In his response, Colin Renfrew retreats to a formalistic argument – Indo-European can only mean a language family. It has nothing to do whatsoever with institutions or religion. This statement simply writes off a whole academic discourse of Indo-European studies. Consequently Renfrew does not accept an argument that links the spread of an institution to a concomitant spread of its language or its terminology. In opposition to this I consider Indo-European languages to have a history linked to social and economic processes of change that we still know too little about. However, it implies a relationship between them, as Colin Renfrew cogently argues in his book (Renfrew 1987: chapter 6). Institutions which appear to have their origin in the Proto-Indo-European period, and which are still preserved – like language diversified – in later Indo-European religious mythology or sagas, are consequently termed Indo-European in this specific research context, as they share a common history. Often they also share a common terminology that can be demonstrated to have a Proto-Indo-European origin. In that they are interlinked in one way or another with language. It is therefore a worthy research task to consider if processes of language spread and the spread of institutions are interlinked, given that their terminology share a common origin.

From this follows that we must either abolish the term Indo-European completely, or accept that it embodies a number of social and religious traditions and institutions whose history cannot be totally separated from that of language, as their meaning is expressed in a specific Indo-European terminology. The danger of political misuse does not originate from research into this relationship; it originates from simplistic theoretical and methodological conflations of such categories with racist and chauvinistic historical constructions. The relationship between language and DNA, which Colin Renfrew has propagated, is no less subject to such manipulation. The only weapon against this is a developed theoretical and methodological strategy.

It is a singular fact that the treaty ending the brief war of 1864 between Prussia/Austria and Denmark addresses the Flensburg Collection of antiquities as an issue to be resolved by the peace. It is not a surprising fact, given the special place antiquities had, and have, in defining national identities in the Scandinavian lands. As J.J.A. Worsaae (1821–1885) said, any country which takes itself seriously ought to know about its own past.

The early nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable reversal of judgment on the American pre-Columbian cultures. Prescott's romantic histories and Lord Kingsborough's monumental Mexican Antiquities are inspirations of earlier and less sceptical eras. Such pleasing imaginings as that the Spaniards ‘overthrew in Mexico a greater civilization than their own’ received scant support from the archaeologist who had displaced the antiquary, or from the critical historian who interpreted him. Dr Robertson1 summed up the verdict of the new investigators;:—‘The inhabitants of the New World were in a state of society so extremely rude as to be unacquainted with those arts which are the first essays of human ingenuity in its advance towards improvement’. He characterized Cortes's ‘emperors’ as ‘headmen’, the gorgeous palaces of the Conquest as ‘huts or mounds of rubble’, the Aztec Empire as a ‘league of primitive tribes’. Research, both among the ruins of the Mexican Valley and in the histories of the more prosaic conquistadores, established a singular lack of anything on the pre-Columbian continents which could be described as other than a tawdry barbarism.

Does a unique eroded prehistoric carving on one of the sarsen uprights at Stonehenge link the most famous of English megalithic monuments to Brittany?

We have invited an active prehistorian from Sicily to set two important events in context: the first conference on Sicilian prehistory held at Corleone and the important exhibition held in Palermo over the last year. Sicily is one of the richest regions of the world for archaeological remains and yet has not received the attention it deserves. This is especially true for prehistory, which has suffered from devaluation by ancient historians such as Moses Finley (1979: 13) — ‘… the Greek settlers found wives among the natives, and also a labour force. Other than that, however, the lasting effects of the pre-Greek populations would not seem to have been very significant’—and where it has often been assumed that everything of worth came from outside. Enrico Giannitrapani presents the emerging consciousness of Sicilians that their island was not founded by the Greeks.

A linear earthwork in lowland Scotland, known a couple of centuries and often thought to be connected to Roman military operations on this far north frontier, is shown to be a Neolithic feature of a kind more often seen further south in Britain.