CHAPTER 14 MANAGING THE SPATIAL DIMENSION OF THE EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESOURCE. TRENDS AND PERSPECTIVES DAVID W. WHEATLEY University of Southampton, United Kingdom LEONARDO GARCÍA SANJUÁN University of Seville, Spain 1. INTRODUCTION In the late 1960s Swedish archaeologist C.A. Moberg claimed that research and management of the European archaeological resource were entering a new stage characterised super-abundance of information, which in turn produced the challenge of an ‘archaeographic crisis’. The accumulation of data and archival mate- rial from rescue excavations and the explosion in the volume of scientific data in archaeological research were the two main factors leading to such an unprece- dented increase in information (Moberg, 1987:13). Almost thirty five years on, it is hard not to be impressed by the predictive sharpness of Moberg´s statement. Both curatorial and research-oriented interventions (excavations or otherwise) have con- tinued to be carried out at an increased rate, as the evidence discussed throughout this book shows. Archaeological Resource Management (ARM) and scientific or- ganisations responsible for such interventions have become firmly established in many more European countries and regions (as they have world-wide). At the same time, archaeological data analysis practice now comprises techniques that derive from a vast range of scientific disciplines ranging from physics to chemistry, geology, soil science, medicine, biology, etc. This trend towards a significantly expanded con- cept of what constitutes archaeological data, only incipient at the time Moberg made his forecast, has now become mainstream. A survey carried out in the early 1990s, before the rapid growth of Internet access, suggested that an average of 3000 books on archaeological subjects were being published in the world per year, just in Eng- lish (Runnels, 1994:358). Archaeological data have continued to accumulate at a faster and faster pace in more and more places while expectations about the accessibility and usabil- ity of those data have also risen dramatically. The extension of computer networks, particularly the Internet, in the last decade, has created a true culture of readily available, retrievable and usable data which is quietly permeating all areas of soci- ety. Moreover, the very existence of Internet, which as Kilbride points out (this vol- ume), is not only expanding but doing so at an increasing rate, is acting as an stimu- lus for a further expansion in the amount of information available for the user. Put simply, the more readily available users expect information to be (faster data trans- fer, more user-friendly interfaces etc.), the larger the amounts of information that will be made accessible to them. Archaeological organisations and users are already beginning to feel the effects of this paradox. In Chapter 12 of this volume, Hansen and Dam have shown how, as soon as the Danish national database of archaeologi- cal sites went on-line in 1997, the system became so popular among professional