Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe (Reference Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe2026) acknowledge that many archaeologists feel they have something valuable to contribute to the major global challenges of the twenty-first century but often fail to achieve a space, or a stable influence, at the policymaking table. In addition, there is an awareness that little action stems from the collaborations with policymakers that do take place. The suggestion of reversed historical directionality is compelling and here I discuss implementing this idea with a firmer focus on local communities rather than policymakers.

While archaeologists excel at producing robust datasets, deep-time reconstructions and past case studies, these outputs do not always connect in a grounded way with contemporary stakeholders. The relevance and practical impact for policy, community priorities and socioecological outcomes have therefore been limited. To address this, Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe argue that we must reverse the discipline’s temporal directionality. The crux of this idea being transdisciplinary archaeological research that starts not with past data alone but with present and future challenges, with community-defined priorities, and then tracing backwards through temporal processes to understand how we got here. What this may mean in practice includes an expanded understanding of contemporary structure and how policymakers respond to unfolding crises. The authors set out that this could foster a dynamic, future-facing dialogue capable of generating actionable insight.

As Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe point out, there have been many calls for greater integration of archaeological work within policy that approaches global challenges such as climate change, sustainable development, biodiversity loss, inequality and more, including by this author (Kerr Reference Kerr2020). Where many earlier appeals have fallen flat is in the lack of actionable details. The reasons for this limitation are clear. Our discipline is inherently multi- and interdisciplinary; indeed, my own research is very different from Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe in terms of geographic region, temporal focus, methodological approach and theoretical framing. Therefore, putting forward concrete ways for archaeology at large to do something as ambitious as tackle global challenges may simply not make sense to vast numbers of colleagues. However, a strength of Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe’s contribution is their offering of a research design that is actionable and seemingly adaptable to different areas facing similar issues. They set out a pathway to improve archaeology’s relevance and impact rather than reiterating what we should be doing and why. I take this opportunity to build on this with an insight from my corner of archaeology.

The authors rightly point out that we should be critical and examine our contemporary society and frameworks for change. I question, however, the centring of policymakers in their discussion. Similarly, I contest the idea that the burden of policymaking related to global challenges lies with archaeologists. Developing technocratic approaches should fall to policymakers and governing bodies: the past and present case studies are accessible, archaeological datasets are ready to be tapped, archaeologists are willing to contribute. Perhaps, we should concentrate our efforts on more proactive parties, such as our local communities, and use a transdisciplinary methodology influenced by reversed temporal directionality to consider community actions and barriers to them. Local-scale engagement with the community as the priority stakeholder builds on the networks and relationships archaeologists are generally good at creating and maintaining. The authors’ discussion of the community frames them as those who set out the issues and provide solutions, drawing on citizen-science frameworks (e.g. Rivera-Collazo et al. Reference Rivera-Collazo, Rodríguez-Franco, Garay-Vázquez, Rivera-Claudio and Estremera-Jiménez2020). I would extend this to say that local communities are the change-makers and archaeology’s role may be to facilitate that, using deep-time knowledge and past case studies to assist problem-solving capabilities.

Research projects undertaken in Ireland and Scotland demonstrate how exploiting archaeology’s storytelling, focusing on ‘glocal’ (global-local) connections, can generate action towards tackling the climate crisis (Kerr & Reide Reference Kerr and Riede2022; Kerr Reference Kerr2023). This is particularly evident when focusing on positive stories that support climate joy, thus counteracting the helplessness that often plagues climate-change communication (Colter Reference Colter2022; Kellom Reference Kellom2025). Similarly, communicating deep-time stories grounded in the local landscape with communities in Denmark facing increasing water-levels has equipped locals with the knowledge to create climate action. Narratives connecting the local landscape and global problems allowed the community to undertake cognizant discussions with policymakers, resulting in better-informed decisions on future adaptation scenarios in their locality. With archaeologists as partners and facilitators, members of the community were the change-makers, using this foundation to create policies themselves (Kerr et al. Reference Kerr, Krogh and Riede2022).

Davies and Lunn-Rockliffe’s research design makes a valid contribution to community archaeology and could assist local-scale climate action. Although climate action is difficult to measure, the authors point out that relevance and impact must begin in the real world, so perhaps issues around scale and quantifiability are acceptable discomforts for seeing genuine impact in the context of a most pressing global challenge.