The St Anthony's Day procession was caught in a bitter, driving rainstorm, accompanied by thunder and lightning. We elected to carry on to the church, despite the weather and the sense of threat. By the time we reached our destination we were soaked through. Locals were happy for the rain and all it implied, students and faculty to have shared the powerful experience which appeared to close an affective gap with our hosts.

Matthew Johnson's engaging paper raises a number of critical issues for contemporary archaeological reflection. The paper takes as a given the existence of archaeological theory as a disciplinary tradition of scholarly engagement, as a social fact of the vita archaeologica. But Johnson resists, rightly I think, the temptation to define ‘the archaeological’ intellectually, in reference to a discrete analytical terrain over which archaeology holds sovereignty. As a result, a considerable weight is put upon what we might think of as the sociology of theoretical work – concrete practices of theoretical production and reproduction located within institutions such as the university and the department. While Matthew's paper largely focuses on the gaps within the current constellatory field between the ethos of archaeological training and the pathos that drives our theoretical agenda, in these brief remarks I want to suggest a more undisciplined sense of archaeological theory, one rooted less in the field itself and more in a historically and socially shifting understanding of the pastness of the object world.

In a well-known paper on ‘the cultural biography of things’, Kopytoff (1986) shows that the application of meaning to ‘things’ is of a processual rather than a fixed nature. Mainly focusing his attention on commodities, Kopytoff demonstrates that, like people, ‘objects’ such as slaves, cars, huts and paintings have a social life of their own. The biographies that may be drawn up of the lives of these objects may provide insight into the complex whole of political, economic, moral and aesthetic practices, values and relationships prevalent in the societies in which they are produced, used and discarded.

As a Palaeolithic archaeologist I am often surprised by the paucity of research on issues of social relations in more recent time periods. The wealth of archaeological evidence and written texts seems so plentiful from where I stand. Thus when I look into Greek and Roman archaeology for examples of research on gendered being and for a discussion of difference in the past I am reminded that archaeological evidence is the consequence of research questions as much as their starting point. We only see that which we are able to comprehend, and archaeological finds and their interpretations become visible through the questions we ask. Issues of gender in the archaeological record are a very useful reminder of the firm grip that disciplinary traditions have on our imagination. In archaeology material determinism and scientific positivism, coupled with the straw man of subjective distortion of objective reality, continue to drive our imagination at a comfortable speed that does not threaten to overturn the theoretical cart. Furthermore, firmly held disciplinary boundaries, such as those that separate history and the study of texts and representations from the practice of archaeological fieldwork, can result in a limited conversation between the social and material traces of the past. In this sense classical archaeology can appear suddenly familiar to a prehistoric archaeologist, if the refusal of history in one context effectively parallels its absence in another. As someone both used to prehistoric contexts featuring minimal physical evidence, and interested in issues of gender as understood by contemporary feminist scholars, I wonder why this should be so.

The variability of Wessex hillfort form, use and development has long been noted, but not satisfactorily explained. This paper seeks to explain this variability and suggests that each hillfort may have had its own distinctive history of use, dependent upon the nature of the hillfort community – the people who visited, inhabited and used the hillfort. This paper starts by using grid–group analysis to define identities that can be found among modern communities – such as that of spectators of contemporary professional football clubs – which helps to frame our understanding of hillfort communities as constituted of households with differing motivations, loyalties and identification with the material environment. The variable trajectories of hillfort development are thus explained by the changing cultural relationships between Iron Age households and hillforts.

This paper deals with Dutch flint axe depositions associated with the Middle Neolithic Funnelbeaker Culture (Trichterbecher Kultur – TRB). Large flint axes were acquired as finished products from southern Scandinavia and were deposited in specific, waterlogged places in the landscape. The application of new empirical research techniques has revealed unexpected patterns of use and treatment of these axes. Moreover, contextual analysis shows significant differences in terms of size and wear patterns compared with axes retrieved from megalithic tombs. The evidence strongly suggests that the observed differences may have been linked to completely different use-lives between the two classes of axes. Drawing on ethnographic analogy, it will be argued that the large flint axes deposited in natural places in the landscape became animated with special powers through the act of production. Given the highly ritualized treatment that accompanied their exchange, they must have played an important role in TRB cosmology.

This paper on perceptions of the Pontine Region in Central Italy starts out with a discussion of a map by the Renaissance artist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci which he made of the Pontine marshes in the early 16th century A.D. Since this map is the earliest rendering known of this former wetland, it is an important document for the reconstruction of the wet areas of the Pontine Region, a landscape unit that falls within the wider survey area of the Pontine Region Project.1 The example shows how deconstruction of historical documents, whether texts or maps, is a prerequisite for an understanding of how landscapes were differently perceived over time. After all we perceive what we want to see. A valid interpretation of Da Vincis's map for archaeological purposes requires, however, insight into both the context of the map and the way in which Leonardo da Vinci handled landscapes in his work. I discuss the map to demonstrate how archaeologists using historical and ethnographical documents run the risk of dealing with ‘outsider’ information whilst thinking they are dealing with sources that take them right inside the landscape, i.e. into the landscape of its past inhabitants. To avoid the pitfall of perceiving what one wants to see, the archaeologist is recommended to obtain insight into the various historical perceptions of his study area. I cite some instances from my work that show how it is possible to extract inside information from ‘outsider’ maps and texts concerning the Pontine Region. It is argued that such inside information is needed to complement Mediterranean survey methodology if the discipline is to develop landscape perception models of Mediterranean regions in antiquity that are not based on a priori notions. The delineation of preference surfaces in the landscape such as forwarded by the archaeological record, is proposed as a starting point for reconstructions of past collective perceptions.

Among the influences that have altered the nature of archaeology over the past two decades, two major trends are singled out for discussion here. The first is the emerging interest in understanding the subjective experiences and perceptions of life in the past. The second trend is the growing concern with making archaeology more meaningful and accessible to a wider public. Some of the characteristics of these two trends will be considered in turn. It is then argued that, although these two movements are generally considered as quite separate issues, they stem from shared social and historic roots. The recognition of the inseparability of these two areas of concern has far-reaching implications for the nature and role of future archaeological practice.

The question ‘Can an archaeologist be a public intellectual?’ appears to express both an unfulfilled desire and a secret hope of an entire professional corps to count among them at least a few public intellectuals. I suggest that the state of the discipline of archaeology makes it harder, compared with other disciplines, for its professional representatives to address present-day issues and relate to public debates. I also suggest that maybe the most significant effect of the fact that society's public intellectuals generally do not have degrees in archaeology is that participants in public debates and policy makers are unaware of how various applications of archaeology and cultural heritage can benefit contemporary society. This potential will therefore have to be realized in different ways.

When first asked to comment upon the contribution of Arponen et al. on environmental determinism in archaeology – a red flag to many – I became excited that the topic is receiving attention again and, not least, that this attention is translating into printed debate. I commend the authors on their effort, also for bringing together multiple voices in their article. All too rarely do theoretical contributions translate into multiple authorship. I cannot in any way disagree with their key conclusions, namely that investigations of deep-time relations between humans and the environment are not just timely but important, and that archaeology should make full use of its rich array of data, cases and dissemination possibilities to investigate them and make them relevant in the present.

Arponen et al.’s paper is a timely discussion paper which raises basic issues about the relationship between environmental science and archaeology, and thus about the relationship between science and archaeology more broadly. My comments will therefore begin with a discussion of the nature of interdisciplinary research, as a background for re-evaluating the question of determinism in environmental research. Thus more recently we have seen a critical concern or even anxiety emerge over how to reconcile science-based and humanistic traditions of interpretation in a period of expanding importance of science-based knowledge in aDNA studies (Callaway 2018; Sørensen 2017; Kristiansen 2017). It raises the question of their relationship and of what provides good practice.

Following some comments on the notion of ‘public’ intellectuals (can they be otherwise?), this brief paper focuses on the intellectual roles that could be played by archaeologists today. Exposure to the media, usually following some spectacular discovery, serves to confirm the romantico-empirical image of the discipline, but should also lead to an engagement with key public debates. Three such debates are indicated: the idea that ‘African man has yet to enter history’ as expressed by the former French president; the creation of a Maison de l'histoire de France under the tutelage of the Ministry of National Identity; and, across the Channel, the Localism Bill, which pushes decision making to an untenably low level while promoting a historically and archaeologically questionable view of local communities.

Toby Pillatt is right. Weather is important. Weather is important every day, as is evident from almost every news broadcast we watch or hear. This is not only true for extreme weather situations – which currently abound in the news – but for ordinary weather conditions at any time. The importance is quite clearly reflected in the numerous weather channels and weather websites and the weather forecast at the end of every news programme. Despite the ‘benefits of civilization’ which today make us often independent of outside influences, many simple daily decisions are still based on the current weather situation. Weather is our first and most immediate environmental experience. It was no different in the past. On the contrary, weather-based decisions were much more important historically than at present, both for individuals and for entire societies. No doubt, then, weather should be of concern also for historical studies. Hence Toby Pillat is right. He is also correct in stating that by involving a palaeo-weather perspective we can add much to our understanding about how past societies operated.

In Archaeological dialogues 12.2 Jean and John Comaroff explored the role of commensuration – the mechanisms that render equitable and negotiable different orders of value – in the production of society and history. While equilibration, standardization and conversion are implicated in most theories of money and commodification, their nature as social processes has not been adequately specified, above all in the construction of universalizing ideologies and modernist political and economic regimes. They pursue these processes in relation to one African theatre, examining the ways in which different regimes of value, brought up against one another in the encounter between the southern Tswana peoples and European colonizers, became the subject of both conflict and complex mediation. Cows, coin and contracts – which had the capacity to construct and negate difference – soon were invested here with magical qualities. But colonized peoples were also sensitive to the capacity of such currencies to enable or impede convertibility, and to the forms of abstraction and incorporation they permit. Which is why, in South Africa and elsewhere, those currencies often became metonymic of the contestations of value on which colonial struggles, tout court, were played out.

In this short essay they respond to the comments on their article by John Creighton and Laurier Turgeon.

Academic developments, migration and other forces of globalization have ruptured the validity of traditional national and ethnic archaeology in the Scandinavian states. However, this does not mean that the relationship between nation states and archaeology has come to an end. In reference to Norway, this article contends that on a practical level there is no viable alternative to replace the nation state. In terms of archaeological narratives, it is more relevant to adapt archaeological narratives to the evolving state than to advocate abandoning the nation state altogether.

What scholars are committed to in principle is not always what they are likely to uphold in practice. Adam T. Smith examines – and deplores – the striking discrepancy between the centrality of the constructivist idiom in a variety of disciplines and the tendency of archaeologists to continue to treat archaeological subjects (be they ethnic groups, classes, nations, races, cultures or any other kind of identity group) as given entities and stable units of analysis. Smith's concern is not merely about the consistency of the discipline's theoretical underpinnings. In fact, his greatest worry turns out to be political: an archaeology that reconstitutes, rather than deconstructs, the essential subject may be wrongly used as a foundation for contemporary political action (such as nationalism). Thus he invites archaeologists to revise the relationship between scholarly analysis and political practice. Smith not only suggests taking into full account the malleability of identity groups in relation to changing sociopolitical contexts, but he also incites scholars to bend their minds to the sociopolitical circumstances within which seemingly stable categories of identity are produced. Archaeologists should be careful not to ‘essentialize’ identities, he concludes, but instead shift their attention to exposing the strategic practices deployed by those who do ‘essentialize’ identities.

If archaeology is the examination of historical conditions with reference to a surviving material residue, then one way in which these conditions might be characterized is as the different ways they had enabled the development of different forms of humanness. The historical construction of this diversity is discussed here as the ways that the relationships between humans and things had been performed. This means that the practice of archaeology must question the recent desire to adopt a flat ontology that defines archaeology as the ‘discipline of things’. It is argued that it was by means of the performances established between humans and their various objects of concern that different forms of human life were able to define themselves. The implications of this argument for the practice of archaeology are explored.

In this fin de siècle moment – or is it closer to a mood of Depression? – the Keynesian idea of expanded government spending is much in vogue. We have been here before. As Shannon Lee Dawdy notes, part of Roosevelt's New Deal in the USA was the famous Civilian Conservation Corps, who performed much archaeology and related work (Maher 2008; Paige 1985). It seems particularly appropriate, then, to repeat a famous quote of Keynes: after all, archaeology comes surprisingly close to that much-derided Keynesian remedy. It was in his General theory of employment, interest and money that he wrote, ‘“To dig holes in the ground,” paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services’ (Keynes 1936, 220). What is less often quoted, though, is the subsequent comment: ‘It is not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations’.