Editorial.

Editorial. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What's happening in Southeast Asia? Everything! At the IPPA(1) congress at Hanoi more than 600 delegates in 107 sessions wereenlightened, amazed and hugely entertained in the city of a millionscooters. The mood was exhilarating--a feeling that the world was youngand yet to be explored. Speakers addressed the peopling of the Pacific,volcanic environments, the reconstruction of the Sahul landmass and theextraordinary discoveries on Flores (where Mike Morwood probes deeperevery year). Maybe it is the large number of islands that gives thispart of the planet its adventurous feel--the crossing of innumerablewaterways in slender craft laden with families, pigs and plants andtheir various genes. An old paradigm, the expansion of the Austronesianlanguage group, still steams the seas and steams up the seminar rooms,but a new one is replacing it. More complex (of course) and morediverse: peoples migrate and colonise and reflux, but forest people maylive parallel lives to coastal people, rice arrives--but doesn'talways stick. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Vietnam is the land of the Dong Song drum, hollow, bronze anddecorative and featuring in extraordinary burials where a person lieswith their head inside one. Vietnam has a historical archaeology like noother: the Ho Chi Minh tunnels and the crashed B52 bombers must rateamong the most sobering monuments of any victorious people. And it wasinteresting to learn that, although the country has a statearchaeological service and a socialist ethos, private museums areencouraged by the government as a way of preventing the haemorrhaging oflooted objects abroad. Farmers find they can get a better price fromcollectors than from the state, and so ..... The archaeological community of Southeast Asia is strikinglycomingled and sociable, often giving confident welcomes to scholars fromabroad. The strongest such contingents were from Australia, and nowChina, where the burgeoning of new work, new ideas and a new style ofprofessional expertise is a story of its own. As a first landfall youreditor went to Hong Kong, Chinas newly repatriated ex-British colony,there to visit Ray Ma in his stunning new museum, the vigorousArchaeology Society in its premises in the Kowloon Sculpture Garden andan archaeological company, Archaeological Assessments Ltd, operating offLamma island. I have a soft spot for Hong Kong having been a pupil inKowloon's KGV (King George V) grammar school at the time of thecoronation (Elizabeth II in case you were wondering), and recognisedcertain heritage items (like the Star Ferry) still in evidence among theclustered concrete towers. I felt not unlike a bit of heritage myself,learning that my dad's old camp at Fan Ling (he was a Ghurkacolonel) was now a scheduled monument. Archaeologically, Hong Kong sitson fossil beds of empire, and now has unmatched potential for hostingthe archaeological dialogue between east and west. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] And so to Adelaide for the [AAA.sup.2] meeting, where the mood wasjaunty among a community of professional archaeologists who are possiblythe most fun to be with anywhere. There are big new research projects,such as the one at Willandra Lakes directed by Nicola Stern, and big newCRM mitigations like the huge open-cast Rio Tinto mining sites. A newAustralian prehistory is emerging, which breaks the mould of a perceived30 000 years of conserved life-ways and reveals more diversity inculture, more responses to changing environments: in brief, anaboriginal past with a stronger narrative. The close involvement andoccasional dominance of aboriginal TOs (traditional owners) in the newprojects was also marked. The large CRM companies lead the field in manyways, but evaluation was sometimes less thorough than they would wish:at Pilbara not all the potentially occupied caves were given the samein-depth testing. Reacting from the audience, TO Maitland Parker of theMartidja Banyjima rightly insisted he wanted to see every rocksheltergiven equal scrutiny. Open-cast is fairly apocalyptic for a landscape,and suggests an expansion of the whole concept of predictive evaluation.The theme was Old Guard, New Guard, but the old guard, led by JohnMulvaney and Jack Golson, was self-evidently no less sprightly than thenew, and often more astute. [TAG.sup.3] in Durham (England) was my last port of call in anomadic autumn. Here the mood was maudlin: where were the theories ofyesteryear? Empiricism, processualism, structuralism, cognition,reflexivity--what's next? The snow fell and our spirits with it.Celebrity guest speaker Lyn Meskell had little time for these paradigmanxieties and the craving for 'positionality'. Folk might besnivelling in a blizzard in Durham (we were), but in California thingswere sun-drenched, vigorous and morally uplifting. It's true that each generation seems to yearn for itspanpharmacon, a prescription for everything, requiring no more thought.Religion has the same problem, and a lull in active philosophy usuallyresults in a reprise of some old creed in a new form--and this mayhappen to us. It never seems to occur to the proponents of eitherarchaeology or religion that inquiring is more meritorious thanbelieving--although much harder work. Inquiry is a solitary business,which is why it is good to relieve our solitude at a conference. Butheaven forfend we should do so by all thinking in the same way. If TAG had less theory, it had more delegates than ever. Of coursepeople do need to see their friends before the year's end, butthere was another yearning too: a need to know that it is allworthwhile--not so much a Theoretical Archaeology Group as anArchaeological Therapy Group. They can be reassured: the past of theworld has never been so interesting: we discover more and understandmore every year. And we do it by doing it. And if each year we meet toswap experiences, and say why we did what we did and what we think itmeans--well, that'll do for theory, even when icy winds blow. Commercial and academic sectors were well represented at TAG but acontrast between their agendas is still noticeable. The business ofarchaeological investigation in the field, which sets out to unearththings not seen before, does not seem in some eyes to carry as muchresearch kudos as a critique of theories, which essentially recycles thealready recycled. Interesting that many of the newest monographs fromthe commercial sector are notable for their cautious presentation of thefacts, and dispassionate commentary--i.e. their scholarship, while someof the outputs from the university are triumphs of complexity overcontent. Scholarship is an activity recently defined by the BritishResearch Assessment Exercise as 'the creation, development andmaintenance of the intellectual infrastructure of subjects anddisciplines, in forms such as dictionaries, scholarly editions,catalogues and contributions to major research databases.' (4)Apparently the gamekeepers of the current knowledge-ecology hope to drawa distinction between research, which discovers new stuff, andscholarship, which manages old stuff. One suspects the influence of abusiness model here (marketing vs. accounting). But surely scholarshipis the foundation on which all else stands: scholars are the seniorservice, the people who actually understand what is going on, who speakseldom, and publish only when they have something to say, who know whensomething really is new? One grieves for the difficulties of ministers of higher education;on the one hand they need their academics to be masters of a broad rangeof knowledge, able to offer a balanced view on, say, the origins ofagriculture, hedged about with ifs and buts, disclaimers and rejoinders,quotes and quiddities--scholarship in fact; on the other they need tosee them batting for the nation, scoring points and holding the highground in the celebrity battlefield, both armed and blinded byconviction. Briefly offered for sale at Christie's in early 2010 was acurious ballot-box in the form of a human skull with a hinged lid,together with two long bones, one inscribed with the name Thor. Theybelonged originally to Yale University's Skull and Bones society,founded in 1832 and said to be one of the oldest and most prestigioussecret societies in the United States. Members were called Bonesmen andincluded President Bush Snr and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. TheLot, which included a book of members, was expected to make between$10-20 000, but was withdrawn on 15 January, 'due to a titleclaim'. The withdrawal was perhaps not unconnected with the protests of theWorld Archaeological Congress: 'The Skull and Bones Society haslong been accused of having the remains of the celebrated Apache chief,Geronimo, and WAC is concerned about the cultural origin of the remainsbeing offered for sale, as well as the affront to human dignityresulting from the sale of human body parts. 'The Congress basedits objection on its Code of Ethics, which includes the VermillionAccord on Human Remains and the Tamaki Makau-rau Accord on the Displayof Human Remains and Sacred Objects. WAC president Dr Smith noted thatthe first principle of the Vermillion Accord declared 'Respect forthe mortal remains of the dead shall be accorded to all, irrespective oforigin, race, religion, nationality, custom and tradition, and shecommented "The buying and selling of human remains cannot beconsidered respectful treatment. ' While congratulating WAC on their successful stance, I for oneregret that such an amazing assemblage should never be displayed. Theskull must count among the most vocal and revealing objects in the lifeof a nation, and I would be sorry not to be able to see it again (5). It was our pleasure last year to greet Azania, ArchaeologicalResearch in Africa, but I should also have noted that AfricanArchaeological Review has gone quarterly, and under its new editor AdriaLa Violette and her advisory editors is helping African archaeology togo global. There will be special Review Essays and prizes for authorsand students. Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ghana all feature in the latest(September) issue. Browsing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for a book about Early MedievalStafford, I read: 'In this year (1124) King Henry ... ordered thatall the moneyers who were in England should be mutilated.... That wasbecause the man who had a pound could not get a pennyworth at a market.And Bishop Roger of Salisbury sent over all England and ordered them tocome to Winchester ... When they got there, they were taken one by oneand each deprived of the right hand and castrated. All this was donebefore Twelfth Night, and it was done very justly because they hadruined all the country with their great false dealing, which they allpaid for' (6). They did indeed; obviously we have become a bit morerelaxed about financiers losing our money since those tough times. Typescript gems: 'The doorway into the tomb was bridged by amassive lentil, 40cms across and nearly 2m long'. Martin Carver York, 1 March 2010 (1) The Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. (2) Australian Archaeological Association. (3) Theoretical Archaeology Group. (4) RAE 2008 The Results (http://www.rae.ac.uk/results/). (5) Christie's declined our request to reproduce an image ofthe Lot. (6) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E-text s.a. 1125.