1 FUNARI, P.P.A.; Podgorny, I. Is archaeology only ideologically biased rhetoric?, Congress Review. European Journal of Archaeology , 1,3, 416-424, 1998. IS ARCHAEOLOGY ONLY IDEOLOGICALLY BIASED RHETORIC? 1 Pedro Paulo A Funari [1] And Irina Podgorny[2] The first meeting of WAC after its third world conference in New Delhi in December 1994, took place in early May this year, having as its theme the destruction and conservation of cultural property. The recent WAC inter congress was hosted by the Croatian Archaeological Society in Supetar, on the beautiful island of Brac in the Croatian Adriatic Sea. If WAC itself can already refer to its own history (Ucko 1987, Thomas 1998), the islands of Dalmacia have their history of hosting conferences, even in former Yugoslavian times. It is of no little significance that these peaceful pieces of earth surrounded by crystalline sea seemed to be far away from the conflicts of remote continents. As one Chilean-Croat told us during our stay on the island: "for Brac the war just meant the sound of the bombs across the sea and the mountains, and the images on the TV...". This sort of isolation of the world was perhaps, not so many years ago, one of the reasons for choosing Korcula as the place where the Yugoslavian Praxis philosophers held their Summer School. By the 1960s and 1970s, the role of philosophy and the relationship between philosophy and science in both the bourgeois and socialist world was on the agenda of this group. In the 'Praxis' debates, Habermas (1974) called into question the relationship between science, technique, philosophy and ideology and/or the forces of production ("ist die Philosophie eher Produktivkraft oder falsches Bewusstsein?"). Twenty five years later the islands had the opportunity to revisit this question. In those years the concept of "non-aligned" states still made political sense and Yugoslavia was one of the leading countries in promoting this separate path. WAC is linked with this tradition not only because of the geographical location of the meeting, but -more deeply- for organising a forum to explore the common basis on which intellectual practice could be examined and judged. WAC supported the idea of an intellectual world not dominated by the East-West opposition but open to the voices of women, and the post-colonial and Fourth- Worlds. The first years of WAC belonged to the historical context of non-alignment but, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 collapse of the post-war framework, such international agendas had to look for another basis for legitimacy. One of the main questions, however, survives and can be posed in terms of the kind of judgement archaeologists are looking for: A professional one? A political one, based on post-Berlin Wall political correctness? an ethical one? A politically engaged one? A socially engaged one? If these two last are the case, engaged with what? Or are we looking for ways to cope with the problem of the (dis)unity of science? In Brac, however, we went straight to the fact inherited from WAC-3 which WAC wanted to evaluate: the demolition of the Babri Masjid Mosque in Ayodhya and archaeologists' responsibility when confronted with this kind of situation. No less meaningful was the issue of WAC´s responsibility in banning debate on the issue during its Third Congress, which had been criticised as contrary to its statutes. The ban and the issues that arose from WAC-3 have been reviewed from different points of view (Álvarez Sanchís 1995, Bernbeck and Pollock 1996, Bernbeck and Sommer 1994, 1 A report on Wac Inter Congress on the destruction and conservation of Cultural Property, Brac, Croatia, May 1998.