World Archaeological Congress Research Articles

World Archaeological Congress 10: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, 22nd to the 28th of June 2025

World Archaeological Congress 10: Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, 22nd to the 28th of June 2025

A conversation with Koji Mizoguchi. On globalization, Japanese archaeology and archaeological theory today

AbstractOn the occasion of a short research trip to Japan, I had the opportunity to sit down with Professor Koji Mizoguchi in Kyushu University, Fukuoka, to discuss several topics, which you will find transcribed below. I was curious as to his thoughts that he – as the President of the World Archaeological Congress, a non-governmental and non-profit organization that promotes the exchange of archaeological results, training at a global scale and the empowerment of Indigenous and minority groups, a Professor of Social Archaeology, and one of the few archaeologists writing archaeological theory in the far East – had on the state of the art of archaeology today. Furthermore, since I grew up in Europe but nevertheless feel a deep connection with my own Asian ancestry, I was very interested in Mizoguchi’s own experience and contributions to archaeology in Japan and the world.

Announcement and News from the World Archaeological Congress on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Announcement and News from the World Archaeological Congress on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Transcript of WAC 8 Digital Bioarchaeological Ethics Panel Discussion, 29 August 2016 and Resolution on Ethical Use of Digital Bioarchaeological Data

This is the transcript of the panel discussion held at the close of the WAC 8 Digital Bioarchaeological Ethics Panel. Given the rapid pace of emerging technology that allows for the creation of digital bioarchaeological data, including representations of 3d shapes, the panel was convened to discuss common issues and dilemmas that arise from the introduction of new ways of creating, visualizing, storing, and disseminating data derived from human remains. The discussants represent expertise in bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology/archaeology, and palaeoanthropology and have experience in different sectors covering museums, collections management, medical, legal, bioarchaeological and anthropological research. The discussion covers the advantages of creating ‘virtual’ bodies using digital bioarchaeological data, and also the many potential hurdles in creating, using, and sharing this data. Finally, the text of the resolution submitted by the panel to the World Archaeological Congress and adopted at the 8th Annual Meeting is reproduced in full.

Letting skeletons out of the closet: the ethics of displaying ancient Mexican human remains

In the wake of Native North American activism and moves to decolonize archaeology, some academics have begun to avoid displaying human remains. Though recent World Archaeological Congress accords detail a consent process for ethical display, some journals, museums, and individual scholars have blanket policies covering even those remains whose descendants favour display. This article examines one context affected by these policies: the central Mexican town of Xaltocan. Here, Indigenous residents advocate for archaeological study and exhibition of ancient human remains, yet they have been criticised and censored by North American audiences. We consider two factors behind their desire to display the dead as part of efforts to reclaim Indigenous identities: long-standing Mesoamerican relationships with the dead and the materiality and symbolic capital of bones. We argue that an academic reluctance to display any human remains is problematic – even if it is a well-intentioned acknowledgement of respect for their sensitive nature – because it imposes the wishes of one Indigenous group on another, and may thereby lead to the unwitting perpetuation of colonial practice. We suggest that decolonizing archaeology may sometimes necessitate allowing the exhibition of skeletal remains; ethnographic research in individual communities is needed to ensure respect for descendant perspectives.

第８回世界考古学会議に参加して

第８回世界考古学会議に参加して

Contract Archaeology in South Africa: Traveling Theory, Local Memory and Global Designs

This paper examines the historical development of contract archaeology in South Africa, placing it in a trajectory of local archaeological thought and practice. In doing so, it sets out to do three things. The first is to consider how metropolitan theory “travels,” takes root, and has particular, local effects as part of a disciplinary ordering of knowledge and practice. In South Africa, the advent of contract archaeology around the time of the 1994 elections was ironic in the sense that it foreclosed on the notion of a “people’s archaeology,” replacing it with forms of corporate accountability and models of business best practice. The second broad aim is to think about what is at stake in the politics of memory after apartheid, and the effects of contract archaeology in mediating and mitigating popular struggles around rights, resources and representation. I argue that, in many cases, the function of contract archaeology is to discipline and school such struggles, diverting them along approved tracks and bureaucratic channels. The third is to think about how contract archaeology functions as part of global coloniality, as an instigator and enabler of global designs. I briefly discuss the case of the World Archaeological Congress and Rio Tinto, as an example of the co-opting of a global organization and of a language of engagement. My argument throughout is that contract archaeology recapitulates the essential coloniality of disciplinary archaeology, presenting it with a new face and a contemporary disguise appropriate to global, postcolonial times.

Global Divides and Cultural Diversity: Challenges for the World Archaeological Congress

The major challenge of our generation is breaking down global divides, especially as these relate to inequities of wealth, power, and access to knowledge. Related to this is the impact of globalization on cultural diversity. Using the example of the World Archaeological Congress as a case study, this paper explores how scholarly organizations can impact upon, and be impacted by, these divides. This study identifies measures that narrow the gap between richer and poorer and which enhance global diversity, as well as measures that act in a converse direction. Finally, this paper identifies challenges for the future of archaeology that arise from this discussion.

A future of archaeology

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FUTURESAs archaeologists we look to the past, but where might archaeology be going in the future? In this issue ofAntiquitywe begin a new feature where we invite archaeologists from different parts of the world to consider how the subject may or should develop in the coming years. For the first of these, Koji Mizoguchi, President of the World Archaeological Congress and Professor at Kyushu University in Japan, offers a perspective on the regional traditions of archaeology within an increasingly globalised world.

Faces of Archaeology: A Photographic Portrait Study from the Seventh World Archaeological Congress

During the Seventh World Archaeological Congress (WAC-7), convened in Jordan in January of 2013, the Faces of Archaeology project captured over 100 portraits of the attendees. This project was formed to document the diverse population of archaeologists and other heritage workers from around the world and to explore and make visible more intangible questions of identity and representation in archaeology. The portraits were subsequently displayed online and at the Theoretical Archaeology Group Meetings in the USA and Turkey. This combined article and photo essay presents a selection of these photos, discusses unexpected outcomes of the project, and provides thoughts on diversity and representation in world heritage.

Review of Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the 21st Century

themes prevalent in recent archaeological discourse concerning, as is evident in the title, interactions between human beings and the natural environment. The chapters within, drawn predominantly from a session held at the 2008 World Archaeological Congress in Dublin, promote multidisciplinary approaches to environmental questions, and frame much of the discussion within topical debates on how humanity might respond to future climatic change. Though both editors are focused in their own work on eastern Africa, this volume presents, if not a truly global perspective – the majority of the chapters are concerned with either Africa or the Americas – a discussion that draws together philosophically and geographically disparate examples to make a largely coherent central argument; that archaeology can offer a positive contribution within the wider environmental and development research communities. Section one reviews how ideas of what constitutes an environment have developed in European and North American (Davies, Chapter 1) and Soviet (Smyntyna, Chapter 2) archaeology. While I felt Davies’ chapter provides a useful background to recurring concepts and themes, there is no obvious Soviet influence evident in any of the later chapters. Though perhaps of interest as a stand-alone piece in its explanation of how considerations of environment during and following the Soviet Union reflected changing emphases in society and government, in the context of this volume the paper seemed slightly redundant. Section two examines distinctions between nature and culture, questioning notions of what constitutes a “pristine” environment. Balee (Chapter 3) argues eloquently that the Amazon forest is a manifestation of longterm human manipulation recognisable via observable signatures, equating the rainforest environment with an archaeological record, “environment as artefact”. A key tenet of Balee’s chapter, and, indeed, throughout the volume (e.g. Kost, Chapter 7; Anderson et al, Chapter 15), is that human-instigated environmental change should not be considered a priori as negative, an argument persuasively and steadfastly expounded by proponents of historical ecology (among whom Balee Boles, O 2014 Review of Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the 21st Century. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 24(1): 3, pp. 1-3, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/pia.452

Archaeology of Spiritualities

Academic anthologies devoted to the archaeology of religion, ritual, and the sacred are nothing new. Since the 1991 publication of Sacred and Profane, we have seen such volumes as Archaeology and World Religion (2001), The Archaeology of Ritual (2007), and Cult in Context (2007) shine light on the various ways in which archaeologists can interpret the cosmological world views and ritual praxes of past societies. Archaeology of Spiritualities represents the latest foray into this fascinating topic, edited by three scholars with differing expertise; Rountree is a social anthropologist at New Zealand’s Massey University, while Christine Morris is a classical archaeologist at Ireland’s Trinity College, Dublin, and Alan A.D. Pearfield is a Minoan archaeologist at University College Dublin (UCD). Published in Springer’s “One World Archaeology” series, the book has its origins in a session of the Sixth World Archaeological Congress (WAC), held at UCD in 2008, which was organised by the trio alongside the University of Tanna’s Tõnno Junuks.

Wobst and World Archaeology

I have a clear memory of Martin Wobst during the Congress dinner at the Fifth World Archaeological Congress (WAC-5) in Cape Town, South Africa. Hundreds of people were dining in an enormous, palatial tent, entertained by fascinating dancers and enchanting musicians. During the dinner, an old Aboriginal man, Peter Manabaru, needed to leave. Though the entertainment was at its height, Martin immediately abandoned the dinner to escort Peter through the darkened tent. I have a strong visual memory of the two of them holding hands, picking their way through the dimly-lit tables—two very senior men from two very different intellectual traditions, joined by friendship, respect and the pleasure of each other’s company. Prior to the Congress, Martin and I had spent a couple of weeks with Sven Ouzman, Bob Paynter and 16 Australian Aboriginal people, visiting rock art sites in South Africa. We stayed in budget accommodation or camped out on the farms of Sven’s friends. The sunsets were stunning and the trees on the horizon scribbly. Every night we dined together or sat around a fire. Often, Martin and the two senior Aboriginal men, Peter Manabaru and Jimmy Wesan, would sit up late, chatting together. The murmur of their voices was comforting. Over this period these three senior men became more than friends. They became family, with the life-long ties that family entail. Martin was given the ‘skin’ name Balang (I call him uncle), in a process by which gossamer threads blended him into the kinship system of Ngalkbon people from central Arnhem Land, Australia. I suspect that these interactions had a profound influence on him. Martin has a strong sense of social justice and a great desire to turn destructive hierarchies on their head. I think with the old men he found a hierarchy based on knowledge and good sense and occasional humour. Travelling in post-apartheid South Africa as a multi-racial group of black, brown and white people, we had experiences that illuminated what it is like to discriminated against, and also the joy that comes when you are freed from discrimination. Total strangers would come up to us in the street and shake our hands, or point to us and laugh to each other. These were mostly black people, but sometimes white or coloured. On the other hand, some white people seriously disapproved of our ethically diverse group and would try and make life difficult for us. At one motel, the owner singled out Peter and Jimmy for making too much noise with their radio, even C O M M E N T A R Y

The Heritage Policy Group: Policy Development and Community Engagement at the UCL Institute of Archaeology

The Institute of Archaeology has a long history of involvement in policy and community engagement, dating back to the work of the Institute’s founding director, Mortimer Wheeler, and continuing since that time through the work of all subsequent directors and numerous staff and students. One needs only to consider the key role of W.F. Grimes in the rescue of much important archaeology in the City of London during the 1950s and 1960s for example, or of Peter Ucko’s political work surrounding the World Archaeological Congress in the 1980s and 1990s, to appreciate the consistent commitment to a sense of wider social responsibility that its directors have brought to the Institute. This includes engagement with a diverse crosssection of communities both far and wide from the physical location of the Institute and, in a broader sense, an ongoing role by the Institute in influencing and informing political policy-making in partnership with other London based organisations, such as the Society of Antiquaries of London and the British Academy. In mid-2011, as part of the planning for the Institute’s 75th anniversary celebrations, reported on elsewhere in this volume (pp. xx–x), this commitment to engage in and influence policy and community work was formalised through the creation of an Institute sub-committee, the Heritage Policy

Knowledge Exchange, Public Affairs

Abstract:KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE“Approaches to Material of the Past in Jordan: Highlighting the Seventh World Archaeological Congress” by Shatha Abu‐Khafajah, Elizabeth Konwest and Dru McGillPUBLIC AFFAIRSETHICAL CURRENTS |“Waste's Messy Challenge to Anthropology: Waste Water in Cairo's Ezbet Khairallah” by Tessa FarmerMorag M Kersel is contributing editor of“Ethical Currents,”the AAA Committee for Ethics column in Anthropology News.RESEARCH ON POLICY |“Reframing ‘Racial Profiling’” by Luis FB PlascenciaVasiliki Neofotistos and Anette Nyqvist are contributing editors of Research on Policy, the AN column of the AAA Interest Group for the Anthropology of Public Policy (IGAPP).VIEWS ON POLICY |“Anthropologists‐in‐the‐Making: Finding Our Way to an Anthropological Filter” by Marie SchaeferPam Puntenney is contributing editor of Views on Policy, the AAA Interest Group for the Anthropology of Public Policy column in Anthropology News.HUMAN RIGHTS FORUM |“When Ethics Meet Human Rights” by Gretchen SchafftMiriam Ticktin is contributing editor of “Human Rights Forum,” the AAA Committee for Human Rights column in Anthropology News.Keywords:Archaeology, waste, race, policy, human right

Conference Review: WAC-7

The seventh World Archaeological Congress (WAC-7) (Fig. 1) was held at the Dead Sea, Jordan, from 13–18 January 2013 and was in trouble before it even started. The interplay between politics, archa...

Human rights and cultural property protection in times of conflict

This article considers the relationship between the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict, as defined in International Humanitarian Law, and human rights. It contextualises this by acknowledging the social role of archaeology as developed by the World Archaeological Congress. The article uses the author’s personal experience of working with the UK Ministry of Defence to attempt to protect cultural property in Iraq to illustrate the failure of the military, and its political masters, to understand the importance of cultural property and argues that there needs to be a closer relationship between the military and cultural heritage experts if the human rights of those caught up in conflict are to be ensured.

Scholarly Publication and WAC: The Need for a Critical Response

This paper is a response to recent critiques of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC), including its Global Libraries Program. WAC should take greater leadership in addressing the current unequal state of international scholarly publication. Scholars from the global south disproportionately have more difficulty obtaining published works and fewer venues to publish their own research. This paper calls WAC to encourage and support local and non-English publications, open access works and journals, commons-based licensing, and e-repositories.

WAC Matters: A Different View to that of Shepherd and Haber

This paper is a response to Shepherd and Haber’s (Public Archaeol 10(2):96–115, 2011) critiques to World Archaeological Congress, from the viewpoint of the current Secretary of WAC. While most of the issues discussed have been already answered and corrected by Smith (Public Archaeol 10(4):223–234, 2011), this paper adds my own views on two of these controversial issues: the meeting between WAC and Rio Tinto Limited in 2007 to explore options to work together on enhancing cultural heritage management and protection in mining activities (where I attended as the WAC Treasurer), and the Archaeologists Without Borders Program (as member of the committee for this program).

“Terms of Engagement,” A WAC Drama in Multiple Acts and Scenes: Acts Three Through Five and a Call for Public Discussion

After plans for a potential partnership with Rio Tinto fell apart, the World Archaeological Congress applied for funds from the transnational mining corporation for the purpose of developing a policy on external engagement. This cautionary tale recounts the work that took place in 2007–2008 as part of this project, some of the discussions that ensued, and a turn of events that delayed the ongoing process. In this paper the draft “Principles to Guide External Engagement” and “Outline of a Process for Engagement” (Appendices) are presented in the context of their formation, with an open call for further comment and discussion.