This year the European Association of Archaeologists' annual conference takes place virtually this year. Ville Rohiola of the Finnish Heritage Agency is presenting about FindSampo in the session “Challenge, Change and Common Ground: The Role of Socially Engaged Practice in Community Archaeology in Modern Europe”, scheduled to run on Friday 28 August. His paper is titled “FindSampo: A Cooperative Citizen Science Platform to Manage and Curate Archaeological Find Data in Finland”, and discusses how the ongoing FindSampo project aims to apply citizen science and activate participatory collaboration between the public, researchers and heritage managers.
On Saturday 29 August, EPFRN members Pieterjan Deckers and Michael Lewis will contribute to the session 'Modern Networks and Past Narratives: "Treasure Hunting", the Art Market, Scientific Analysis, and Co-Operation for Protection of Archaeological Heritage' with their talk 'Licence to loot? The challenges of a cooperative approach to metal-detecting in Europe'. Through a series of recent, high-profile cases from England, they argue that EPFRN's cooperative approach to hobby detecting is not without its problems and requires continuous
effort and investment. However, at least in northern and western Europe the balance of costs and benefits of the cooperative approach still outweighs that of more restrictive policies; especially if one espouses the idea of an open, participatory archaeology.
Registration for the conference is open to all EAA members, with details about joining and registration via the conference website. The full programme runs from Monday 24 August to Sunday 30 August 2020.