Karolina Ploska (University of Cardiff)

Although never a legal instrument but rather a set of internal guidelines for heritage authorities and conservators, the ‘circular’ of 1963 for many years had been governing the official approach to architectural and archaeological monuments in Poland. Seemingly a reaction to damages caused during the WWII and the need to facilitate and prioritise the restoration of the devastated cultural heritage, the ‘circular’ introduced five ‘classes’ of monuments grouped according to their artistic, historic and scientific value, with the ‘class 0’ being the most valuable and of an ‘international importance’. Although abandoned only a few years later, this classification, based largely on political agenda and anti-clerical ideology of the communist regime rather than any kind of scientific assessment, distorted the public perception of the cultural heritage in Poland. To this day the deeply rooted idea of a ‘class 0 monument’ repeatedly appears in media and public debates to haunt archaeologists and other specialists involved in the cultural heritage management processes. Given that in the popular view the cultural heritage is still largely defined as ‘monuments’ – standing buildings and archaeological sites (less so) which can (or even should) be ‘ranked’ according to their ‘value’ and ‘importance’, ideas such as historic landscapes and cultural environment still have not achieved a wide public acceptance and understanding. Drawing on the totalitarian experience of the 20th century and the propaganda of the ‘real socialism’, this paper explores the complexity of issues related to the interpretation, representation and consumption of archaeological heritage in modern day Central Europe.