Going local? The World Archaeological Congress and effective action

It is time to take stock of the World Archaeological Congress as an organization – to take a critical look at its organizational structure and to ask whether this way of doing things still serves to further WAC’s primary goals. In offering this personal perspective, I hope to start a wider discussion that will lead to some concrete proposals that can be considered by WAC’s Council when in next meets in Washington in 2003. The starting point for this discussion needs to be a re-affirmation of WAC’s founding purpose. This is set out clearly in Article 2.2 of the Statutes: “WAC is based on the explicit recognition of the historical and social role, and the political context, of archaeological enquiry, of archaeological organisations, and of archaeological interpretation”. From this follow two “distinctive aims” for the organization: “to discuss themes which truly reflect the interest of its worldwide membership”, and “to make explicit the relevance of its studies to the wider community”. In pursuit of these “distinctive aims”, WAC is defined as broad in both intellectual and geographical scope, and is “concerned with all aspects of archaeological theory and practice. Its main emphasis is on academic issues and questions that benefit from a widely oriented and comparative approach. It attempts to bridge the disciplinary divisions of the past into chronological periods (such as prehistoric or protohistoric or historic archaeology), and to avoid exclusive, particularistic regional concerns” (Statutes, Article 2.1). Appropriately, membership is not restricted to professionally qualified archaeologists (although only those in archaeological employment, or in a related discipline, are eligible for election to WAC’s Executive). Article 4.1 specifies that “institutions or individuals with a genuine interest in, or concern for, the past who support the principles set out in Article 2 hereof may become Members of WAC by completion of an application form and the payment of the appropriate subscription”.