For a third time, Archaeological dialogues has organized a face-to-face dialogue at an international conference around a current and provocative question. At the annual meeting for the Society of American Archaeologists in Atlanta, USA, in April 2009, Archaeological dialogues invited a panel of leading scholars to participate in a discussion forum entitled ‘Is archaeology useful?’. The discussion sought to address a number of interrelated questions: how important is the criterion of ‘usefulness’ in establishing the value of our discipline? To whom do we need to justify ourselves? In what ways can or should archaeology be useful to society? Must archaeologists distinguish between critique and action, and balance knowledge production and public consumption of our work? Does it really matter what we do and for whom? Shannon Dawdy presented her thoughts in a keynote address which was followed by comments from Carol McDavid, Peggy Nelson, Mark Pluciennik, Jeremy Sabloff, Joe Watkins and Rita Wright. The keynote address, along with the comments that arose from the forum, are published in this issue as a discussion article. The written version of this dialogue also includes comments by Pedro Funari with Aline Vieira de Carvalho, Cornelius Holtorf and Ulrike Sommer, who were invited to share their views on the topic and broaden the scope of the debate.

This discussion article responds to a forum question posed by the editors of Archaeological dialogues: ‘is archaeology useful?’ My response initially moves backward from the question, considering whether archaeology ought to be useful, how it has been useful in the past, and the millennial overtones of the question in our present climate of crisis. I critique the primary way in which archaeology attempts to be useful, as a dowsing rod for heritage through ‘public archaeology’. While European archaeology has long been aware of the dangers of nationalism, in the Americas this danger is cloaked by a focus on indigenous and minority histories. I then move forward through the question and urge colleagues to embrace an archaeological agenda geared towards the future rather than the past. My hope is that transatlantic dialogue will be politically useful in reorienting archaeological research towards supranational problems such as climate change, hunger and population stress.

Shannon Dawdy has presented us with a provocative dialogue on the question ‘is archaeology useful?’ In it, she forecasts a rather bleak future for our field, raising doubts about whether archaeology should be useful and whether it is ‘threatened with its own end-time’. Woven throughout her paper are major concerns about the use of archaeology for nationalistic ends and heritage projects which she deems fulfil the needs of archaeologists rather than those of the public they serve. In the final section of her paper, when she asks, ‘can archaeology save the world?’, Dawdy recommends that we reorient our research ‘away from reconstructions of the past and towards problems of the present’ (p. 140). In my contribution to this dialogue, I introduce an issue that reflects on cultural heritage, antiquities and artefact preservation, which, though they may seem antithetical, are closely aligned with Dawdy's concerns. As a prehistorian with a focus on the third millennium B.C. in the Near East and South Asia, I consider these issues to be the ‘big stories’ that have emerged in the early years of this third millennium, and those that speak directly to the usefulness of archaeology. Of course, it is not the only thing we do, but it is ‘useful’.

Dawdy's keynote paper, rather than answering the question whether archaeology is useful, asks whether it should be useful. That is, she asks whether archaeology needs to be useful beyond archaeology for archaeology's sake. It is a valid question, because many people see archaeology as a non-essential option, of peripheral use if any. For others, archaeology's utility lies in its ability to provide the long-term view of human behaviour and humankind's reactions to situations of the past that, hopefully, we might use to help us deal with present and future events.

In this fin de siècle moment – or is it closer to a mood of Depression? – the Keynesian idea of expanded government spending is much in vogue. We have been here before. As Shannon Lee Dawdy notes, part of Roosevelt's New Deal in the USA was the famous Civilian Conservation Corps, who performed much archaeology and related work (Maher 2008; Paige 1985). It seems particularly appropriate, then, to repeat a famous quote of Keynes: after all, archaeology comes surprisingly close to that much-derided Keynesian remedy. It was in his General theory of employment, interest and money that he wrote, ‘“To dig holes in the ground,” paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services’ (Keynes 1936, 220). What is less often quoted, though, is the subsequent comment: ‘It is not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations’.

Is archaeology useful? Shannon Dawdy suggests that in the application of our knowledge to contemporary issues we find the utility in archaeological work. While I believe there are many ways archaeology is ‘useful’ beyond this application, I will pull that thread, illustrating the applications of archaeology to contemporary issues at the interface of society and environment. I then examine a few of Dawdy's concerns about the failings of archaeology.

First I will offer a view of public archaeology which differs from Dawdy's perspective. Then I will respond briefly to one of her specific questions. Finally, I will comment on her suggestion for a futurist archaeology.

I would like to focus my brief remarks on Shannon Dawdy's very important third question, ‘can archaeology save the world?’ But to show my biases up front, I would rephrase it to read, ‘how can archaeologists usefully contribute to public policy considerations on the future of this planet?’, or perhaps just modify her question to say, ‘how can archaeologists help save the world?’ As one looks at recent books such as Newman, Beatley and Boyer's Resilient cities. Responding to peak oil and climate change (2009), Richard Heinberg's The party's over. Oil, war and the fate of industrial societies (2005), or Howard and Elisabeth Odum's A prosperous way down (2001) or key articles such as ‘Ecology in times of scarcity’ by John Day et al. (2009) or ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’ by Mathis Wackernagel et al. (2002), it seems clear to me that archaeologists could readily amplify the important arguments mounted by these authors and play a useful role in helping planners confront looming global cultural–ecological issues. It is not that these writers are unaware of archaeology and its potential contributions – Heinberg (2005, 34–38), for example, looks quite favorably on the work of Joseph Tainter – but that archaeological research could be more thoroughly and productively utilized.

When I was asked to comment on Shannon Dawdy's position paper entitled ‘Millennial archaeology. Locating the discipline in the age of insecurity’ I must admit that I was, even with the give-away ‘millennium’ of the title, thinking of the current economic crisis, the ‘credit crunch’ as it is known in Britain. Shannon Dawdy seems to describe a much more specific American crisis – the realization that the United States are not somehow outside history, that they can be hit on their home ground and that their political and military hegemony is contested (and if you detect a certain European smugness there, you are probably right).

Professor Dawdy's keynote speech addresses some of the main challenges of the discipline in the 21st century. Archaeology should not be self-serving, and it can even become dangerous, a possible consequence of a quest for its usefulness. A possible solution would be to focus efforts on environmental archaeology. Looking for ancient sustainable agricultural practices, for example, in order to better inform contemporary human adaptations, would be a path to follow. According to Dawdy, this useful, futurist archaeology finds a public ready for such an endeavour.

I have much sympathy for Shannon Dawdy's eloquent argument in favour of reorienting archaeology ‘away from reconstructions of the past and towards problems of the present’ (p. 140). The topic is timely, her argument sharp, and the discussion of the issues at hand benefits from them being put on the spot in rather dramatic fashion. I do not agree with those who might argue that such calls for more social relevance in a humanities subject are merely the symptom of an unhelpful but prevalent insecurity and demonstrate a lack of confidence in one's own academic abilities. At the same time, Dawdy's passionate and courageous argument would have benefited from additional analysis of the subject matter at hand. As it stands, I have two main reservations to her paper.

I want to thank the commentators for their thoughtful and diverse responses. I was originally worried that my intentionally provocative sally was going to either scratch a bundle of raw nerves or go over like a wet firecracker. Instead, the replies were all over a very interesting global map (with perhaps a few reactions at either extreme). To quote Mark Pluciennik, one could say of the total array of responses that ‘where archaeologies might fit among such a constellation of uses and abuses is of course highly contextual and dependent on one's position in time, and space, and sociocultural and political situation’ (p. 153). I will not be so bold as to try to contextualize each author according to their national original, institutional setting or academic training and research interests, since I think the intelligent reader can see these glinting through the responses. Instead, I will take this opportunity to contextualize myself. Despite my calls for honesty in the paper, I have not been entirely honest about the genealogy and context of my opinions. In the course of my confessional, I will also enunciate those places where I am humbled by the knowledge and activities of the responders and, of course, where I think I have been misunderstood.

With the growing impact of postprocessual orientations, archaeologists have become increasingly aware that the production of values resides in all aspects of archaeological research. This awareness has also paved the way for a more encompassing concept of archaeological heritage, which of course not only includes the management of material traces but also the transmission of values through archaeological practice, method and theory. Many archaeologists and heritage managers now propagate the belief that reflecting on value production will better equip archaeology for ethical concerns or that it will improve its engagement with society, and that adopting anthropological perspectives and key notions may help to achieve this goal. This contribution explores the opposite proposition: that an anthropologically informed reflexive attitude is important to understand present-day heritage practices, but in most cases it is desirable for archaeologists to tell stories about the past, not about themselves, in order to be really engaged with public and ethical issues. Arguments for this proposition can be derived from the discipline's specific articulation of discovery, difference and time depth (including the ‘long term’), which traditionally shape archaeological research and narrative to a high degree, not only within academic discourse but also in a wider social setting.