The Instituto Português de Arqueologia (Portuguese Institute of Archaeology - IPA) has been working a body of legislation concerning some of the most important issues to frame and regulate the archaeological activity. These projects aim at updating current legislation and regulate the Law 107/2001, namely on matters relating to the archaeological heritage. The Portuguese Institute of Archaeology is conscious of the existing gap between everyday life and the law, in particular in areas where market forces have developed in recent years, and keeps in mind the need to adequate the present legal rules and regulations to the needs of the protection the archaeological patrimony.

Urban Archaeology is a very specific field of rescue work. In Portugal neither the Law or the public authority are concerned about the peculiar problems of the excavations and study of the town subsoil. The approaches produced in the eighties of the last century were forgotten by the heads of the new Institute of Archaeology. Urban Archaeology in the USA or England won a wide public, concerned about the future of the cities landmarks. In Portugal, except a for few cases, the ancient towns rich sediments were destroyed without public reaction. As a conclusion, the author suggests some changes in the law and the government strategy to avoid that Portuguese towns will become empty places without memory or identity.

In the last years, salvage archaeology has assumed an unequivocal importance in the panorama of Portuguese archaeology, either for the increasing number of professionals that exponentially are occupied in this activity, either for the volume of data that continuously puts on display. Understanding the differences existing between the current laws and the social, economic and cultural dynamics that frame this kind of activity, supported by an insufficient and mismatched legal skeleton, we suggest some normative measures, in the scope of the politics of cultural heritage management and regional arrangements, susceptible to stimulate a balanced relation between urban development and the preservation of the collective memory.

Language: Portuguese

Archaeological findings are a structural element of archaeological heritage, and, as such, one must have in relation to them the same concerns regarding their protection and valuation that are deserved to monuments and sites. However, a thoughtful reading of current Portuguese laws shows that the legislator has paid less attention towards the archaeological findings, revealing a disturbing ambiguity, and, in some instances, several contradictions with respect to the different laws referring to them. In this paper, we analyze those legal texts by considering the concept of “archaeological finding” and its custody, the responsibility of the archaeologists over the findings collected on archaeological interventions, measures taken for their inventory and protection, policies of storage and incorporation, as well as those questions concerning accidental discovery or illicit appropriation. After the analysis, we reflect about the necessity of revision and matching of existing laws, in order to efficiently protect, manage and valuate archaeological findings, which often represent the only material survival from disappeared archaeological monuments and sites.