Improved heritage management and the inclusion of heritage in planning and sustainable development processes necessitate inventory and documentation. More than mere scientific tools recommended in international agreements, inventory and documentation play a strategic role. The complexity of the heritage items that now have to be inventoried and their interaction with our everyday living environment require the clear definition and harmonisation of practices at the European level.

Through its work in the 1960s, the Council of Europe helped to lay the methodological bases for inventorying architectural, archaeological and movable heritage. The efforts to systematise the process came in answer to the broadening meaning of heritage, and today new considerations lead us to address such notions as heritage groups. The guidelines proposed in this book reflect the work done so far and provide a basis for future research. It is part of a series produced under the Technical Co-operation and Assistance Programme to present the experi¬ence derived from the projects implemented by the Council of Europe.

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