 session organizers for organizing this session. When I first went to the session aspect I was really attracted to the dilemma that it kind of presented with the huge accumulation of data that archaeology has been really successful in accumulating data, but also the dilemma that actually the relevance or the perception of the relevance of archaeology among the public is kind of decreasing which is a paradox you could say. And I recognize this very well in the case study that I'm, or the research area that I'm working with which is Danish contract archaeology because particularly since there was a new museum act in 2002 where the financing model of contract archaeology changed from being paid by the state to changing into a developer-funded financing model. The number of excavations has been increased hugely but also kind of the critics of the relevance of archaeological knowledge has been increasing in the medias and recently by governmental report actually questioned the relevance of archaeological knowledge. So kind of diving into this dilemma is kind of the starting point of this paper. Then when I read the session aspect again I realized that you're actually looking for like the happy stories and good arguments for why archaeological knowledge is relevant today. And I'm sorry that I'm not that far yet. So what I'm looking for is more kind of the the reasons why or the obstacles to make archaeological knowledge relevant but hopefully we will. I think that that's an important step to actually get to to to make the good and happy stories. So please follow me. That's too far. So this is a research project that I'm working on at the moment so new knowledge or repetition archaeology and investigation of the conditions for knowledge production in day-to-day contract archaeology. And it's a qualitative research project funded by the state or the cultural agency and the museum that I'm working at. And the bit that I'm going to talk about today is some interviews that I've done with archaeologists working in different kind of stages of the process of contract archaeology. So from the digging archaeologists and all the way up to the governmental consultants. So trying to get kind of the broad picture of what is going on in this process. As I'm still working I mean of course this has been like a preliminary presentation but yeah at least there's some pictures. But then I think maybe you need some kind of background understanding for what is going on because contract archaeology in Denmark is organized in a very centralized way. So we have like the main organization is the cultural ministry and all excavations are actually going through them. So they have to approve that an excavation can actually take place. And then it's the local museums that are conducting the excavations. So what you see in this very colorful map is kind of the areas that each museum has as a responsible area. So I'm working in this area for all the green stuff that belongs to my museum. So this is not like a model of competition. So there's no archaeological companies that are working in the museum areas. At the same time the museums are also research institutions and of course they have also a big aim of communicating all the archaeological matters produced. And maybe I also owe to say that the universities for instance in Denmark they don't have any excavation units. So if they want to excavate they have to actually cooperate with the museums. But all in all the result is that there's like 500 to 1200 excavations a year including trial excavations which is quite a lot considering the size of the country. And that equals like 90 to 95% of all excavation activities. So that's why I think that the kind of knowledge produced in contract archaeology is really central to actually understanding what is going on in Danish archaeology. So just to kind of give a picture of the process of how this works or the procedure that the museums receive the information of any kind of building activity and then contact the developer and inform her on the kind of the legislation around this area. And then in the dialogue with the developer the museum applied to the agency with a lot of arguments of why this excavation should actually be conducted. And then hopefully the agency says yes of course you're going to excavate this because it's going to be destroyed. And then it's followed by of course excavation and then writing it up sending out the bills and then putting it into the central databases and then cases closed. So the agency's kind of task in this procedure is to both kind of secure the preservation of and the investigation if they can't be preserved in situ of the sites. And then also to kind of secure that the developer is only paying for like the necessary necessary excavations not like like the happy archaeologists just going out and digging because they want to. And kind of the key argument of how an excavation is going to be approved is that the site has to contribute with significant new archaeological knowledge. That's kind of the the official argument. So that's what the museums are working with and use as an argument. But there's no kind of clear definition of what is archaeological knowledge. So it's actually quite fluffy and yeah gives a lot of problems actually in the administrations but also for the research and the communication of what's actually going on. So that's why I kind of felt that it was relevant to actually kind of dive into what is archaeological knowledge. And I mean we're really good at going out and asking the public what they think is like relevant and what archaeology could do. But maybe it's time to also look kind of inwards and see what do we actually think ourselves. So based on the interviews I mean very broadly archaeological knowledge is defined as more than data. So it somehow has to be processed from the excavation and put into some kind of context. There's also a strong kind of opinion about that knowledge. It's what we actually communicate to the public. And there's a strong kind of wish to actually get to that point that we can communicate something to the public. So that's really central in contract archaeology as well. And then kind of it's put into this kind of general synthesis that archaeologists want to kind of know about the past. And a few also kind of used like the national history as kind of the main synthesis that this data is put into. So then I also asked kind of how they see the role of contract archaeology in relation to this kind of more kind of abstract experience of archaeological knowledge. And that was kind of interesting at least I think that many of the archaeologists experience contract archaeologists as very different from other archaeology. So there's a big distance experience in kind of what is going on in the field and kind of the rest. And they see these the excavation as rescue situations and not as as a research situation which is also kind of supported by the legislation that kind of secures that the developer is not paying for the research but only for the kind of rescue of data. So the result is that these excavations become data collection and the main kind of aim is to date the site and kind of organize the data for future research. So then the communication that is actually coming out of these excavations is very site specific and it only happens like during the excavation because there's not really long process afterwards. And that means that it's focusing on the extraordinary and unique finds. The agency even makes this kind of top 10 list of the year. And I mean if they kind of have to communicate like the broader picture is always illustrate this piece of the jigsaw or big data in kind of this general cultural historical narrative but never questioning the kind of the framework that it's put into. And then yeah to actually really argue that this is new knowledge. It's very often kind of presented as this is going to change the history of Denmark. But at the same time I mean in the or the other side of this this kind of a process is that I also met in the interviews I also met a lot of frustrations that actually the archaeologists that I interviewed they didn't really feel comfortable in this kind of setup. So they experienced kind of excavation that's unfocused and just does this mechanical machine that's just going on. And there's never time enough to do the job properly. So they actually have some some thoughts about doing something but never actually allowed to do it. And yeah the result is that it kind of is more like a repetition of what we actually know when you're before than actually doing like producing new knowledge. And there's a lot of doubts if there will ever be like this future research which is kind of the some data of the contract archaeology. And in the end it means that there's a lot of difficulties to make this knowledge relevant to modern societies. And yeah and that's of course the big problem in this because if we can't I mean convince the society that this is relevant I mean then the risk is that they will just close down the activity. So kind of my my interpretation of the synthesis is that all the kind of narrative that these finds are put into that there's a problem with like focusing only on the find on the site because it actually leaves a very narrow definition of archaeology in the public. So it's only about the discovery and not about kind of all the wonder and all the questions that it poses. And there's also a problem of like talking about archaeology as a jigsaw because the aim becomes to kind of close the holes in the jigsaw instead of kind of opening up and yeah ask new questions. And kind of there's a logic that the more data the better because then we can one point we can actually see the full jigsaw. And then there's a like a specific kind of focus on reconstruction of the past to kind of present the some clear results instead of yeah kind of take up present issues and kind of mirror them in the results. So there's a kind of a distance between the past and the present in that way in the way that we work with these data. So what I think might be a thing is to actually go back to another thing in the interviews because I'm also asking these archaeologists why did they actually kind of begin an archaeology? Why did they become an archaeologist? Was actually driving them or drove them when they started at least. And it's completely different wordings that they put into this when they're talking about why they're in archaeology. So it's about curiosity, it's about the mystery of the past, it's about wonder, it's about the excitement of working, it's about reflection and understanding and you know understanding the humanity and origins and where we haven't been and where we're going. The interest of understanding like and also the weirdness of archaeology that is completely different from what my own every day and yeah this very fruitful combination of practical and theoretical dimensions of the thing. And maybe I mean the big difference between why people actually started in archaeology and what they're actually doing in the everyday I think to see that as something to work on there. So if we kind of took that as a starting point instead of just collecting data. So start at wonder, maybe not focusing on what we know but actually what we don't know, we don't understand in kind of the excavations and have a specific focus I mean yeah creating questions and not answers. I'm not saying that we shouldn't answer the questions but also just have a focus on kind of opening up these these analysis that we're making. Well archaeology or the contract archaeology in Denmark at least is very standardized. So kind of opening up also more experimental approaches and yeah look at the past from the present. And I thought one way to actually kind of sense is that we are putting things into like small boxes is instead of kind of focus only on reconstructing what the archaeological record was once in the past. Actually start at what it what it is today and then go back in the biography. So in that way we bring kind of the present into the past. So yeah excavation is a knowledge process not just a kind of collection of data and yeah maybe that's a good topic to actually go on discussing here but archaeology is archaeology. Why is this big difference between what is going on in contract archaeology and then archaeology as a general. Yeah thank you.