was a bit miffed because it almost seemed that if the only people there losing things would be UK archaeologists. Well, at the same time, I'm very much thinking that I would lose things as well. And that also tells you about the emotional value of that. But there are some warnings in the text I'm thinking, is this all about the UK? And I have to say that I would be moaned the day that I would not be allowed to go in the UK or any other part of the European Union, for whatever reasons, because I'm very much aware that as an archaeologist, I'm made by my experience outside of my borders, the borders of the Netherlands. I'm a European archaeologist, that's the way I perceive myself, and I have matured thanks to, well, talking to lots of poor people, not only the people in this room, but also outside. So there is something to gain there and therefore something to lose. There is anger, there is emotion, and if you talk to archaeologists in general in, well, almost everywhere, we tend to be on the side of the remainers, or remoters, if you like that way. It's an interesting travel, it learns new words. Till two weeks ago, I never even heard about this word. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the constitutional ways of the British parliament, but a discontinuing of a session, in the sense of discontinuing of a relation as well between us, emotional bunch archaeologists, and therefore you get these mean things, and archaeologists against the Boris. Well, but then you have to ask you, what would it help if we sort of all tremble on Boris? Well, we have a Boris less, but in the end, this whole drive for Brexit is not Boris related, and this whole idea of depicting someone else as a Nazi or calling me a fascist or whatever, is also not very helpful for your personal narrative. Whatever Boris does, I want to have a relation with other archaeologists across those borders, how stentent these are, and is this something in European archaeology, in the history of European archaeology? Let's go back to the year 1936, a year which some historians say started World War II. Well, we can agree on it being a prologue or an intro. The Spanish Civil War, the Italian, the second Italian Ethiopian war being fought, it is all a well, a nasty place in time. There are these tensions and extractions during the Berlin Olympics and, straightly enough, I put it in the film Amidst the Malayans doing World Oscar, and you would say, oh, that's great news, there was a big brawl about it, so even that was not helped. 1936 is not a nice point in time. But at the same time, 1936 hosts one of the most successful archaeological conferences with the international flavour ever. The Congress Internationale des Sciences Tristurique, a proto-historic, sorry, my French is atrocious, and also by chance it was an organisation that was meant to bridge gaps and in Bern, 90 years ago, perhaps this place, but somewhere around here, the Réglement, the rules were put up, and the first successful session was done in London, 1932, with 639 participants, and in Oslo, during the same year when the words seemed to start to burn, it was well attendant. I couldn't find the numbers, I know there were less people there, but still it was more than 400 at least. I have to thank these gentlemen from Romania who wrote this in our article, so I found it, so I have heard about it, but then if you want to have the sources, then it's pretty difficult to get this materialized. And if you see the sentiment, I wish to point out that everyone, I just found quotes on speaking French at this stage. The French was Dilligné Franca of European Ideology, and here we have Charles Riet, who is the President of the First Congress, and he tells us that he assures that the London Congress has resulted in a close ties of friendship among scholars of all countries, and in the removal of it remained of any divisions between us. So there was war there, there was hardship, but the Archaeologists have found each other. It's even a bit stronger, for years later in Oslo, Yes, we are going to take advantage of the possibility and the importance of international collaboration in our sciences, if, first of all, international science of prehistory and of the proto-history, sort of, okay? That's an answer to Kocina. And he translates in that sense that, yes, the end of the conference is there, but he's totally convinced that there is an importance of international collaboration in Oslo, international sciences, the science of prehistory and proto-history. There was, at this stage, a very strong belief that the archaeologists of Europe would have a sort of a counterculture, and they would be able to reach all these things, all these divides, all these borders, which were then strengthening itself and making international work, these are nice words, but then if you look at, for instance, Graham Clark, I have to say at this stage, my whole presentation collapsed thanks to E.T. work, so you have to look at Berger for the rest of the presentation. Clark is a prime example of someone working across these borders. From 1931 to 1937, he visits all over northwestern Europe, from Sweden, Denmark, he visits Germany twice, he goes to Poland, he talks to Polish archaeologists, and the effects of his visits are so big that, to my amazement, I discovered that in 2014, there was a special congress on the influence of Clark on Polish archaeologists with a bundle of his material, so there was something there, and I have been very lucky that the father of Dutch archaeology, Van Giffen, to just use the short version of his name, was in correspondence with Germans, Italians, French, English, Irish, archaeologists in more than one language, so there was literally the work people connecting with other people and working together on research across all these borders. So, difficult situation going on through these borders, but now we move to the blessed time when there are no borders. I want to introduce you to the idea of a Euratio, Euratio's EU, a radio is a system where across a national border you make connections with each other and you sort of make differences between them all systems, very small it has to do with the European program of Interrecht, and one of the most famous ones is the area where three countries have decided to do this, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, it's the Maas-Rein area, it is a large area with a historic continuity as well, and if you think about the prehistory or the Roman period or the high medieval period, there are great connections in that area, so in 1976 it is decided to go with that kind of area of protected and promoted working together, and you would say that's wonderful, but if you look at the literature for instance for the Roman period and you look at the study of Roman land use you will see that the modern borders are in high influence, the Belgian studies although they speak about the land use in northwestern Europe only go to the national border, while the systems of the land measurement and the regular forms cross into the Netherlands, the same can be said that the German articles on this thing also speak about the north-eastern Europe but only talk about the German forms of Roman land use, there is no German form of land use, but those areas, and there is no connection from both sides to the part in the middle where the excessive big villas or furandale etc are which are connected to all these other Roman stuff, so amazingly till this day even with all the removal of borders there's hardly any connection between the researchers of these things, so if there is a total freedom to move you cannot find the borders, these people meet each other on receptions for the new year or shake hands or like each other but there is no collaboration, this is a bit of a negative, the same thing EAA has been very busy in committees about the connection between transnational working working across borders, so you think what happened in the time when we needed people from other places in the world to come work for instance in Dutch archaeology, in the end I looked at it again and in the late 90s early 2000s we had three very big projects and in the end approximately 22 to my count British archaeologists came over and then you sort of think how many of them stayed in the Netherlands and the answer is three and two in archaeology, there is hardly any movement in that direction nowadays there is a very large project in the UK known as high speed two and they're desperate for people and you sort of ask around how many Dutch archaeologists are there and the answer to so far I can say is three so the amount you are able to move but are you willing to move and the strange thing is that the border in itself seems to play a part in hardly any roles you can move these things around you can have this idea you can like British archaeology and almost every Dutch archaeologist will say oh it's great British archaeology is much better than Dutch archaeology and all kinds of sentences come around but then you would say well what's keeping you to go into heaven and cross the pond work on the other side or academically speaking the idea of the North Sea culture the North Sea culture is this idea that modern civilization comes up on both sides of the North Sea so academics should be working on it from well British and English sides and work together there's no research being done on this page this is not so much as a negative but also a a strange outcome to my mind from the success story of the British and the Dutch universities strangely enough the British and the Dutch have had the highest success rate of getting money from the EU so therefore partnerships in European context has to be done with groups outside of the leading countries so the Dutch are leading in most things organizing projects and the British are and you cannot both be at the same time leading so therefore you sort of avoid each other and you go in coalitions which don't work together so you can be very successful but then even sort of cling to your order what to do about it a future perspective I personally whatever happens in the strange world of brexit politics and it makes good television there will be great films about it in five years time or so but regardless of what is happening regardless how hard the border will I will try to stay involved in British archaeologists yes it's on the periphery yes I want to work there that's probably very difficult at this stage but I will be there and the big question is not so much what borders do for us but how much do you want to invest in each other do we want to become part of each other's story and you see in the example of the 1936 is that you could all once become hopeful from it that if the problems and the borders and the divides between you are very strong as perhaps also a willingness to engage more with the other side in that sense you could be hopeful and say well maybe this gives us a chance to sort of rethink our relations and rethink the possibilities to work each other in general British and Dutch archaeology like each other in general we want to work with each other but now's perhaps the time to have this dream or this idea become actual fact in a sense there is nothing which stops us apart from our lack of interest to film make true what we already have been preaching for the last 30 to 40 years thank you