060110 VU Expert Witness Opinions and Monuments Value in Archaeology (2023S)

Especially in archaeological heritage management, but increasingly also in other areas of archaeology, the production of expert witness opinions (or "expert statements", see e.g. BDA 2022, Richtlinien: Archäologische Maßnahmen, 6. Fassung: Stand 1.1.2022, Wien: BDA, Seite 31) is an important task for archaeologists. It is less commonly known that writing expert witness opinions can also be a lucrative business for archaeologists: under § 34 Abs. 1 Z 3 Gebührenanspruchsgesetz 1975 as currently applicable, the court or administrative agency requesting an expert witness opinion must pay external experts for the establishment of the facts of a case and their expert assessment "which require particularly high disciplinary competence, as transmitted by a university degree or comparable education, a fee for their effort of between 80 to 150 Euro for every started hour"; obviously excluding VAT. The hourly rates private experts can charge whose services are needed by e.g. parties affected by the decisions of heritage managers can even considerably exceed the rates for court or administratuive agency appointed expert witnesses. Yet, composing an expert opinion on even a simple question rarely takes less than 8 hours; with complex expert witness opinions easily clocking up a hundred hours or more quite frequently. It thus is possible to earn quite the income with writing such expert opinions.
Especially in archaeological heritage management, the most important question that must be answered by expert witness opinions is that of the monuments value of some archaeological object, be it a single portable antiquity or a whole archaeological landscape. The main task of expert witnesses in such cases is to determine the prevailing opinion in the academic community of the (relative) value of the (potential) monument; especially regarding the criteria stipulated in § 1 Abs. 2 Denkmalschutzgesetz (or the relevant comparable provision in other monuments protection laws in other countries).
In this seminar, we will consider what monuments value ist o start with, how the monuments value of an archaeological object can be determined, and how an expert witness opinion for its determination is constructed to be of use to the monuments authority for the legal decision of whether the specific archaeological object must (or must not) be scheduled, but also in court cases where the monuments value of the archaeological object is disputed. We will practise constructing expert witness opinions and counter-opinions, to turn the seminar into a moot court to decide cases with opposing expert witness opinions.