Looking Back and Forward

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This slightly delayed issue of Archaeologies at once looks back to 2016 and forward to 2017. In looking back, we reflect on WAC8 in Kyoto to which we looked forward in our August 2016 issue. In looking forward, we wish all our readers and colleagues, and WAC itself, a very happy and (albeit belated) prosperous New Year. Many of the issues arising in 2016 remain to affect us in the coming months, and we are sure new ones will arisesome positive for archaeology, others less so. Themes of articles this month reflect a number of issues affecting archaeology and archaeologists across the globe.

High Numbers at WAC8
Late August and early September in Kyoto were unseasonably warm and humid, as a number of locals assured us, and looking at people in the streets of the city it was clear they were keen for the weather to break. The welcome to over 1600 archaeologists from 83 countries at the 8th World Archaeological Congress held from 28 August to 2 September at Doshisha University, close by the impressive Japanese Imperial Palace, was as warm as the climate but much more enjoyable. There, colleagues from all over the globe came together to exchange news and ideas and to debate key issues affecting archaeology globally. The range of issues addressed-in fifteen themes and over 250 sessions plus eight plenary sessions and other business gatherings-is reflected in the range of resolutions put to and accepted by the members of WAC present (for the current status, see http://worldarch.org/blog/wac-8-resolutions/). We publish in this issue the text of WAC President Professor Koji Mizoguchi's opening address, urging the conference to become an 'ideal speech situation'-one where differences of background are put aside and where open debate takes place in the context of achieving common goals. WAC aims to represent archaeology globally, and it is as a global community that we come together: when we do so, we need to be such an ideal speech community. To what extent this was actually achieved is for those who were there to decide, and future issues will include some commentary on this (see also below for an early contribution).
Issues that came to the fore simultaneously looked to the past of WAC and its founding principles, to the present state of archaeology across the globe, and to its future. A powerful theme of the Congress, dominating several sessions, was archaeology in Palestine and how WAC should respond especially to Israeli political initiatives affecting heritage sites. We have made reference in previous Editorials to the situation in Turkey, and another resolution reflected this by condemning limits to academic freedom in that country and elsewhere. Similarly, WAC8 recognised problems in West Africa caused by the activities of armed groups and the failures of governments to take effective action to protect archaeology and archaeologists, and WAC 8 specifically urged a number of countries in Asia to recognise the rights of minority and Indigenous groups; on a related theme, the Congress urged repatriation of Indigenous remains and materials.
The rise of digital technologies over the past few years was specifically noted. With meetings only every four years and given the speed of development in these areas, WAC may well be thought to have fallen behind in considering them, but the general principles offered by the Congress reflect those which WAC has always espoused. Conventional publishing also came under the spotlight, and principles were offered that affect everything published under the WAC name, including this journal: while we would hope never knowingly to have violated any of the principles espoused, we are happy to undertake to comply with them. Looking to the future, it was proposed to establish a committee to support the career development of younger colleagues. Overarching all these, Congress called for collaboration between archaeological communities to unite in seeking to achieve a wide and ambitious set of common goals-the fulfilment of which would be clear evidence of creating an ideal speech situation, something to which the editors of this journal also aspire.

Archaeology in the Era of Donald Trump
The world political climate is changing rapidly, and most changes do not seem to be positive. Our lives are more and more affected by authoritarian leaders. Last year we missed Turkish colleagues in Kyoto as they were banned from travelling abroad due to Erdogan's anti-Gülenist witch-hunt. Now if you are a refugee or politically persecuted scholar from one of the 'evil seven' predominantly Muslim countries, President Trump wants to prevent you from entering the USA (although his unconstitutional Executive Order is currently suspended by the decision of the Federal Court). Such actions are not affecting dictators and terrorists: just the opposite, it punishes the victims of terrorism and evil regimes.
We hoped to offer you at least one item of good news, but even this seems to be disqualified by most recent developments. The long-time campaigning of the Sioux tribe and other activists against the Dakota Access Pipeline aims to protect the tribe's sacred areas, defend the sustainable water source, and takes into account the pipeline's devastating climate impacts. Outgoing US President Obama ordered the project stopped until the full environmental assessment of the pipeline impact will be available and as a result the US Army Corp of Engineers announced it will look for an alternate route for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota. However, on 24 January President Trump signed the Executive Order to advance construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This means the Sioux people have to fight again. Tribal opponents say they will fight a restart of the project in court. President Trump states that from now on it is going to be always 'America first', but he obviously means 'Rich White America first'. It would seem that in Trump's world view those campaigning indigenous people are maladjusted citizens whose rights and needs are totally unimportant for the US white majority.
So is the 21st century going to be age of new dictators trying to shape everyone lives? Is our world really so much influenced by authoritative leaders? Is European society so insecure in defending its democratic roots that more than 70 years after defeat of Nazism we still fear the memory of its evil leader? In October 2016, Austrian MPs voted to expropriate the home where Adolf Hitler was born. A large majority approved the new law, which was submitted by the government earlier this year in a bid to stop the dilapidated house in the northern town of Braunau-am-Inn from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. This seems mainly like a sign of weakness in defending democracy. The house-innocent in itself-was built more than 200 years prior to Hitler's birth and as a historic building qualifies for preservation in its own right.
Alongside continuing atrocities committed on the people of Syria, we observe with fear the ongoing destruction of Syrian and Iraqi heritage. The recent news from this territory is not good either. The battle over Mosul affects further historical monuments, and Palmyra was re-captured by Daesh (ISIS). Not only have the reconstruction efforts in Palmyra been forced to stop but further destruction occurred, now targeting the Roman theatre, one of the largest and best preserved parts of the archaeological zone.

What's in a Name?
On April 15 2016, UNESCO discussed a resolution that ignores Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. The 5-page resolution 'strongly condemns'

Looking Back and Forward
alleged 'Israeli aggressions' against 'the freedom of worship and Muslims' access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif'. The resolution, which was proposed by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, ultimately passed. It passed with 24 'yes' votes, six 'no' votes and 26 abstentions. When writing the resolution, the board referred to the mount only by its Islamic name, 'Al-Haram al-Sharif', and never used the words 'Temple Mount'. It was also highly critical of Israel, addressing Palestinian grievances about the site while largely ignoring Israeli concerns.
Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, who was not part of the board, was not happy with the resolution's wording and the perception that Jewish ties to the site were being denied or downplayed. Subsequently she made the following statement: 'The heritage of Jerusalem is indivisible, and each of its communities has a right to the explicit recognition of their history and relationship with the city. To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list'. We believe that in passing such a resolution UNESCO failed in the representation of its objectivity and internationalism. Such acts are clearly undermining the efforts (such as WAC initiatives) to maintain fair dialogue between parties involved in the Middle East conflict.
This issue and its consequences for archaeology especially triggered a complex and interesting argument among WAC members turning on whether the term 'Temple Mount' should be included in description of the 'Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif' site in Jerusalem or whether WAC should follow UNESCO usage and exclude this term. The debate continues and so we have not published the full texts of resolutions in this journal: when it is finalised we shall do so.
In part, the issue is one of the technical interpretations of WAC Statutes which require WAC to adhere to UN and UNESCO principles of Human Rights and official languages: whether the latter extends to adoption of UNESCO names for things and places is less clear. But it goes further than this: the names applied to places are also indications of claims of ownership and stakeholder status. Since WAC is also bound to defy the forcible occupation of territory and the oppression of peoples, to recognise 'Temple Mount' as a legitimate title is potentially to recognise Israeli claims and therefore implicitly offer support for Israeli occupation of Jerusalem in defiance of international condemnation.
And this is where archaeology comes in: the evidence for the site as the location of the Jewish Temple destroyed in 70CE is limited and highly disputed. Nonetheless the site is revered by Jews, Christians and Moslems, since all look to Judaic tradition as the foundation of the faith, and the site has meaning for them all-for Moslems as the 'Haram-al-Sharif' to which Mohammed was transferred during the 'Night Journey', for Christians as the place from which Christ expelled the moneylenders during his brief Ministry, and to Jews as the site of Solomon's First Temple destroyed in 587BCE. As such, the site is as important as a site of belief as it is as a site of evidence of the past: its intangible qualities may override any reliance we may place on material evidence as a factor in ascribing significance. Even if it was not the site of an earlier Temple, or indeed of any Temple, the fact that there are those across the globe who believe that it was perhaps should be more important to us than anything else. On this basis, including the name 'Temple Mount' may not in itself constitute acceptance of Israeli claims to the site. Such is the power of language and of words with which we have to engage in our work. The debate continues online while Professor Koji Mizoguchi has the unenviable task of trying to square several different circles.

This Issue of Archaeologies
One way and another-reflecting WAC's commitment to archaeology's place in the larger world-this issue contains articles that address the inevitable relationship of archaeologists with forces that lie beyond the bounds of our specialism. They cover engagement with popular media, our role in education, interaction with commercial and political interest, how archaeology reflects and is implicated in the construction of national identity, and gender issues.
As indicated above, this issue contains the text of the President's Opening Address to WAC8 calling upon participants to create an 'ideal speech' situation and (below) one response to that call.
In her paper based on her experience with television production, and perhaps with a view towards the creation of ideal speech in that context, Suzie Thomas outlines some advice to those who find themselves involved in archaeology on TV, sounding a warning note. Her paper is not as academic in style as most of those we publish, reflecting our commitment to alternative styles of writing, but nonetheless concerns issues that may affect many of us at one stage or another in our careers. This is certainly true for one of our editors-JC-who had dealings a number of years ago with a production company who took advantage of his advice to design a programme that ran for a successful series but for which he received neither acknowledgement nor reward. Given the concern we should all have for the welfare of colleagues as reflected in WAC debates in Kyoto, this paper finds a very suitable home in this journal issue.
Duncan Wright and Deborah Veness address an issue related to the concern over future career prospects for our younger colleagues by a consideration of approaches to archaeological education in Australia. Advocat-

Looking Back and Forward
ing 'work integrated learning' as part of an archaeology programme, the article emphasises the value to the profession and to students of an approach that integrates required academic (theoretical, methodological, disciplinary) knowledge with opportunities to apply that knowledge in 'real world' contexts. By doing so, they overcome the unhelpful divide between narrow 'vocational' training and the wider educational purposes of higher education to develop graduates who are equipped with the ability to apply theoretical expertise to solve problems in a wide range of contexts.
WAC was founded in 1986 in part on issues related to the situation then pertaining in South Africa, and it was a proud moment when WAC4 was hosted in Cape Town in 1999. In this issue, Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu looks at the way in which World Heritage sites in that country face threats by the fragmented relations between government departments which can be exploited by commercial stakeholders to the detriment of environmental resources. He emphasises the inability of UNESCO to prevent harm to World Heritage sites under such conditions. The article will have resonance for many across the globe where the demands of development outweigh those of environmental security and where responsibility for environmental matters is divided among a range of separate authorities who do not effectively co-ordinate.
Hae Woon Park takes a brave stance against the traditional periodisation of Korea's past to challenge its construction as a sequence of unilinear development. The adoption in Korea of a Western model akin to the 'three age system' for Europe serves to diminish the role of external influences in Korean culture and thereby to give scientific support to an exclusive sense of Korean identity. This is in defiance of evidence from the archaeology of Korea: the tendency is to make the facts fit the model, rather than drawing on the evidence to construct a more complex understanding of the past. We hope the paper will invite debate and discussion on this topic, and we are happy to help promote that debate.
Our last paper revisits a regular topic of archaeological debate: that of gender. Jan Turek calls on archaeologists to abandon a bisexual model of gender in interpreting material from the past, especially human remains. As the European Neolithic record demonstrates, and like non-Western other cultures, people were not just 'men' or 'women' as determined by physical form but offered a wider range of possibilities and roles. As he argues, this is nothing necessarily to do with sexual preference either: to some extent age categories may also have played a role in the ascription of gender and the archaeological record provides evidence for this.
John Carman and Jan Turek February 2017 A Comment on 'Ideal Speech' at WAC8 by Malgorzata Trelka, University of Birmingham, UK I am a Ph.D. student and archaeologist who attended WAC for the first time in 2016. This commentary is based on my previous experience at other conferences and especially, comparisons to other international events I have attended before I returned to academia from my work in archaeology and heritage policy. The obvious analogy which can be made is to UNESCO meetings, which I attended as part of a national delegation. Although these two organisations are very different entities, they were founded theoretically on common principles. Indeed this connection was also recognised in the opening speech by the President of WAC-8, Koji Mizoguchi: …and various international organizations, including the United Nations and the World Archaeological Congress, are trying to facilitate our on-going endeavour to construct the infrastructure for the achievement of an ideal speech situation.
To draw on this comparison, the obvious difference between these two entities is that WAC facilitates academic discussions. It enables anyone with an interest in the past to take part, and speakers can freely express their desires, frustrations, criticism and ideas concerning the way archaeology is practiced. These can often push the existing boundaries of the current frameworks upon which we understand and interpret archaeology. Some academics would argue that their academic freedom is constrained by the institutions which employ them. As an academic researcher affiliated with a university, I do have to adhere to university's rules; however, those do not constrain my understanding of my research area.
Conversely, the World Heritage Committee meetings, the flagship events of UNESCO, has rigid and structured rules in place which favours governmental expression of views rather than from non-governmental organisations or individuals.
There is no doubt that WAC engages in debates which cover a very wide spectrum of issues concerning archaeology as well as heritage which are approached critically from the perspective of different interests. Although overwhelmingly dominated by academics from the Anglophone world, this Congress allows non-academic voices to be heard, or to be represented by academics who devote their professional careers to speak on behalf of those whose voices have been silenced or marginalised in the national narratives.

Looking Back and Forward
To give an example, a debate on the Palestine-Israeli issue goes back to previous Congresses and in particular to the resolution which was passed at WAC7 in Jordan in 2009: It is unethical for Professional Archaeologists and academic institutions to conduct professional archaeological and excavations in occupied areas possessed by force (Resolution 9 WAC 7).
The session I attended at WAC8 was concerning protection of basic human rights and the promotion of social justice amongst other proposed statements relating to the Palestinian Occupied Territories in the context of ongoing physical destruction of archaeological remains. The session was preceded by an email exchange between some of the WAC members; this online discussion became especially interesting when the request was made for 'WAC to stay out of politics'. To which Sarah May responded: 'WAC was set up to acknowledge and engage with the political dimensions of archaeological practice. It has always been political, and has no useful function if it tries to move from that position' (WAC email exchange 25 August 2016).
I appreciated that the views expressed during the debate on the Palestine-Israeli issue were balanced and I could hear stands taken by individual researchers, who argued how the existing political situation affects their work. Skilfully moderated, this difficult and highly contentious discussion was based on substantial evidence rather than political interventions.
Of course, these issues are highly political, but we have to be clearer what it means to be political. In my personal view, the 'political' nature of intergovernmental meetings which I have experienced under the aegis of UNESCO has virtually nothing in common with the way in which organisations such as WAC are 'political'. There is a difference between an ethical organisation which holds to its core values about understanding how the exercise of authority affects archaeology and concerned communities, and one that is concerned to execute that political authority.
As individual archaeologists or people interested in the past we have a limited authority to influence the external forces which affect archaeological enquiry. State bureaucracies often driven by political biases contribute to the production of narratives based on perception rather than evidence. Hence, WAC provides an alternative approach to archaeology which endeavours to facilitate listening to different ways archaeology is understood and interpreted and how those interpretations can connect the past with the present.
Through marrying 'traditional' methodical approaches in archaeological investigation with those which are less prevailing, WAC allows democratisation of archaeology where social justice is at its heart. It contributes to the enrichment of our discipline; thus, it enables tangible outcomes such as reinterpretation of archaeological remains and in some cases rejecting long-accepted views derived from science driven enquiry.
However, I do think that our views and ideas derive from our identities. Our identities are constructed on our perceptions of who we are and who we are not. We cannot simply stand beside our identities, but we can encourage the multiplicity of those identities to take part in the debate which reflect the world's diversity and work out the ways in which we can join forces to aim for the implementation of common goals. The question remains as to what extent we listen to each other and how much is about us as individuals.

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