I would like to focus my brief remarks on Shannon Dawdy's very important third question, ‘can archaeology save the world?’ But to show my biases up front, I would rephrase it to read, ‘how can archaeologists usefully contribute to public policy considerations on the future of this planet?’, or perhaps just modify her question to say, ‘how can archaeologists help save the world?’ As one looks at recent books such as Newman, Beatley and Boyer's Resilient cities. Responding to peak oil and climate change (2009), Richard Heinberg's The party's over. Oil, war and the fate of industrial societies (2005), or Howard and Elisabeth Odum's A prosperous way down (2001) or key articles such as ‘Ecology in times of scarcity’ by John Day et al. (2009) or ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’ by Mathis Wackernagel et al. (2002), it seems clear to me that archaeologists could readily amplify the important arguments mounted by these authors and play a useful role in helping planners confront looming global cultural–ecological issues. It is not that these writers are unaware of archaeology and its potential contributions – Heinberg (2005, 34–38), for example, looks quite favorably on the work of Joseph Tainter – but that archaeological research could be more thoroughly and productively utilized.
I strongly believe that archaeologists should be at the table in public policy planning on crucial issues such as how a sustainable environment can be maintained in the face of rampant urbanism. In a world that has seen the percentage of this globe's population living in cities change from approximately 2.5 percent in 1800 to about 10 percent in 1900 to more than 50 percent today and increasing rapidly (Ponting 1991, 295; Kotkin 2005, 147), as new million-plus cities are being created every year in China (Perkins 2005), and megalopolises around the world are expanding rapidly, archaeology has, I feel, useful information and perspectives to share in discussions about sustainably supporting such urbanism (Sabloff 2008, Chapter 5; Smith 2008).
As many writers and commentators have noted in recent years (also see Margaret Nelson's comment in this dialogue), too much attention in policy considerations – especially economic ones – is paid to the short term (and often the very short term) at the expense of the long term. In a cynical vein, one might ask that given the recent outcomes of policy planning that have resulted from a reliance on economists and perhaps political scientists, why have some archaeologists and anthropologists not been at the planning table? One might argue in fact that one of the major problems in economists’ contributions to public policy discussions is that economists seem to be generally unaware of archaeology and anthropology and usually ignore the cultural contexts of behaviour.
Thus I would argue that governmental planning, in particular, needs the long-term cultural perspectives that archaeology is uniquely positioned to offer. Some archaeologists are already moving in this direction. For example, among many others, I could cite Redman's Human impact on ancient environments (1999), Redman et al.'s The archaeology of global change (2004), Allen, Tainter and Hoekstra's Supply-side sustainability (2003), and the McIntosh, Tainter and McIntosh volume The way the wind blows (2000), as well as ‘Sustainability or collapse. What can we learn from integrating the history of humans and the rest of nature?’ by Costanza et al. (2007). Other scientists are also turning to archaeology in regard to policy discussion, as we can see, for instance, in Ruddiman's excellent Plows, plagues, and petroleum (2005).
More particularly, I could cite the research efforts of Van der Leeuw and colleagues in the global Integrated History and Future of People on Earth effort, which aims to inject archaeological understandings into current policy discussions on environmental sustainability. I was fortunate to participate in a recent conference at the School for Advanced Research on the extension of this effort to the Maya area, led by Vern Scarborough, in which archaeologists and environmental experts have begun to examine the long-term sustainability of cities in tropical rainforest environments.
Perhaps archaeologists could join forces in this regard with scholars in the relatively new field of sustainability science, especially in relation to scenario modelling of future trends in sustainability, which is a common form of such work. Archaeologists might be particularly helpful in examining various assumptions that are an essential aspect of these modelling efforts.
Does this mean that all archaeological research needs to be pointed in such directions? Clearly not. As Shannon Dawdy has pointed out, and as a number of archaeologists – myself included – have argued, archaeological research can be justified in many ways, from providing humanistic perspectives on the accomplishments of peoples of both the ancient and the recent past; to the preservation of humankind's diverse cultural heritage; to its relevance to key modern issues such as the nature of warfare, class differences and economic inequality, and nationalism. All I am suggesting is that more archaeologists should be willing to enter the realm of public policy on all levels – from the local to the regional to the national to the international (as was pointed out in the SAA discussion) – where their perspectives and expertise might be appropriate, and that long-term urban sustainability might be one such policy area.
This is a daunting charge and one that clearly is fraught with a number of potential political dangers. Yet I firmly believe that such risks will frequently be worth taking. As I have stated before, ‘Archaeology cannot solve the world's ills, but it often can provide useful perspectives and, on occasion, real solutions’ (Sabloff 2008, 28). Or, as Ronald Wright (2004, 56) has put it more eloquently, ‘Archaeology is perhaps the best tool we have for looking ahead, because it provides a deep reading of the direction and momentum of our course through time: what we are, what we have come from, and therefore where we are most likely to be going.’
To conclude, in response to the editors’ provocative question ‘is archaeology useful?’ my answer is: ‘could be!’
