Target group

There are two target groups of the course Archaeological Heritage in Contemporary Europe. The first target group is composed of professionals employed in local branches of heritage sector in participating countries. Major offices are located in provincial capitals, while their branches are placed in smaller cities. Understandably, the group is largely dispersed and is characterised by a varied access to the newest knowledge in the field. In this case of this group, we speak of combination of professional activities with necessity of its continuous training. Accordingly, methods of vocational training need to combine efficiency of the educational process with time constraints of the target group. Other segment of this target group are individuals working in the archaeological sector or otherwise related to this sector such as field archaeologists, planners, architects, etc Dispersal of this group is even larger the heritage sector employees. They are associated with the archaeological heritage related issues on an irregular basis. Consequently, keeping them up-to-dated with recent developments in this field is a prerequisite condition to facilitate efficient and beneficial co-operation with the archaeological heritage sector.

The second target group comprises graduate and extramural students of universities from participating countries. A consequence of the old-fashioned education system of archaeological education at Polish and Latvian universities is an almost complete lack of heritage courses in the curricula. This is particularly unfortunate due as (1) archaeological heritage is becoming a backbone of contemporary archaeology, a tendency clearly manifested in Western Europe, and (2) broadly understood heritage sector creates today a majority of archaeological jobs. At the same time, British, Dutch, German, and Swedish graduate students experience a lack of knowledge about specificity of this field in new EU countries, especially in those that share similar environmental conditions (North European perspective) and have comparable arch. potential.