The present issue marks the tenth birthday of Archaeological dialogues as an international academic journal. What once began as an English-language periodical established by a small group of Dutch graduate students has now evolved into a leading international journal for debating interpretative, theoretical, methodological, historical and political issues in archaeology. This development has taken us as much by surprise as it has far exceeded original intentions and expectations. When the journal was set up in Leiden in the early 1990s, the key aim of Archaeological dialogues was to promote and, indeed, provoke theoretical discussion in Dutch archaeology. Inspired by the fascinating theoretical developments in Anglo-American archaeology and anthropology of that time, the editors sought to reconcile these exciting new ideas with the long-standing empirical traditions of continental European archaeology. This ambition was readily evident from the subtitle that was carried on the cover for the first four years: ‘Dutch perspectives on current issues in archaeology’.

The alleged professional misconduct of Cambridge prehistorian Miles Burkitt, over his guided archaeological trip to South Africa in 1927 and the single-authored publication that resulted, has been taken to epitomize colonial relations of expropriation. However, unexploited archival and printed resources show that the affair has far more interesting implications, and that in South Africa of the 1920s and 1930s prehistoric archaeology became something of a ‘national discipline’, bearing both on national prestige abroad and on national unity at home, in the stormy relations between the English- and Afrikaans-speaking communities.

Nathan Schlanger's entry point into the history of South African prehistory may be read as an academic coup de poing, a sharp fist strike designed to cleave its way into the archaeological establishment; yet, like the examples of such ‘palaeoliths’ that so fascinated earlier prehistorians, the object of study may require further contextualization and understanding in order to yield up its wider meanings.

Buried deep in the Goodwin Collection are five passport-style photographs of the man himself, memorable for their informality and their eccentricity. In the first photograph Goodwin looks directly at the camera, the sober academic. In the second, mouth ajar, he looks up to the heavens. In the third, in a different jacket, he gazes off into the distance, wistful as a pre-Raphaelite virgin. Pencilled on the back, in Goodwin's handwriting, is the word ‘Soulful’. A fourth image has him grinning at the camera. In a final photograph he looks to the floor. Pencilled on the back is the caption ‘The Modest Violet’.

Among historians and sociologists of science, it is a commonplace that scientists' accusations of plagiarism defy straightforward explanations. To appreciate that these accusations need not indicate simply that given individuals have claimed others' ideas as their own, it is important to remember that scientists' habits of communication create specialized research communities in which professional practices are – and are intended to be – relatively standardized. A defining property of science is, after all, that it requires practitioners to reach consensus about solutions to their common research problems, in pursuit of which disciplinary colleagues are expected to exchange regular reports of their theories, information, materials and techniques. Certainly, patterns of behaviour do not fully realize the scientific ideal; there is no end of evidence that scientists’ communications may be less than fully frank, that their judgements are affected by diverse personal considerations, and that their research is shaped by peculiarities of places and things. But to find disparities between the real and the ideal does not mean that the ideal does not inform occupational practices. And because scientists belong to exchange networks, their standardized practices are virtually guaranteed to lead to so-called ‘simultaneous discoveries’. Sometimes, when two or more scientists reach a given conclusion at the same (or nearly the same) time, their agreement occasions mutual congratulations, since it confirms the appropriateness of scientists' shared interpretations. (When in 1858, for example, prominent British scientists celebrated Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russel Wallace's independent formulations of the concept of natural selection, they rendered the concept less controversial than it might have been had it been advanced by one man alone.) At other times, however, a scientific event that might be regarded as a simultaneous discovery under some circumstances instead becomes an occasion for expression of discord among interested scientific parties, prompting a ‘priority dispute’ or (worse) an accusation of plagiarism.

Together with the welcome insights they have brought to the matters at hand, the archaeological dialogues here engaged have certainly made me appreciate where my claims could be modified and my arguments amplified. Since I have already been taxed with a questionable insistence on setting the record straight, and with a penchant for academically coup de poing-ing my way through the archaeological establishment and its established historiography, I may as well persevere and thank the commentators for helping me grasp the following key point: what has been motivating a substantial part of my investigations, I can now better specify, is a growing unease with the well-established paradigm of ‘colonial vindication’. This is not, let me hasten to add, a reference to the genuine injustice done to those indigenous populations whose pasts have been expropriated and denigrated by the colonizing powers (i.e. Trigger's sense of ‘colonial archaeology’). Likewise, there is obviously no denying that the globalization of archaeology in the colonial and post-colonial eras has entailed considerable intellectual and institutional struggles, alongside innumerable power games, financial calculations and scientific compromises – and here Shepherd is surely right to give as example the ‘cradle of humanity’, a shifting zone whose ideological, diplomatic and economic potential Smuts had already fully sized in the 1930s (cf. Schlanger 2002b, 205–6). Rather, what I wish here to open to scrutiny is this apparently long-standing notion that South African archaeology has been systematically ‘done down’, ‘passed over’ and ‘badly used’ (Shepherd's terms) by the metropole – making it quite evident that its history, if not its ethos, should be primarily geared towards securing due recognition and redress.

Few archaeologists can claim to have written more than 300 articles in three different languages, let alone on topics as diverse as the philosophy of archaeology, the Ukrainian Eneolithic and the anatomy of the Iliad. Still fewer to have convinced Stalin, to have been convicted for homosexuality, and to have written a half-million copy bestseller about his years in prison. Only one archaeologist has. Despite all this, he is still poorly understood. At 76, Leo Klejn is still active. And still eager to have his voice heard.

Archaeology has an identity problem. At least three factors are involved. The postmodern view of radical instability has collided with processual aversions towards ‘meaning’, resulting in a stalemate regarding the past. Modern problems with identity, including the role of the past and archaeology itself, have generated additional confusion. Identity is a hall of mirrors which parallels other epistemological debates in archaeology, all of which revolve around the divide between realism and idealism. Archaeology cannot resolve this problem. The solution is not, however, to become either better technicians or more strident ideologues, but to become more informed contributors to larger debates in the human sciences and philosophy, in an atmosphere of civility and pluralism.

In recent years the gap between archaeological theory and practice has been closing, but although there have been calls for ‘reflexivity’, there has been little critical examination of its meanings. Proposed reflexive methodologies still perpetuate many traditional hierarchies of power, and fail to consider the creative nature of excavation and post-excavation. Much archaeological work in Britain, Europe and North America also takes place within the commercial sphere, and post-processual ideas cannot advance archaeological practice unless they can be implemented in contract archaeology. This paper examines theoretical considerations of reflexivity, representation, subjectivity and sensual engagement to highlight their relevance to everyday archaeological practice, and their political potential to undermine existing hierarchies of power within commercial archaeology.