Session: #439

Regular session

To create a more sustainable archaeology, we need the capacity to imagine how things can be different. During the last 10 years, there has been a momentum to the critique of the neoliberal structures determining and framing the professional lives of archaeologists in Europe and elsewhere. In these structures, ceaseless growth through fast science is propagated, perhaps at expanse of slower and more careful engagements. This critique has highlighted the unsustainability of our practices and the structures we operate in. However, arguably, archaeology has not always had the creative and imaginary capacity to imagine how things can be different and what opportunities there may be now to make positive change. Therefore, we would like to focus our session on possible ways to move forward from the critique towards actions in the present aiming for a more sustainable archaeology.

Our central concern is imagining what sustainable forms of research are possible in the future, how this research could look like and operate, and what actions we can take to move in those directions. Given how our societies are developing historically, we should think about the obstacles and how to overcome them in order to sustain archaeology as a practice.

The session aims to broaden the horizon of what may be possible, rather than determining one desirable outcome. The diversification of possibilities and opportunities is a goal. Furthermore, the ideas presented in the session can be built around ongoing research projects and environments, but it can also be built around ideas that are neither funded nor finalized yet. This is a session where imaginary, creative and novel ideas are valued, but these ideas can very well still be in-the-making.

future, sustainability, neoliberalism, slow science, possibilities

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Gustav Wollentz (Sweden) ^1,2

Artur Ribeiro (Germany) ³