In this fin de siècle moment – or is it closer to a mood of Depression? – the Keynesian idea of expanded government spending is much in vogue. We have been here before. As Shannon Lee Dawdy notes, part of Roosevelt's New Deal in the USA was the famous Civilian Conservation Corps, who performed much archaeology and related work (Maher 2008; Paige 1985). It seems particularly appropriate, then, to repeat a famous quote of Keynes: after all, archaeology comes surprisingly close to that much-derided Keynesian remedy. It was in his General theory of employment, interest and money that he wrote, ‘“To dig holes in the ground,” paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services’ (Keynes 1936, 220). What is less often quoted, though, is the subsequent comment: ‘It is not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations’.

In Keynesian mode, I want to suggest that archaeology is quite probably less ‘useful’ than many other human activities we might undertake, though equally it could be argued to be often less harmful. I agree with much of what Dawdy writes and in particular her repeated calls for ‘honesty’, but I suspect that the view from inside archaeology is necessarily somewhat different to that from elsewhere (cf. McGuire 2007). What I want to propose is that if by ‘useful’ we mean more than the provision of employment primarily for archaeologists, we would probably do better looking elsewhere. Archaeology, I would argue, is neither particularly useful nor necessary, but it is intellectual fun. Whether that is sufficient justification is for various others to decide.

Dawdy suggests that the question that frames this discussion can be broken down into three components. I would read the question slightly differently and indeed more pedantically. What, I might ask, do we mean by ‘useful’ in the first place? Useful to whom? And I would also wonder what we might mean by ‘archaeology’. There are various ways in which we can approach this question and put forward answers. One very simple (if rather self-interested) way would be to admit that, for most readers of this journal but also many others in the associated field, obviously archaeology is useful: it provides employment for us and others, interest, careers, money, education, entertainment – and opportunities for interesting archaeological dialogues. Further, for many it does not appear to do any very obvious harm which would negate that usefulness, and may even offer some temporary protection to some small parts of our planet. Others, of course, especially the variously colonized or worse, will see archaeology, along with anthropology and its offshoots, as direct perpetrators of evil deeds such as grave robbing, and other forms of desecration. Or one might reasonably view archaeology in its most ubiquitous form – cultural resource management – as a willing collaborator with the dark forces of ever-expanding development and a voracious and environmentally destructive capitalism (Kintz 2001). But then, as Dawdy has also noted, archaeological endeavours may also enrich communities in various direct and indirect ways, from tourism to a heightened sense of place as well as the more ambivalent values of ‘identity’. We should, of course, neither expect nor want simple answers. But the point is surely clear: where archaeologies might fit among such a constellation of uses and abuses is of course highly contextual and dependent on one's position in time, and space, and sociocultural and political situation. The uses – the purposes – to which each archaeology might be put can be very differently glossed: useful to whom? When? And for what? I do not think one can reach any definitive, global or universal answers that way. And Dawdy and others have rehearsed warnings about archaeological misuse which I need not repeat.

Can one, then, at least ask what is meant by ‘archaeology’? Leaving any moral import aside, and without worrying where archaeology blurs into history, may I propose that it is the systematic investigation of the human past? If accepted, then that term ‘systematic investigation’ immediately suggests that large numbers of people – the public so often recently appealed to – are typically excluded from knowledgeable participation or indeed interest: not that sheer quantity of participants or indeed democratic validity need necessarily be a parameter of ‘usefulness’, though again one could ask ‘to whom?’ But it does perhaps help us temper easy assumptions of any general and benevolent value for the discipline. After all, for some, anti-archaeology – what archaeologists are disposed to call ‘looting’ – may be of positive benefit (Hollowell 2006). For many others, probably the vast majority of people, archaeology sensu stricto – discovering things about the past by digging, or looking at bits of stone and pot in a museum – is irrelevant and unnecessary, or may even be positively harmful, but certainly hardly ‘useful’, practically or otherwise. This of course goes for large numbers of people in the USA (Newport 2006; 2009) and elsewhere, including the UK (BBC 2006).Footnote ¹ Polls suggest that almost half of people prefer and indeed accept literalist readings of ancient texts or traditional stories in which the past is already (and often supposedly completely) known. One suspects the proportion would be even higher on a global basis. Such faith-based ‘knowledge’ broadly excludes rational argument about the nature of the past as it might look from an archaeological position. Although people commonly hold sometimes conflicting beliefs, any idea of aspiring towards different, or more realistic, or more inclusive, or constructed or contestable pasts through the medium of archaeology, is presumably ultimately meaningless to such believers. For a further large section of the population, archaeology qua archaeology is simply something that they do not come into contact with, have no interest in, and would not miss if it disappeared tomorrow except for increased repeats on television channels. One answer to the question therefore might be a very qualified ‘yes’, realizing that the usefulness of archaeology, if any, may well be mostly confined to a small well-educated elite, people looking and behaving very much like, well, us.

But others, notes Dawdy, propose that at least some archaeology offers the chance to critique the ‘historical conditions of inequalities in the present’ (p. 135). No one should doubt the sincerity of such practitioners, but archaeology is not necessarily the most effective way to do so, though it may be the most obvious and indeed accessible platform for those who are archaeologists in the first place, and especially those who are resident in academia. But sometimes these justifications tend to smack of special pleading: archaeogenetic study of indigenous peoples will help understand the source of their health problems better (and act as a continuing source of research funding . . .); environmental archaeology will show the long-term damage we are doing to the planet (which excuses our funded collaborations with those self-same developers . . .). This is not to dismiss the historical perspective, but I remain unpersuaded that such interventions demonstrate unequivocally the usefulness of archaeology. They tend to come from quite specific interest groups and be somewhat narrow in scope. Of course archaeology informs us and the public more generally if they wish, but it is a very roundabout way of ascertaining facts about the modern world and combatting its inequalities, and Dawdy's arguments about action being at least partly substituted by archaeologies of apology resonate with recent statements by historians, too. Margaret Macmillan (2009, 30) argues, ‘If we look back too much and tinker with history through apologies, the danger is that we do not pay enough attention to the difficult problems of the present’. Apologies for and about the past are also nuanced by disciplinary history. In Europe archaeologists feel tainted, or threatened, by the connection of the discipline with Kossinna and extremes of nationalism. In colonial contexts, and especially those where the colonizers are still dominant, such as the Americas and Australia, there is added guilt since the origins and relative prominence of ‘historical archaeology’ are so obviously associated with the production of recent settler history and a very particular take on a ‘national story’. Where does self-awareness become self-obsession? When does concern become apology? When does intellectual ambition become hubris or perhaps disciplinary delusion – the wish to be considered useful?

A decade ago I wrote,

Margaret Macmillan expresses her view of the value of history more succinctly: ‘If the study of history does nothing more than teach us humility, scepticism, and awareness of ourselves, then it has done something useful’ (Macmillan 2009, 169). That archaeology and history should work like that is a nice idea! But note that such ‘scepticism’ has to be of the proper kind. Arguments that there may be ‘another explanation’ but one which is different to that espoused by those who ‘claim to have uncovered the truth once and for all’ (Macmillan 2009, 170) simply will not wash with very large sections of the population who feel no need for evidence-based justifications, or rather believe that sacred texts or traditional stories provide all the evidence required. Polemics such as those quoted above, however, ask that others play by the same rules. They require, for a start, that those people, generally, will read such material, know their lines, have access to and similar evaluations of the same kinds of resources, and have similar motivations and desires to construct empirically sound and reasonably rigorously argued pasts. It assumes that for the parties involved, people's interests in outcomes and knowledge of the kinds of acceptable arguments will be broadly aligned in a rational, sociological, political and moral sense (LAW 1997). Given the large numbers of people who believe in irrational human histories, whether involving mythical origins, recent creationism (Creation Museum 2009) or the intervention of aliens in human affairs, that seems a big ask. Ask a community or a public what, if anything, they want archaeology to do, and you may well get an answer that it is difficult to live with as an archaeologist. Help with development for jobs! Support our territorial claim (Curta 2001)! Argue in court for our essential identity (Field 1999)! There is surely a coherent argument that can be made that if you really want to be useful, you would be better off setting any interest in history and archaeology on one side, and rather concentrating on present injustices and explicitly political actions aimed directly at emancipation and a better future. Dawdy argues for the second – but wishes to keep the first, the archaeology too, and I am not sure that the logic works.

One can, of course, do both the archaeology and the politics. If one is trained as an archaeologist – as a certain kind of intellectual – one might choose to use one's skills in an explicitly political way; say, to provide employment, tourist trails, economic benefits and possibilities, community involvement. But one should not confuse that with archaeology as an intellectual endeavour attempting to understand the past. The former is using archaeology as a tool – and no doubt a useful one in certain circumstances – but it could equally and perhaps more usefully be gardening, or building, or teaching small business skills, or starting up a credit union. The ‘usefulness’ does not reside in the archaeology, but in the way the archaeologist chooses to use it. It is also very clear that tourism (and here see Crick 1985), economic development and so forth are not unambiguous forces for good, and liberal bourgeois notions of what constitutes a ‘community’ and the values associated with it may look very different from the inside, or indeed from other and often more knowledgeable disciplines.

Supposing we turn the question on its head and ask ‘what difference would it make if there were no archaeology practised?’ Clearly, human societies can quite happily and successfully exist without it, and have done so for tens of thousands of years: archaeology is a methodology, a profession, a discipline, which can reasonably be argued only to have become possible as part of modernity (Thomas 2003). There are much broader philosophical questions which could be asked: is the sense of a past necessary for humans as a basis for an imagined or internalized trajectory, whether for personal identity or for social collectivities – that is, history. Archaeology could then be considered simply as a subset of, or a particular methodology for constructing, such histories (narratives) and perhaps justified as psychologically ‘useful’ in that way. Archaeology would then simply be the way in which the construction of ‘histories’ and narratives is facilitated at this particular juncture, but if history sensu lato is a necessary part of being human, then we could certainly deem archaeology ‘useful’. There are, though, plenty of other ways to construct histories, and again it is not clear that archaeology would have any particular claims or merits. Despite attempts by Dawdy to make archaeology useful in a different way, I remain unconvinced by her claims that archaeology can directly help us produce better ‘adaptations’ to contemporary and future environmental problems. Apart from my dislike of the terminology, I cannot see that it takes an archaeological project to inform us, for example, that extensive building on flood plains is likely to end in mishap. Such projects may well be interesting, but largely insofar as they help us explore the past, rather than deal with predicted futures. The citation of headlines from Archaeology magazine also seems a red herring: journalistic milieux, as is well known, have their own requirements (Gero and Root 1990), and attention-seeking should not necessarily be confused with a shift in the zeitgeist. Using the archaeological past to somehow predict the future, or draw lessons for it, is far too simple an answer for my liking, and quite possibly ends up in repetition rather than future-oriented action (cf. Davies 2006, 1–20). If we could really slot in data from the past and crank out ‘useful’ answers, then studying archaeology would not be nearly so interesting.

What, then, if anything, does archaeology do that is genuinely and uncontroversially useful? I think we are led to the conclusion that it is of undoubted intellectual value, but among a circle that is largely restricted to other archaeologists and those in related disciplines. For people with such interests (and they do not have to be professionals), archaeology arguably can help provide alternative perspectives in time and space. Intellectually, it can offer places to think from and to reflect about difference (as can ethnography, sociology and history), and which may help us individually reach a perhaps more balanced view of our situation and those of others. In that arcane and narrow sense, archaeology can be considered as useful or even a force for good within some forms of intellectual life, as could just about any other discipline that involves thinking. The political role of intellectuals has been long debated (Gramsci 1971; Mannheim 1956; for archaeology see Hamilakis 1999; Hamilakis and Duke 2007; Pluciennik 2001), and one would hope that the value of that is accepted in a positive sense by many in our discipline too. But we should not have to be defensive about intellectual or cultural endeavours more generally. I am not some kind of fundamentalist utilitarian in human affairs: I do not think that every activity we undertake should be demonstrably, directly and practically useful. The world would be both poorer and more painful if everything had to be justified by some spurious use-value – many of us are all too aware of what is ignored or devalued within so-called ‘audit economies’ (Shore and Wright 1999; Hamilakis 2007, 21–22). But let us be straightforward here: archaeology specifically is mostly useful for ‘us’. Any greater or more general claims are difficult to justify, and we would be all the intellectually stronger for the honest recognition of such limitations.