KOPAĆ, JAK TO ŁATWO POWIEDZIEĆ

For years, publishing the results of archaeological studies has given rise to multiple controversies. A rapid growth of the number of examined sites and discovered monuments has long ago exceeded the intellectual productivity of researchers. Museum storerooms are brimming with piles of boxes containing invaluable monuments without any chances for publication. The only opportunity for archaeologists to quickly issue the research results is to change the organisation of investigations and the principles of conducting work, predominantly to modernise the methods of documentation. Suitably performed and skillfully illustrated work should become, immediately after its completion, material for pertinent publications. Such an attempt had been made two years ago in Gdańsk by a team from the Institute of Archaeology at Warsaw University, while examining the area of the Dominican Centre. The two volumes have become the source of enormous satisfaction among researchers dealing with the history of Gdańsk, although they were also criticised for workshop shortcomings. At the same time, the very sense of socalled rapid material publications was questioned. The purpose of the presented text is to defend the idea of rapid publication, with the initial premise being that the fundamental duty of every archaeologist completing his excavation work is to publish its outcome before he embarks upon successive research.