Applying for excavation permits and filing discovery reports
If you want to perform excavation activities in the Netherlands, your company needs a certificate. You must report archaeological discoveries to the Cultural Heritage Agency or the municipality where you made the discovery.
Find out more or arrange now
at your municipality, province, or water authority
Reporting an archaeological discovery
Did you accidentally make an archaeological discovery, for instance when working in the soil? If so, you must report your archaeological discovery to the Cultural Heritage Agency or the municipality. Did you find a maritime artefact? You should use the form for maritime finds (in Dutch).
Do you own an archaeological business? Then you have to report your finds in the Archaeological Information System Archis (in Dutch). This is the Dutch national system in which monuments, reports of archaeological discoveries, and excavation reports are registered, together with their geographical location.
Excavation certificate
Do you want to perform excavation activities in the Netherlands, such as archaeological investigations, drilling exploratory boreholes, and the removal or relocation of objects that belong to Dutch cultural heritage? Then your company needs a certificate.
In the Netherlands, it is prohibited to perform an archaeological excavation without a certificate. If your company has a certificate, it means you work according to the standards of the Dutch Archaeology Quality Standard (KNA, in Dutch) and the assessment guideline BRL 4000 Archeology (in Dutch).
You can apply for a certificate to a certifying body (CI, in Dutch). The certifying body checks each year if you work according to the quality standard. A certificate is valid for 4 years, as long as you pass the yearly audit. Costs involved depend on the protocols you must comply with. Costs and application periods may differ between CI’s.
Excavation by a foreign company
Do you own a foreign company and do you want to perform an excavation in the Netherlands? You do not need a Dutch certificate for excavations in the Netherland, but you must meet the conditions:
- You only excavate in the Netherlands occasionally.
- You have a valid permit or similar document from another EU country. You must comply with the same rules as companies with a Dutch certificate.
- You must submit your report about your research to Archis (in Dutch) within 2 years after the excavation has taken place. You can write your report in Dutch, English, or German.