Abstract
So we gotta get off our arses and stop just talking about it! Hear! Hear! I agree! It’s action that counts, not words, and we need action now! You’re right. We could sit around here all day, talking, passing resolutions, make clever speeches, it’s not gonna shift one Roman soldier! So let’s just stop gabbing on about it! It’s completely pointless and it’s getting us nowhere. I agree! This is a complete waste of time! They’ve arrested Brian! What? They’ve dragged him off! They’re gonna crucify him! Right! This calls for immediate discussion! (Monty Python, The Life of Brian, movie 1979). If you are haunted by anniversaries, the best thing is to ignore them! However, anniversaries as a periodical strategy of remembrance, sometimes of nostalgic feelings and mourning, may create an opportunity for applying new perspectives on both the past and the present, thereby creating new knowledge. We are more haunted, I believe, by all the inaugural or keynote speakers, keynote lectures and keynote articles, where well-established scholars, flattered by the request, seriously point towards the future, trying to predict trends and to draw the lines for future research by others. This is an overestimated academic genre. It is a genre concerning power over the discourse in the present and at least attempts to exercise this power in the future as well, most often in vain. However, and first of all, why in a multivocal world should we let anyone have a certain keynote status? Do they have a certain authority to lean back on? Or, as I would prefer, do they have good convincing examples to show? Secondly, are predictions about the future of any relevance to the community of teaching and research? Why not just wait and see what happens or clear your own path through the jungle of perspectives, methods and examples – free of authorities? Looking back on
Highlights
If you are haunted by anniversaries, the best thing is to ignore them! anniversaries as a periodical strategy of remembrance, sometimes of nostalgic feelings and mourning, may create an opportunity for applying new perspectives on both the past and the present, thereby creating new knowledge
In the beginning Bjørnar Olsen shows ironic distance and hesitation about the task given to him by Current Swedish Archaeology as a keynote writer on some anniversaries in theoretical archaeology, he swallows the assignment with commitment
It becomes a text of great interest for its reflections on theoretical archaeology, mainly in Scandinavia, with a more or less conscious bias towards Tromsø and the author himself
Summary
If you are haunted by anniversaries, the best thing is to ignore them! anniversaries as a periodical strategy of remembrance, sometimes of nostalgic feelings and mourning, may create an opportunity for applying new perspectives on both the past and the present, thereby creating new knowledge. Predictions in the present are defeated by the butterfly effect, by the unpredictable actions and events in years to come. It becomes a text of great interest for its reflections on theoretical archaeology, mainly in Scandinavia, with a more or less conscious bias towards Tromsø and the author himself.
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