Press Conference Opening Statement
Vienna declaration 11th April, 2003
Dr. Christine Finn, University of Oxford
This statement has come about as a result of the spontaneous action of the archaeology community gathered in Vienna for a conference, and in response to the words of the Austrian president at his opening address.
The subject of the conference - Computer applications in Archaeology - is particularly relevant to the current situation in Iraq, as a large amount of information about Iraqi antiquities is now available on the web, largely as a response to the last Gulf War.
There are already several individual websites to disperse this information. Our aim is to work for a centralized database so that we can estimate the damage done by the current conflict, and urge the protection of existing antiquities for the Iraqi people in particular, and the world heritages in general.
Iraq is the birthplace of our civilization. This is the first step in what we hope will be an international effort.
christine.finn@arch.ox.ac.uk
Press Conference Participants included:
Professor Lewis Lancaster
University of California, Berkeley
Helga Trenkwalder
University of Innsbruck, Austria
Ortolf Harl
City of Vienna Archaeology, Austria
Mr. Wolfgang Börner
City of Vienna Archaeology, Austria
Professor Samuel M. Paley
the State University of New York at Buffalo,
USA
Professor Kris Verhoeven
University of Gent, Belgium
Dr. Christine Finn
University of Oxford, UK
