Founded in 1945, some 71 years ago, the South African Archaeological Society (ArchSoc) has consistently lived up to its mandate to promote public awareness of archaeology and to facilitate interaction between professional archaeologists and people with a lay interest in the subject out of the goodwill of its own members and well-wishers. It has experienced different political contexts and its founding members and subsequent membership authored the history of archaeology in more profound ways than books have written on the subject. Much of this remains to be documented, published and shared. This is what archaeology was then, and what archaeology is, today. One of the strongest pillars of the Society is its constitution, something not be taken for granted if current national events are anything to go by.
     My address focuses on the Society's role in the present and the medium term future, in a changing national, regional and global socio-political environment in which intensive, competing and contradicting modes of knowledge production are now questioning as well as shaping the world we live in. Is doing archaeology today similar to how we experienced it a decade or more ago? What has changed? What is the role of the public in archaeology, or alternatively, what role should archaeology play in public? What role should ArchSoc play?
     My central message is for the society to celebrate what is right with southern African archaeology, and not what is wrong; to seek for an even broader public audience within which there is abundance of thought and ideas; and to galvanize energy necessary to confront situations and contexts of uncertainties in the present. My message, in concluding the address, is for an even more engaging archaeology of public value; an approach to archaeology that enhances our interactions with the past to better understand and shape the present, and, a sustained valuing of the past because it is the basis for and of the present and the future.