Degrowth and archaeological labour

Degrowth offers a complementary field of scholarship for some of the attempts at crafting a radical alternative to an archaeology being simultaneously strangled by austerity and steamrolled by runaway growth-oriented development. The comprehensive introductory volume on degrowth in English, which provides short essays covering the theoretical and practical aspects of the movement, is Degrowth. A vocabulary for a new era (D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis Reference D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015). The main thrust of the argument is that a growth-oriented capitalism cannot continue on its current path on a resource-limited planet (see also Barnosky et al. Reference Barnosky, Hadly, Bascompte, Berlow, Brown, Fortelius, Getz, Harte, Hastings, Marquet, Martinez, Mooers, Roopnarine, Vermeij, Williams, Gillespie, Kitzes, Marshall, Matzke, Mindell, Revilla and Smith2012; Frey Reference Frey2019; O’Neill et al. Reference O’Neill, Fanning, Lamb and Steinberger2018). To survive and thrive in the future, humanity needs to find a new way of thinking about economic behaviour in a way that promotes a reduction in scale, particularly in the wealthiest countries, while also considering the quality of life through a lens other than consumerism as encapsulated by concepts like GDP (O’Neill Reference O’Neill, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015).

Degrowth proposes to repoliticize environmental activism (Renou Reference Renou, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015; Swyngedouw Reference Swyngedouw, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015), providing a call to action to rebuild economies around renewed notions of commons (Helfrich and Bollier Reference Helfrich, Bollier, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015), care (D’Alise, Deriu and Demaria Reference D’Alisa, Deriu, Demaria, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015), happiness (Sekulova Reference Sekulova, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015) and conviviality (Deriu Reference Deriu, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015b). Importantly, degrowth seeks to move beyond the purely hypothetical or idealistic to think critically through the specific policies, praxis and theories that can be used to construct a better future via action in the present (e.g. Foster Reference Foster2017; Kallis Reference Kallis2013; Lorek and Fuchs Reference Lorek and Fuchs2013; Sorman and Gianpietro Reference Sorman and Giampietro2013). The goal here is not to completely summarize the degrowth movement and related debates in all of their complexity (for a recent synthesis, see Kallis Reference Kallis2018). Rather, I want to point to a few key tenets that might be interesting for reconceptualizing archaeology in both the long and short terms. Specifically, some of the degrowth concepts surrounding labour seem imminently applicable to archaeology as a field of practice.

One of the important concepts from degrowth is the idea that humans not only need to reduce consumption (though we need to do this too – Barnosky et al. Reference Barnosky, Hadly, Bascompte, Berlow, Brown, Fortelius, Getz, Harte, Hastings, Marquet, Martinez, Mooers, Roopnarine, Vermeij, Williams, Gillespie, Kitzes, Marshall, Matzke, Mindell, Revilla and Smith2012; O’Neill et al. Reference O’Neill, Fanning, Lamb and Steinberger2018). We also need to reconceptualize the way that we think of employment and the production of goods and services. A necessity of contemporary, growth-oriented economies is the proliferation of administrative and bureaucratic make-work jobs, and related support services (24-hour food preparation and delivery, privatized for-profit childcare and so on). Graeber (Reference Graeber2018) terms ‘bullshit jobs’ those careers that provide no discernible social good and no meaning for the people who have them. They are simply a way to earn an income but offer no real value for individuals or society.

Perhaps the alienation or cynicism many practising archaeologists feel results from the fact that deep interest in the past has largely been subsumed to bureaucratic process for much of the field (Zorzin Reference Zorzin, Gnecco and Lippert2015a, 128–130). Worse, current weekly working hours produce unsustainable levels of carbon dioxide, because of both the carbon outputs of labour activities and the consumption habits that drive people to work long hours. Arguments aimed to dismiss critiques of archaeology and capitalism on the basis that the profession offers merely a ‘solid, middle class salary’ (Hutchings and La Salle Reference Hutchings and La Salle2015, 702) ring somewhat hollow when viewed from this perspective. Reducing the length of the working week both is necessary to combat climate change and will increase employment levels as well as worker happiness (and not just for archaeologists – Frey Reference Frey2019).

Degrowth scholarship simultaneously recognizes that nonetheless people do need to have some form of work to provide meaning and structure for their lives. Mass unemployment is not a positive way forward for a shrinking economy. Ironically, one of the things the degrowth literature suggests is that a reduction in working hours related to the kinds of unnecessary jobs mentioned above might free people to pursue meaningful work in precisely the care and maintenance-type services oriented to communities and the environment that are currently undervalued and underemphasized in growth-focused economies (D’Alise, Deriu and Demaria Reference D’Alisa, Deriu, Demaria, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015; Helfrich and Bollier Reference Helfrich, Bollier, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015).

One recommendation to solve the issue of meaningful use of people’s time is some form of ‘jobs guarantee’ that seeks full employment while at the same time reducing the number of working hours per individual (Alcott Reference Alcott2013; Unti Reference Unti, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015). Laying aside the macroeconomic arguments here, one of the goals of a jobs guarantee and related concepts like a basic and maximum income (Alexander Reference Alexander, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015) or work sharing (Schor Reference Schor, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015) is to free people to pursue the kind of work they find interesting and fulfilling. It shifts an economy in which labour is conceptualized as drudgery and misery to one in which unpleasant but necessary work is shared more equitably, while interesting and enjoyable work is more prevalent and widely available (Nørgård Reference Nørgård2013).

Surely this would be a positive outcome for archaeology. Consider how many sincerely interested people don’t pursue a career in the field because they don’t see paid employment in it, or leave after a few years of feeling unappreciated and underpaid (see examples in Zorzin 2015a; Reference Zorzin2015b). A degrowth labour economy would give people the autonomy (Deriu Reference Deriu, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015a) to decide for themselves how much of their time, if not all of it, to use in the pursuit of meaning, through work or leisure. At the same time, archaeology could be decoupled from the development-oriented state bureaucracies that currently drive most professional work. We could lose the worst parts of the kind of work we do (the dull, procedural and administrative elements of archaeology), while keeping the best (the exciting, fascinating, collective pursuit of researching the human past).

This is in some sense a return to the roots of the discipline, when archaeology was generally a leisure pursuit for well-to-do amateurs (Trigger Reference Trigger1989, 35–109). Unlike the elitist past of much archaeological practice, a degrowth approach would seek to expand and diversify opportunities for participation, and not just as manual or menial labour. In the short term this would not necessarily mean giving up the professional status of the discipline or our places as ‘experts’, but it would necessitate an opening up of archaeological practice to embrace alternative forms of engagement with the discipline in ways that don’t necessarily fit capitalist norms of ‘work’. In the longer term, a degrowth approach to archaeology would emphasize the communal, convivial aspects of fieldwork and research for diverse groups of people in an economy that was actively deconstructing and redistributing the massive amounts of wealth accumulated at the top of the system.

Archaeology in a degrowth economy

To understand one of the ways that archaeology would function in a degrowth economy, I add the concept of dépense (Romano Reference Romano, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015), originally formulated by the French scholar Georges Bataille (Reference Bataille1976) in La part maudite (sections have been translated to English in Bataille Reference Bataille and Richardson1998, 61–85). Bataille argued that human societies dispersed surplus resources, which are inherent to life on Earth, through communal and individual sacrifices of various sorts. Dépense refers to those social activities that exist to utilize (‘spend’) the excess energy produced as a result of physiological limitations and human productivity. Assuming that society produces more than enough to survive at the most basic subsistence level, the energy above and beyond that level must be put to some purpose. Currently, this energy is largely returned to individualistic consumption and thus the production system itself, so it can feed cycles of economic growth (Victor Reference Victor, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015). In a degrowth economy, the goal of dépense would be to use the excess energy for activities that offer collective experiences and assist in the construction of social meaning.

What is archaeology, if not a dépense activity? At their best, archaeologists come together in a communal pursuit of information about the past, through surveys, excavations, studies of museum collections and so on. At their best, these pursuits are done without any interest in economic or monetary gain; rather the goal is to create knowledge, engage people to think about their identities, and pursue a sense of community or sense of place. These practices can be enjoyable because they offer a sense of conviviality, a coming together of people to share a meaningful experience. Archaeologists drawing on Ivan Illich (e.g. Reference Illich1975) have pointed to the ways that capitalism has interfered with society’s convivial tendencies both historically and within our own disciplinary practices (Caraher Reference Caraher2019; Given Reference Given2018).

In outlining what a degrowth archaeology might look like I’d also like to point to the potential importance of modern-world archaeology (e.g. Orser Reference Orser1996; Reference Orser2010) to the field. If the last 500 years or more produced the growth-oriented modern capitalism that has been so damaging to so many ecosystems and communities, we might need another 500 years or more to work towards a true degrowth of that system. Archaeology provides a means to understand the material and historical dynamics of the emergence of a global growth political economy, and perhaps some perspectives on how to escape the old order.

It is thus possible to imagine what archaeology might look like in a degrowth future:

• Archaeology is no longer mostly developer-driven, as a degrowth approach to the economy does away with destructive, consumptive, unsustainable development based on economic growth.

• Academic archaeology has moved on from the ‘publish-or-perish’ paradigm; instead universities provide a shared and accessible space for people to pursue research interests with an end goal of co-publishing or publicizing knowledge for society.

• Knowledge produced by archaeologists is no longer hidden from the public behind paywalls as profit-oriented commercial presses no longer dominate the publishing landscape.

• Archaeology is a project of communal labour and cooperative praxis; its practitioners come together out of shared interests and work towards common ends.

• Archaeological work takes place in an environment that fosters appropriate sharing of knowledge and care for its practitioners and for heritage.

• Archaeology is pursued as a convivial activity, bringing people together both to learn and to gain happiness through the pursuit of understanding the past. This includes difficult pasts that need confronting so communities can heal from past injustices such as colonialism.

• While expertise would still be needed and appreciated, the archaeological process would be democratized and consensus-oriented.Footnote ¹

• There might still be professional archaeologists, but they serve as mentors and facilitators rather than as bosses or bureaucratic managers.

• Archaeological work would be a form of dépense; that is, a way for people to engage in a joyful, meaningful pursuit as a use of surplus resources available to society.

Prospects for the present: can we get there?

There are many ways to imagine an ideal archaeology in a utopian future, but coming up with concrete strategies to arrive at such a future can be more difficult. Degrowth is a form of utopian thinking, but scholars have understood for a long time that utopianism is a necessary counterpoint to ideologies which aim to maintain the status quo (Mannheim Reference Mannheim1936). If a dramatic revolution, violent or otherwise, is unlikely, and probably undesirable,Footnote ² then degrowth provides a usable philosophy of everyday action that can complement some of the other radical proposals for the field of archaeology, and for society. If capitalism and the state are unlikely to go anywhere in the immediate future, degrowth can provide some ideas for how to act within the political economy that we do have, even if the end goal is the dissolution of that system (hence the notion above that it provides a kind of middle-range theory). The seeds of a degrowth-oriented archaeology are, in a sense, already planted in some fields of disciplinary practice. This being a relatively new concept, there is little archaeology explicitly engaged with degrowth, but some extant practices and tendencies could be built upon in the future. Above all, we need to find the ways in which archaeologists are able to resist the commercialization and bureaucratization of our discipline, then cultivate, strengthen and support those areas that might contribute to a degrowth future.

Much of what is described above overlaps to some degree with concepts of ‘public archaeology’ (Matthews, McDavid and Jeppson Reference Matthews, McDavid and Jeppson2011; Moshenka Reference Moshenska2017) and ‘community archaeology’ (Marshall Reference Marshall2002; Truscott Reference Truscott2016), including the building of communities within the discipline (Carman Reference Carman2018). Arguably in some cases the notion of collaboration with communities has been coopted for the purposes of a colonialist business-as-usual approach that treats community as another tick-box to clear the way for development (Carman Reference Carman2011; La Salle and Hutchings Reference La Salle, Hutchings, Labrador and Silberman2018). One way forward, particularly in settler colonial societies, is through situations in which indigenous people themselves take the lead in establishing the parameters for archaeological work (e.g. Acuto and Corimayo Reference Acuto and Corimayo2018; Gonzalez et al. Reference Gonzalez, Kretzler and Edwards2018; Kawelu and Pakele Reference Kawelu and Pakele2014). In other contexts, various groups of people should have access to the archaeological decision-making process, and where possible we should be seeking out the most marginal voices to contribute to the discipline. As Kallis (Reference Kallis2018, 121) describes, degrowth economies will involve collective, ‘unproductive expenditures … festivals and carnivals, an expansion of the humanities, Dionysian festivals or unprofessional Olympic games’. Many archaeologists will have fond memories of field schools, archaeology open days, lab work and even university seminars where we were able to pursue interesting research or discussions about the past, its meaning and its relevance for the present. Further, particularly in fieldwork, there are already elements of conviviality and in some cases a ‘festival’ atmosphere involving both the participants and public visitors exploring and celebrating a local past.Footnote ³

More broadly, the archaeological decision-making process has to be moved in some way out of the purview of both private developers and governments whose primary view of archaeological heritage is as a nuisance to be cleared away, or a ‘resource’ to be used to bolster nationalism or produce a profit, through tourism for example. In both cases archaeology is primarily transformed into information so that development can go ahead and economies can grow. In some cases, communities see economic growth as beneficial and archaeology as getting in the way of something they desire. While archaeologists need to respect community wishes, there is also a space for negotiation and debate about how to best deal with heritage. A degrowth perspective could provide the argument not only for a better treatment of heritage, but also for the need to transition to a degrowth society more broadly.

Outlining archaeology’s problematic relationship with capitalism is not the same as proposing to do away with the commercial heritage industry immediately. The immediate cessation of contract archaeology would in many cases mean that archaeology is simply destroyed by developers or governments who patently do not care, even in the face of public outcry (Ribeiro Reference Ribeiro2015). At least in the current state there is some bureaucratic recourse, even if it is imperfect. Contract archaeology can be one area of direct action and confrontation with development, but it only works well when archaeologists have the time to properly understand and act on local concerns, with relevant communities having the autonomy to decide how a project might move forward (see Colwell Reference Colwell2016 for an example of things gone ‘wrong’). Ideally, contract archaeology can leverage its position to help communities work with the archaeologists to be in a place to rebut or offer resistance to developers or governments as needed.

The notion that archaeological knowledge can be used in some simple way for ‘public education’ needs to be challenged, as many communities have different priorities and different ideas about knowledge, its uses and its values (Bezerra Reference Bezerra2015; Thompson Reference Thompson2011). A degrowth approach would suggest that rather than considering archaeological information as a commodity (in the form of videos, websites or pamphlets) to be ‘given’ to local communities, knowledge should be co-produced in an environment where community perspectives take precedence, and where the time can be taken to work together in a way that goes beyond the ‘tick-box’ of ‘consultation’. What this requires above all is time, and a commitment by archaeologists to accept a ‘slow’ approach to our research that allows for real relationships to emerge rather than rushing to produce the next outcome and then on to the next project (Caraher Reference Caraher2019; Cunningham and MacEachern Reference Cunningham and MacEachern2016).

One of the related issues at stake in the degrowth literature is the question of what is an acceptable level of development, particularly considering the massive disparities in global wealth. Surely some poorer communities (in the ‘Third World’, ‘global South’, or whatever euphemism is preferred) deserve to have a better standard of living than they do now. One point from the degrowth literature is that as the wealthiest countries scale back production and consumption, there should be some redistribution of resources so that human life everywhere has some level of comfort, and of course there are debates about what that level could or should be (Kallis, Demaria and D’Alisa Reference Kallis, Demaria, D’Alisa, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015, 5–6). For archaeology, we have to ask in many cases whether our pursuits are in fact compatible with local priorities. For example, there are tensions between the assumptions that indigenous people are interested in their archaeological heritage in the same ways that archaeologists are, and a lack of basic resources in those same communities (e.g. Thompson Reference Thompson2011).

At the same time, there is a space for capacity building aimed at better understandings and uses of heritage in parts of the world with fewer resources to contribute to such pursuits (for examples from the Pacific see, e. g., Bedford et al. Reference Bedford, Spriggs, Regenvanu, Yona, Taylor and Thieberger2011; Flexner and Spriggs Reference Flexner and Spriggs2015; Smith Reference Smith2007). This is one space where both commercial archaeologists and academic archaeologists have much to offer. While we have to be very careful of reproducing colonial or imperial inequalities (providing our expertise to the benighted masses), there is something to be said for working alongside under-resourced communities, including those in very wealthy countries (the many groups of Indigenous Australians, for example; see Greer Reference Greer2010), to create new understandings of local pasts, especially where local people shape or even lead the research agenda (though this still needs to be approached critically; Zorzin Reference Zorzin2015b, 794–797).

While not explicitly about degrowth per se, the pursuit of archaeology in Vanuatu, where I do much of my fieldwork, to some extent anticipates one possible model of a more convivial archaeology. Local indigenous communities formulate ideas for research, then with Vanuatu Cultural Centre fieldworkers as interpreters and guides, outside archaeologists are engaged to provide technical expertise and knowledge (see Bedford et al. Reference Bedford, Spriggs, Regenvanu, Yona, Taylor and Thieberger2011). Research is not disengaged from community relationships; rather it relies on a foundation of reciprocity between shared fieldwork activities, meals, stories and exchanges of contemporary valuables (Flexner Reference Flexner2019). Vanuatu Cultural Centre archaeologists have also been instrumental in the promotion of the discipline through local festivals oriented towards cultural renewal and sustainability, such as the annual ‘slow-food’ festival (Guiomar Reference Guiomar2016). It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it’s an example of how indigenous-led research and practice can take us towards a better future for the discipline (see also Gonzalez, Kretzler and Edwards Reference Gonzalez, Kretzler and Edwards2018).

Importantly, degrowth literature suggests that the goal of raising the level of wealth in poorer communities is not to free up resources so that ‘developing’ countries can follow the same path as wealthy countries did in the past. Rather, degrowth seeks to free up a space for many nations to explore a variety of other possible cultural frameworks for political economy (see Gudynas Reference Gudynas, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015; Ramose Reference Ramose, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015). For archaeology, this might mean ceding the traditional dominance of Europe and the anglophone settler colonies for the ways that archaeology is practised (Trigger Reference Trigger, Hodder and Preucel1996’s ‘imperialist’ mode). What this might look like is to be determined, but one promising direction is collaborative approaches to historical archaeology that aim to take indigenous historicities on their own terms, beyond the ‘pre-/post-contact’ divide (Flexner et al. Reference Flexner, Willie, Lorey, Alderson, Williams and Ieru2016; Lightfoot and Gonzalez Reference Lightfoot and Gonzalez2018; Schmidt and Pikirayi Reference Schmidt and Pikirayi2018). A large component of this transformation will require training more indigenous colleagues to take on a leading role in transitioning the discipline away from a Western capitalist economic productivity mode.

A final concept used in degrowth rhetoric that is relevant to archaeology is the notion of ‘post-normal science’ (D’Alisa and Kallis Reference D’Alisa, Kallis, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015; Funtowicz and Ravetz Reference Funtowicz and Ravetz1994). Post-normal science is a call for democratization of scientific knowledge and scientific processes. It is not a ‘post-truth’ reflection of everything-means-anything extreme relativism. But it does relinquish the monopoly of technologies of discovery, publication and knowledge creation from small groups of experts, valuing instead ‘dialogue, value commitment, plurality of legitimate perspectives, recognition of uncertainty’ (D’Alisa and Kallis Reference D’Alisa, Kallis, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015, 188, emphasis added). Post-normal science does not deny or eschew the value of scientific knowledge. It does, however, distribute recognition of authority and expertise, and embraces discussion and debate of reasonable ideas among a wider community of interested parties. Beyond the obvious and oft-repeated call for more open-access publication, broader availability of research data or better public outreach, I want to focus specifically on the ways in which a growth mentality has infected the academic publishing sphere.

In academic archaeology (and academia more broadly), scholars work in an environment that expects and rewards more and faster publication at every step in the research process. The resulting quantity-over-quality approach to publication results in a situation where scholars are offered less reward for careful thought versus productivity, and in which the stories we tell largely reflect and reinforce assumptions derived from the status quo (see discussion in Criado-Boado Reference Criado-Boado2016). Put simply, in post-normative science, storytelling matters. What might emerge if we offered ourselves the time and space to think more carefully about the stories we tell, and how they might speak to a variety of audiences? Could a ‘slow-science’ model (Cunningham and MacEachern Reference Cunningham and MacEachern2016), in which we took the time to not only gather data, but also discuss it widely with peers, colleagues, friends, villagers, locals, non-locals and so on, offer a way out?

For those of us lucky enough to find ourselves in academia, we can use our positions of influence to accommodate the varied pace of publication that comes from different levels of engagement with this possibility. We can avoid always recommending the job/promotion/grant for the person with the longest list of publications or the biggest ‘impact factor’ (or whatever metric is used) with an eye to improving the department’s position in international league tables. Perhaps we can instead start to think of valuing the work of scholars who might appear less productive in the orthodox sense expected from a capitalist model of commodity production, but appear so because of the time they’re taking to work with communities of people to produce archaeologies on their terms.

This goes for commercial archaeology as well. Communities that value archaeological heritage often don’t realize the potential ability they have to disrupt and shape the development process. For example, in Sydney in the 1970s, trade unions initiated a series of ‘green bans’, refusing to work because of a perceived lack of respect for working-class heritage by developers and the government in the Rocks neighbourhood, halting roughly AU$4 billion in development (Lydon Reference Lydon1993, 33). Archaeologists were then sought to document and interpret that heritage with both academic and public outcomes (e.g. Karskens Reference Karskens1994). This represents one of the early examples for Australia of successful collaboration between communities concerned about heritage under threat, and archaeologists interested in researching and conserving materials from the past.

What undermines collaborations such as these most often in the present is a growth attitude in which, like any business, many heritage consultancies are expected to do more each quarter, year and so on, at a faster pace and for the smallest cost to the ‘consumer’ (i.e. the developer or government agency funding the project). Archaeologists are well aware of this problem, and, at worst, feel there is nothing to be done about it (e.g. Zorzin Reference Zorzin, Gnecco and Lippert2015a, 123, 127). Rather than aiming to offer the lowest number to the developer, more of us could aim to take seriously things like community consultation, public engagement and long-term plans for research and interpretation. This includes everyone from the senior consultant writing the tender to the field technician deciding whether there is time for a detailed scale drawing or not. Ethical decisions of these kinds can be leveraged towards producing degrowth tendencies within our everyday practices.

We should be considering how archaeological practices and knowledge can bolster things like indigenous land values or sustainability. In some ways, this is already happening (e.g. Owen Reference Owen2015), and where it is, we should be working to reinforce this pattern. Rather than focusing on the notion of other archaeologists as competition, we should be banding together to face the very real threats derived from capitalism, as well as the state, to the heritage and the communities we care about. Perhaps one opportunity would be to gradually do away with private, for-profit contract-archaeology companies entirely, replacing them with worker-owned, community-based collectives or cooperatives (Johanisova et al. Reference Johanisova, Crabtree, Frankova, D’Alisa, Demaria and Kallis2015) of practitioners, enthusiasts and experts. This could maintain the professional standing of the discipline while moving away from a managerial and growth-oriented corporate structure. It might be possible for archaeology to become the first degrowth industry in this way.

Conclusion: archaeology and alternative futures

Archaeologists are notoriously hesitant when it comes to making predictions about the future. Our discipline is equipped to understand the past, but the same tools allow us to speculate at best when projected forwards in time. Imagining a degrowth future and archaeology’s place in it requires speculation, mixed with reading the (contemporary) past backwards (Mrozowski Reference Mrozowski2014), suggesting one possibility for a better future for the discipline. One reason for this exercise is to challenge the cynical tendency towards ‘capitalist realism’, the idea that the current system is the only one that does exist and can exist in the future (Fisher Reference Fisher2009). I do not agree that there is no alternative, and I think archaeology is a rich field for expanding our practices as well as beliefs regarding what is possible in this and future worlds. As Graeber (Reference Graeber2011, 19) notes, anthropologists, archaeologists and others avoid grand narratives at their peril, as doing so simply cedes the space to people who craft inadequate stories that are too easily harnessed to draw the wrong conclusions for the wrong reasons (see, e. g. critiques of Jared Diamond in McAnany and Yoffee Reference McAnany and Yoffee2009). Degrowth I propose as a grand narrative worth embracing in archaeology.

The key thing to remember when imagining a degrowth (or indeed any alternative) future for archaeology is that we have a choice. One of the interesting and positive things in many degrowth proposals is the extent to which participation is voluntary rather than required through legislation or other mechanisms. We can treat many of the challenges facing the field as opportunities we can address, and degrowth offers some of the possible tools to work on them. Archaeologists do not have the largest say in what happens to the global economy or international politics, but we absolutely control our collective actions within the discipline, the narratives we construct, the decisions we make about what sites are protected and conserved and the relationships our discipline maintains with various publics.

As archaeologists, we get to decide, collectively, what the discipline will look like in 10 years, 100 years, 1,000 years. The antiquarians of two centuries ago could not have imagined the shape of the discipline as it is today, and history is generally not deterministic in any simple way (Gould Reference Gould1989). Our decisions shape the heritage of the present and this provides some direction to the possibilities of the future (Borck Reference Borck2018). In the short term, actions towards a degrowth archaeology could include things like refusing to undercut and under-resource ourselves in the heritage-management sector, or trying to cultivate a friendlier culture of collective, cooperative praxis in academia. It could include lobbying for better resourcing overall to support archaeology, including at local and national levels.

But these should be seen as first steps, not end goals in themselves. As others have noted, our knowledge about the past does give archaeologists a special set of perspectives about the future (e.g. Kirch Reference Kirch1997; Mrozowski Reference Mrozowski2014). Archaeology may be seen by many as an unlikely source of contribution to movements like degrowth. While I haven’t explored it in detail here, the idea that our discipline can offer useful diachronic perspectives to movements rooted in the search for social and ecological justice surely has merit (e.g. Flexner and Gonzalez-Tennant Reference Flexner and Gonzalez-Tennant2018, 216–217). One of the most important places we can apply those perspectives in the present is in imagining where our own discipline is going. If we want a sustainable, just, convivial archaeology, we can start with the present, but we must also keep our eyes focused on fairer horizons.