‘All quiet on the western front’ (Härke 1991) for years on end, and now, suddenly two theoretical works out of Germany, one of them even of handbook-character – what's happening? Is the enmity towards theoretical discourse of mainstream German archaeology (Eggert and Veit 1998, 11) finally abating?

‘Has theoretical archaeology ever developed into archaeological theory?’ That was the question posed by Michael Dietler and Liv Nilsson Stutz, which the British Matthew Johnson has courageously agreed to answer. Before commenting on his answer and trying, in turn, to answer this question, I strongly recommend the non-British reader to look at the brief synthesis on British phenomenological archaeology written by Joanna Brück (2005). Coming from the innermost postprocessual circle of the Department of Archaeology of Cambridge University, Brück clarifies the issues and places them in perspective.

The British Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland in the nineteenth-century was an official systematic survey which created a picture document of the landscape and the past. While the maps influenced the institutionalization of archaeology, the documenting of an archaeological record on the maps shaped their look and language. Within a setting of the political contest between British colonialism and Irish nationalism, both the Ordnance Survey maps and the archaeological past they recorded became powerful tools that helped to construct Irish identity and a sense of place and heritage.

Despite widespread attention to the recent past as an archaeological topic, few archaeologists have attended to the particular social and ecological stakes of one of the most defining material features of contemporary life: the long-term effects of toxic industrial waste. Identifying the present era as the high Capitalocene, this article highlights the contemporary as a period caught between the boom-and-bust cycles of capitalist production and the persistence of industrial waste. Drawing on an archaeological case study from Edmonton, Alberta, we outline how the working-class shanty town community of Ross Acreage (occupied 1900–1950) was formed in relation to the industrial waste that suffused its landscape. Drawing on data from both archaeological excavation and environmental testing, this article argues that the community of Ross Acreage was defined materially by its long-term relationship with industrial waste, what we term a ‘fence-line community’.

Not all archaeological remains cause discussions concerning stratigraphy. In Sweden, for example, intense stratigraphy discussions have taken place among archaeologists working mainly with urban sites (see e.g. Larsson 2004), and many of the illustrative examples in the text by McAnany and Hodder are rather well-preserved remains with complex stratigraphic sequences. This is, of course, due to the fact that different remains are stratified to different extents and are thus valued differently regarding this issue. Poorly preserved, sketchy remains scattered in the ground may lack complex stratigraphic relations and are regarded as less relevant for this discussion. However, all archaeological remains have some stratigraphical relation and – as McAnany and Hodder mention – interpretation of stratigraphic sequences is a part of archaeological identity. A greater interest in how stratigraphic sequences are formed in social terms should be relevant for all archaeologists. I believe that archaeologists working with complex stratigraphic sequences, and those who work with less stratified remains, have something to gain from this discussion, but in different ways. McAnany and Hodder state that stratigraphy may be both overdescribed and undertheorized. The problem of overdescription concerns complex stratigraphies, while I think less stratified remains are suffering from a lack of discussion concerning stratigraphy all together.

Miguel John Versluys offers a richly textured essay in an attempt to resuscitate the concept of Romanization, which he has found to have been nearly flogged to death, to paraphrase an oft-quoted characterization of the Romanization debate in recent years. To be more precise, he argues that certain quarters of Romanist academia have ‘ganged up’ on the concept over the last decade or so and that others – the implicitly silent majority – have begun to stage a comeback in recent years. Versluys's self-imposed mission is to shore up the Roman resurgence with freshly cut intellectual joists.

I am very grateful to Miguel John Versluys for this paper, which raises several important issues that derive from current debates in Roman archaeology. I am aware of the context of Versluys's arguments as I am a contributor to the forthcoming volume Globalization and the Roman world (which Versluys has jointly edited; Pitts and Versluys 2014). I am pleased to be able to develop some of the themes outlined in my chapter for that volume (Hingley 2014b) through this reflection upon Versluys's contribution to the developing debate. The issues raised by Versluys are particularly timely since a number of younger colleagues have observed that the critical focus provided by what I shall term ‘post-colonial Roman archaeologies’ (PCRAs) is stifling innovative research. PCRA is the term I use to address the body of research and publication characterized by Versluys as ‘Anglo-Saxon Roman archaeology’ (for reasons given below). I did not attend the TRAC session at Frankfurt to which Versluys refers, but I recognize his observation that there is a genuine concern about the form and content of PCRAs arising from Roman archaeologists both in Britain and overseas. PCRAs have focused around two core themes: (1) critiquing the concept of Romanization and (2) the development of new ways of approaching the Roman Empire. Versluys suggests that this discussion has culminated in ‘an uncomfortable ending’ (p. 1) for the Romanization debate and his proposal includes the reintroduction of this concept. Taking a rather different perspective, I shall propose that a dynamic and transformative agenda is spreading across several continents and that PCRAs form an important aspect of this developing perspective.

Tim Murray has occupied a unique, and at times contentious, position within Australian archaeology. His primary interests in the history of archaeology and theory made him ‘a luxury no department could afford’ in the fieldwork-dominated atmosphere of 1980s Australian archaeology, though he has since gone on to establish himself as a leading figure in both Australia and the international community. The politics of archaeology has also been a central element of his thought through both his historical work on race and his engagment with indigenous communities in Tasmania. The breadth of Murray's interests and contributions to the discipline of archaeology emerges very clearly from this interview and highlights issues that remain of central importance to the discipline.

With the growing impact of postprocessual orientations, archaeologists have become increasingly aware that the production of values resides in all aspects of archaeological research. This awareness has also paved the way for a more encompassing concept of archaeological heritage, which of course not only includes the management of material traces but also the transmission of values through archaeological practice, method and theory. Many archaeologists and heritage managers now propagate the belief that reflecting on value production will better equip archaeology for ethical concerns or that it will improve its engagement with society, and that adopting anthropological perspectives and key notions may help to achieve this goal. This contribution explores the opposite proposition: that an anthropologically informed reflexive attitude is important to understand present-day heritage practices, but in most cases it is desirable for archaeologists to tell stories about the past, not about themselves, in order to be really engaged with public and ethical issues. Arguments for this proposition can be derived from the discipline's specific articulation of discovery, difference and time depth (including the ‘long term’), which traditionally shape archaeological research and narrative to a high degree, not only within academic discourse but also in a wider social setting.

This article discusses the American Compañía Stanford’s efforts to drill an oil well on the outskirts of the archaeological site of El Tajín, Mexico, during the 1930s. Drawing on recent scholarly efforts to think beyond archaeology and the nation state, this article problematizes the notion of a unitary state behind the concept of nationalist archaeology, the constitution of archaeology and extractive industry as separate spheres, and their apparent mutual exclusivity. Exploring the negotiations between site guards, archaeologists, inspectors, oil company officials and labourers shows that different state actors worked at cross-purposes, and that the nominally separate spheres of nationalist archaeology and foreign oil extraction were in fact characterized by the sharing of infrastructure, equipment, expertise and labour. Consequently, this article advocates for close attention to the administration and management of archaeology in specific historical contexts, demonstrating that it is more reasonable to assume archaeology’s imbrications with the nation state and extractive industries.

As historical archaeology has expanded from its origins in the ‘settler nations’ of the post-colonial world, an increasing number of European scholars have argued for a radical reorientation of the subfield. But if historical archaeology is to be accepted as the ‘archaeology of literate societies’, the profound interdisciplinarity of the subject must be embraced. While the presence of written documents can indeed be a luxury, providing for richer or more personalized interpretations of the past, it can also be a curse, demanding careful attention to the interplay between material and textual sources of evidence. Allison's example of ‘gendering’ the Roman military landscape provides a crucial first step towards a more socially oriented archaeology of the classical world. It also demonstrates both the opportunities and limitations faced by scholars of the literate past.

Archaeologists have ‘discovered’ memory, drawing on historical and anthropological insights into commemoration and interrogating the contexts of archaeological exploration in ways that sometimes produce evidence of specific understandings of the past by ancient populations. Analogy is sometimes suggestive, as, notably, when archaeology's own historical emergence provides interesting parallels with ancient antiquarianism. Difficulties arise, however, from the heavily psychological cast of much work on memory, which displaces the older archaeological interest in ‘influence’ without always preserving the accompanying focus on patterns of cultural imitation and absorption. The best work on prehistory appears to focus on patterns of co-occurrence but, in the absence of textual evidence, methods often lack rigour and ideologically sensitive reflexivity; especially problematic are the frequent attributions of intentionality. Claims that memory (or its obliteration) was itself the focus of acts recorded in the archaeological record thus underscore both the temptations and the limits of the current concern with this topic.

To place ‘regional projects’ and ‘cultural identity’ next to each other in the title of a conference session is extraordinary, indeed baffling: questions of cultural identity have hardly ever been addressed in conjunction with a regional project. In fact, many of us who were attracted to regional research some time ago saw in it an opportunity to escape from the quest for identity which, in the form of ethnogenetic concerns, had dominated the practice of archaeology since 1900 and to explore instead issues of an entirely different nature: adaptation to the natural and social environment, economic rationality and its long-term effects on such adaptation, the formation of hierarchical polities, and the like.

I have much sympathy for Shannon Dawdy's eloquent argument in favour of reorienting archaeology ‘away from reconstructions of the past and towards problems of the present’ (p. 140). The topic is timely, her argument sharp, and the discussion of the issues at hand benefits from them being put on the spot in rather dramatic fashion. I do not agree with those who might argue that such calls for more social relevance in a humanities subject are merely the symptom of an unhelpful but prevalent insecurity and demonstrate a lack of confidence in one's own academic abilities. At the same time, Dawdy's passionate and courageous argument would have benefited from additional analysis of the subject matter at hand. As it stands, I have two main reservations to her paper.

I thank the commentators for their thoughtful and articulate responses, in which they have quite rightly exposed several inconsistencies and queried or expanded on a number of points that I did not have the time or space to develop in the original piece. In doing so, they raise the important issue of regional variations in the ways in which archaeology is conceived, practised and perceived by its practitioners and publics, which also significantly extends and complicates the original discussion. Rather than comment on specific points, almost all of which are relevant and well made, I want to focus on four linked themes which I think are reflected in different ways across all five comments. These are the relationship of archaeology to modernism and modernity, the value of the archaeological production of a sense of the ‘uncanny’ as an active intervention in the quotidian present, the surface/depth dichotomy, and the question of archaeological methodology in relation to an archaeology in and of the present. In doing so, I hope to provide some important clarification regarding what I mean when I use the terms ‘archaeology in and of the present’, ‘surfaces’ and ‘assemblages’, as well as to take up Ian Russell's challenge to approach more critically the use of artistic metaphors to emphasize the affective qualities and creative possibilities of archaeological practice. Before I move on to do this, I think it is helpful to discuss briefly the circumstances under which this paper was written and its place within a broader emergent programme of research and writing to give some context to what follows.

Exploring the relocation and reuse of fragments and whole artefacts, materials and monuments in contemporary commemorative memorials in the United Kingdom (UK), this paper focuses on the National Memorial Arboretum (Alrewas, Staffordshire, hereafter NMA). Within this unique assemblage of memorial gardens, reuse constitutes a distinctive range of material commemoration. Through a detailed investigation of the NMA's gardens, this paper shows how monument and material reuse, while used in very different memorial forms, tends to be reserved to commemorate specific historical subjects and themes. Monument and material reuse is identified as a form of commemorative rehabilitation for displaced memorials and provides powerful and direct mnemonic and emotional connections between past and present in the commemoration through peace memorials, of military disasters and defensive actions, the sufferings of prisoners of war, and atrocities inflicted upon civilian populations. In exploring monument and material reuse to create specific emotive and mnemonic fields and triggers, this paper engages with a hitherto neglected aspect of late 20th- and early 21st-century commemorative culture.

This paper addresses the limits of the methods and questions asked by osteoarchaeologists when dealing with human remains. Osteoarchaeologists seem to take for granted that through the study of such remains they can say something relevant about a past individual's identity, something about the nature of their being. Since the early 1990s various voices have questioned these assumptions, also claiming that the study and display of human remains are unethical. It is my intention to rethink the topic of ethics in osteoarchaeology by shifting the focus to the research questions and methods we employ – what kind of evidence are we looking for and what kinds of relationship are we establishing with those earlier lives? By taking as a starting point the analysis of the remains of the Greek Catholic Bishop Vasile Aftenie, killed during the Communist regime, I explore the view practitioners take as the legitimate way of framing the relationship between past and present and the transformation of bones into scientific objects. In the end I propose that such a re-evaluation, alongside an opening of our discipline towards anthropology, can contribute to a recovery of humanity as part of the academic discourse, which should be the key element in any ethical discussion.

Explicitly regional projects have been a comparatively recent phenomenon in Mediterranean archaeology. Classical archaeology is by far the strongest discipline in the university, museum and antiquities services career structures within the Mediterranean countries. It has always been dominated by the ‘Great Tradition’ of classical art and architecture: even today, a university course on ‘ancient topography’ in many departments of classical archaeology will usually deal predominantly with the layout of the major imperial cities and the details of their monumental architecture. The strength of the tradition is scarcely surprising in the face of the overwhelming wealth of the standing remains of the Greek and Roman cities in every Mediterranean country. There has been very little integration with prehistory: early prehistory is still frequently taught within a geology degree, and later prehistory is still invariably dominated by the culture-history approach. Prehistory in many traditional textbooks in the north Mediterranean countries remains a succession of invasions and migrations, first of Palaeolithic peoples from North Africa and the Levant, then of neolithic farmers, then metal-using élites from the East Mediterranean, followed in an increasingly rapid succession by Urnfielders, Dorians and Celts from the North, to say nothing of Sea Peoples (from who knows where?!). For the post-Roman period, church archaeology has a long history, but medieval archaeology in the sense of dirt archaeology is a comparatively recent discipline: until the 1960s in Italy, for example, ‘medieval archaeology’ meant the study of the medieval buildings of the historic cities, a topic outside the responsibility of the State Archaeological Service (the Superintendency of Antiquities) and within that of the parallel ‘Superintendencies’ for monuments, libraries, archives and art galleries.

This is a characteristically trenchant and persuasive critique from Jane Webster, who has done more than most to persuade Roman archaeologists to engage with comparative and postcolonial perspectives (Webster 1997; 2001; 2003; 2005 are required readings). Yet, as she argues, despite some notable theoretical advances in the last decade or so the study of the Roman past still remains hidebound within classificatory and descriptive categories. The result of this is that we remain far better at delineating our subject than at interpreting it – especially where we enter territory that is not well served by supplementary sources (such as texts or epigraphy). However, the problems that she has identified with regard to the archaeology of slavery apply with equal force in many other areas where the material culture is ambiguous or discrepant. Thus, while I find myself in strong agreement with much of what she says, I would like to pose a series of points for further reflection.