Editorial.

Editorial. * Ireland, host nation for the sixth World Archaeological Congress The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization which promotes world archaeology.Established in 1986, WAC holds an international Congress every four years to promote the exchange of results from archaeological research; professional (July 2008) brilliantly showed the archaeological world what it is to bea host and a nation. Sixteen hundred and eighty delegates had a choiceof 1721 papers in 33 themes, and the organisers somehow pulled the trickof making this massive event friendly, flank and personal. Thepresentations stopped midweek when the whole conference had a chance tomeet Irish archaeology on its home turf. Nineteen coaches set off fromDublin in the morning to nine different destinations on five tours (anorganisational feat roughly equivalent to the Normandy Landings) andeach party found its way through sunshine and rain to its traditionalevening paradise in a feasting hall ringing with music. Our readers willhave been on a great many field trips in their time, but what made thesespecial was having the excavators and researchers on site--George Eoganat Knowth, Conor Newman and Muiris O'Sullivan at Tara, Chris Lynnat Navan, Aidan O'Sullivan at Corlea, to name but a few--tellingus, as friends and colleagues, what it was like then, what puzzled themstill, spilling the beans. At Tara we met a little band of protesters, with banners and tents,still hoping to halt the motorway now slowly chewing its way up theGobhra (Gower) Valley which runs along the east flank of the Hill ofTara Not to be confused with Tara Hill, County Wexford.The Hill of Tara (Irish Teamhair na R��, "Hill of the King"), located near the River Boyne, is a long, low limestone ridge that runs between Navan and Dunshaughlin in County Meath, Leinster, Ireland. . This motorway, that brushes so close to Ireland's iconicheart, has been the subject of nine years of evaluation andinvestigation, but continues to generate anger and frustration. Therewas no attempt at a cover-up at WAC WAC(Women's Army Corps), U.S. army organization created (1942) during World War II to enlist women as auxiliaries for noncombatant duty in the U.S. army. Before 1943 it was known as the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). Its first director was Oveta Culp Hobby. ; on the contrary, an afternoonsession devoted to the problem brought a dozen of the key players intocontention--proud locals, worthy contractors, dour officials and feistyidealists. A few harsh things were said, but I never expect to hear amore passionate, articulate or civilised exchange. At the ConcludingAssembly, protagonists attempted to gather support for the'indigenous' citizens of Country Meath, against the sinisterforces of motorway builders and their collusionist lackeys, thecommercial archaeologists. The exercise showed that life is not thatsimple: the most indigenous of the locals clearly wanted the motorway,and many of the commercial archaeologists, far from happy at being paidto dispose of To determine the fate of; to exercise the power of control over; to fix the condition, application, employment, etc. of; to direct or assign for a use.See also: Dispose the archaeology, recognised that the process isnonetheless the product of democratic legislation. Archaeologists are against the large scale destruction of theirevidence, but they are not against development, roads or prosperity.They even drive cars themselves. So what is to be done? First, theoristsand practitioners of all stripes need to get together quickly to decidewhat a 'historic landscape' is and to what extent it canreasonably be protected. Second, we must confront the uneasy fact thatthe significance of a place, and the archaeological response to it, areitems purchased by developers from consultants and contractors withoutpublic moderation, often even without the local archaeological society.Democracy requires that every major construction offer a detailed planto public scrutiny. But while every archaeological response these dayshas a project design, that project design too often remains privy to theconsultant, the planner and the developer. In my view archaeologicalproject designs, at least for projects of international stature, shouldbe published and be themselves subject to planning permission planning permissionNounformal permission granted by a local authority for the construction, alteration, or change of use of a buildingplanning permissionn → licencia de obras. This goesfor research projects too. Otherwise we cannot claim to have soughtconsensus with that wider group of interested parties around the worldfor whom the heritage has no national frontiers. One thing seems likely: advances in consensual archaeology willhappen first in Ireland. And UCD's Gabriel Cooney, who has alreadyled the convergence of academic and commercial archaeology there, andhas now brought us this stunning Congress, will surely be in thevanguard. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * No plans for a motorway yet, but the Robotic Arm A robotic arm is a robot manipulator, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement. of NASA'sPhoenix Lander dug two trenches on Mars called Dodo and Baby Bear on Sol14 (June 8, 2008), the 14th Martian day after landing. Excavated soil isdelivered to a sieve which then is shaken over the TEGA TEGA Thermal and Evolved Gas AnalyzerTEGA Technical, Energy, and Government Activities Committee (Ashrae Standing Committee)(Thermal andEvolved-Gas Analyzer) which heats up the fine particles and tells uswhat they are. There will be more exciting news to come, and I trust thefirst young archaeologists are already in training since they will soonbe needed to discover what became of the Martian civilisation. Thetrenches were not huge--90mm wide--but archaeologists will note that theindustry that has given them GPS and cling film may soon provide themwith the consultant's dream: sites sampled from your ownliving-room with the aid of a thumb-stick. * Matthew Johnson, Professor of Archaeology at Southampton, and ourTheory Correspondent, has been assessing the recent TheoreticalArchaeology Group conferences. He writes: "TAG came to York for thefirst time, in December 2007. The York team did an excellentorganisational job and should be congratulated. Their plenary sessionwas dedicated to the archaeology of slavery and featured guest speakersDoug Armstrong and Zoe Crossland from the USA (sponsored by Antiquity),as well as York's own Jim Walvin, the slavery historian. MartinCarver as Chair, rightly keen to demonstrate the importance of thearchaeology of recent periods to the discipline as a whole, repeatedlychallenged the audience to draw out the lessons of the historicalarchaeology for the understanding of slavery in earlier (i.e.prehistoric) periods. But for me there was a much more importantunspoken issue. To follow in the tradition of the great Eric Williams,this issue was the centrality of the institution of slavery to theorigins of the modern world--and thus its centrality to the socialcontext within which disciplines such as archaeology developed. To putit another way, slavery was part and parcel of the theatre of knowledgein which archaeology emerged in the eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies. The archaeology of slavery, then, should be a component ofany archaeological education not because it is directly applicable toprehistoric and Classical periods, but because it speaks of a conditionof knowledge and of society that we all address, howeverindirectly". Matthew went on to attend the "well-organised andexciting inaugural North American North Americannamed after North America.North American blastomycosissee North American blastomycosis.North American cattle ticksee boophilusannulatus. TAG, hosted by Columbia University inNew York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . The style and tone of NYC-TAG was in many waysreminiscent of the best early British TAGs, with a high proportion ofpapers by research students, many exploring themes from'left-field' and flying kites rather than polished theses.North American TAG goes to Stanford next year and Brown the year after,with others eager to bid for succeeding years". These events were highly successful; but how healthy is'archaeological theory' in general? "I heard a lot ofgood things at both the York and New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of TAGs" says Matthew,"and came away optimistic about the theoretical future of thediscipline. However, I have one lingering concern. York was heavilydominated by post-processual thinking, however defined, and NYC NYCabbr.New York CityNYCNew York City almostexclusively so. There is nothing wrong with this in itself--yourcorrespondent was raised in this tradition--but it would be easy to comeaway from both conferences believing that approaches informed by thiscritical legacy now hold sway over archaeological theory completely.This is clearly not the case: selectionist se��lec��tion��ist?adj. also se��lec��tion��alOf or relating to the view that evolution or genetic variation occurs chiefly as a result of natural selection.n.One who holds or favors a selectionist view. and processual approachescontinue to flourish, particularly in North America, and a verydifferent configuration of theoretical concerns pertains to much of thenon-English-speaking world. TAG, and archaeological theory generally,needs to guard against the danger of the situation in disciplines suchas literary studies where the word 'theory' is mistakenly seenas coterminous co��ter��mi��nous?adj.Variant of conterminous.Adj. 1. coterminous - being of equal extent or scope or durationcoextensive, conterminous with a particular set of approaches, which much of thediscipline ignores or opposes. For this correspondent, one of the mostimportant advances of the last generation was the recognition that weare all 'theorists' regardless of our avowed a��vow?tr.v. a��vowed, a��vow��ing, a��vows1. To acknowledge openly, boldly, and unashamedly; confess: avow guilt.See Synonyms at acknowledge.2. To state positively. position--thatno-one can do archaeology innocent of reflection on the aims andassumptions in any piece of work, however mundane. The solution restsnot with one 'school', but with all archaeologists. There is aresponsibility and set of mutual obligations--that different theoreticalschools engage critically and constructively with each other, ratherthan dismissing the 'other bunch' as 'wildpostmodernists' or 'positivist dinosaurs'. And also, ofcourse, that theorists engage (as many already do) with archaeologicalpractice, and that practitioners engage (as many already do) with thewider intellectual frame of our discipline. Indeed, the best papers atTAGs over the last ten years seem to me to have moved beyond sterile'debates', and are addressing substantive issues in atheoretically informed way that is not easily pigeon-holed. TAG goes toSouthampton in December, and many of these themes will be taken upthere". I am reminded of Shanks and Tilley's adage "archaeologyis critique or it is nothing" and my reflection at the time--if itbecomes only critique it really will be nothing. * This is probably an appropriate moment to welcome the new journalTime and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture.The first editorial reveals its mission: "to provide a forum formany disciplines and approaches [and] an interplay between explorationsof archaeology, consciousness and culture". Amongst theseapproaches they look forward to including the artistic and poetic.Excellent! "Should we not use our own senses," they ask"--our vision, hearing, smell and haptic haptic/hap��tic/ (hap��tik) tactile. hap��ticadj.Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.haptictactile. sensitivity--asinvestigative tools, just as we use more technical approaches?" Iimagine most excavators would agree with that, and for those thatdon't recognise the word, haptics is the science of studying dataobtained by means of touch, which sounds quite sexy. The first issuecontains papers on acoustics in Chaco Canyon and in Neolithic passagegraves, mind-altering plants of the Holy Land, shamanism shamanism/sha��man��ism/ (shah��-) (sha��mah-nizm?) a traditional system, occurring in tribal societies, in which certain individuals (shamans) are believed to be gifted with access to an invisible spiritual in southernCalifornia and an interview with the British landscape archaeologist,Peter Fowler. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Around 20 000 people attended the nostalgia-fest in London Who doyou think you are? The genealogy business is booming and about 75 percent had come for that, while another 20 per cent were there to exchangewar stories and an estimated 5 per cent attended the archaeology stalls.Reality TV personalities were on hand 'to make the event seemreal' and audiences were addressed with megaphones in open-air penssurrounded by surging crowds. An event perfect for those who like theirhistory The past as a pastime at Olympia, London. full of sound andfury. * It is odd that our esteemed founder O.G.S. Crawford has notpreviously found a biographer, but most gratifying that he has now foundsuch a good one (1). Kitty Hauser briskly relates Osbert'supbringing by a couple of aunts, his achievements in creatingarchaeological maps and aerial photography--and of course theestablishment of our own journal, with its unique style of reportage.However, those accustomed to adulate ad��u��late?tr.v. ad��u��lat��ed, ad��u��lat��ing, ad��u��latesTo praise or admire excessively; fawn on.[Back-formation from adulation. the quirky fieldworker with thebike are in for a shock. Delving into unpublished work, such as "ATour of Bolshevy" in the Sackler Library and the "Bloody OldBritain" of her title in the Bodleian, we meet a batty cosmologist,deluded Stalinist, Nazi tolerator and advocate of the great Goddess. HisBloody Old Britain, a mss released in 2000, is a 180-page rant designedto examine the anthropology of 1930s Britain in the manner of thecontemporary Mass Observation Project. O.G.S. gives observational statusto advertisement hoardings, the quality of food, the width of soupspoons, badly designed teapot lids, the modern 'capitalist'tumbler, the temperature of the bath water, the functions of the hotelporter and the price of fish. His biographer makes a noble attempt todiscover insights in this diatribe di��a��tribe?n.A bitter, abusive denunciation.[Latin diatriba, learned discourse, from Greek diatrib , but it shows through as just theprotracted moan of a lonely old man in a hotel. Things don't cheerup when he gets a letter from fellow curmudgeon cur��mudg��eon?n.An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.[Origin unknown.]cur��mudg Gordon Childe in 1943:"Let us turn our eyes from this disordered present to the past,where from our high ivory towers we may discern an order". Lawks,no wonder they were depressed. Ageing archaeologists beware; this iswhat happens when you abandon the glorious diversity of the humanexperience for the banal generalities of politics. Crawford clearly needed a good woman to knock some sense into him,and he has found one at last in Kitty Hauser. Vivacious, witty,knowledgeable and always good company--there can't be too muchwrong with a subject that attracts writers such as this. York, 1 September 2008 (1) Kitty Hauser Bloody Old Britain. OG. S. Crawford and thearchaeology of modern life (London: Granta Books, 2008). See also NewBook Chronicle