The Laboratorio de Patrimonio (LaPa) operates where archaeology and heritage converge. LaPA belongs to the Instituto “Padre Sarmiento” de Estudos Galegos (IEGPS), itself depending on the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Spanish High Council for Scientific Research, and has strong links with the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC).

The LaPa develops an integral and systematic research programme, strongly focused on Landscape Archaeology and aimed at the field of Cultural Heritage Management. This agenda combines both theoretical goals and a pragmatic perspective, basic and applied research, meeting a humanistic, critical and reflexive point of view and the aim of relating Science to the Knowledge Economy. This means looking for a productive interaction with the industrial and economic sector, creating wealth and employment, and promoting an active transformation of Society through research. The LaPa team currently includes 42 professionals, working on different Units and Projects. These Projects belong to a whole cycle of research and work, and they are materialized in different Working Units, Research Lines and concrete Activities.

As for the ACE project, since all the fields covered are to a greater or lesser degree related to the LaPa research lines, we intend to contribute along several directions:

Regarding theme I Researching the Significance of the Past, the following lines are noteworthy: Landscape Archaeology: territorial analysis of the Archaeological record; Archaeology of Architecture: the built Space; Archaeology of Monuments: rock art, settlements and territories; Archaeometry: Archaeology of Material Culture; Anthropology, Ethnology and new Heritages.

On theme II Comparative Practices in Archaeology, we are interested in the fields of Applied Archaeology: research for management of archaeological data; Information and Communication Technologies for Heritage and questions of European archaeology and international development

Theme III The Archaeological Profession is strongly linked to our line on Sociology of Archaeology and Heritage: on this theme LaPa is team leader, together with INRAP. We will also contribute with our experience in the organization of specialized training and postgraduate courses, as the six editions of a master course on heritage management.

On theme IV Public Outreach we will contribute with different activities related to the dissemination and socialisation of Archaeology and Heritage: active participation in the planned exhibition, the planned book on Archaeological Europe, and in the activities related to model sites, through our experience in enhancement projects in Iron Age settlement hillforts as Neixón (A Coruña) and Castrolandín (Pontevedra).

The LaPa (CSIC-IEGPS) will organise and host an ACE meeting in Santiago in November 2008.