I would like to thank Silvia Tomášková, Christoph Ulf and James Wright for their comments, which allow me to clarify and expand my argument. As I cannot address all the points they raise in this response, I have decided to concentrate on three themes: (i) the application of moral theory, (ii) Homeric questions and (iii) the focus on the shaft graves of Mycenae.

In this dialogue, Hodder and Lucas skilfully manoeuvre the winding trails of archaeological theory during the last decades and critically juxtapose the discussion of symmetry and asymmetry of relations between entities with that of entanglement. Their provocative dialogue compellingly leads to the conclusion that most entanglements are in fact asymmetrical. Whereas I mostly concur with the conclusions of the dialogue, addressing the authors’ closing statements I would like to highlight the need to equally (in some ways, symmetrically) consider disentanglement as the process opposite to entanglement, along with the consequences of such disentanglement. If we are to understand better the contexts and politics of entanglements – concerns that this dialogue brings to the fore – I furthermore suggest that we more closely scrutinize the density (quantity) and joining (quality) of entanglements, as well as pay closer attention to memory, emotion and affect in entanglements.

Oliver J.T. Harris and Tim Flohr Sørensen have written an interesting and urgent paper, raising crucial points touching upon a question at the very core of archaeology: what can we learn about the lives of prehistoric people, based solely on the material remains? Or, rephrased, how far can we reach on the Hawkesian ladder? To tackle this question, Harris and Sørensen accept the ten-year-old challenge raised by Sarah Tarlow, and suggest a vocabulary that will enable archaeologists to include emotional aspects in their interpretations. As they point out, several studies in archaeology have focused on emotion during the last decade, using burials as their main material. But as they acknowledge that emotions were a part of mundane social life, and not limited to ritualized events such as burials, they want to broaden the span of their inquiry and include materials from other contexts as well. As they do this, they make an interesting point and take a step forward in the development of archaeological interpretation. However, I would argue that they could have explored the issue even further. It would, for example, have been interesting to see them apply their ideas to some of the more mundane archaeological materials, from, for example, settlements that would be more explicitly connected to everyday life. Instead they use a quite spectacular site, where dramatic events have taken place. Is it perhaps easier to make assumptions about emotions when they are suspected to have been intense and exceptional in some way? The mundane emotions still escape us. Nevertheless, the case study chosen by Harris and Sørensen still illustrates their arguments and serves as an example for how the suggested vocabulary may be used.

The paper examines epistemological problems behind a recent study claiming to provide a synthesis of a vocal sound from the mummified remains of a man named Nesyamun and behind racial designations in Egyptian mummy studies more generally. So far, responses in the media and academia concentrated on the ethical problems of these studies, whereas their theoretical and methodological backgrounds have been rarely addressed or mentioned only in passing. It seems that the media reaction has targeted the synthesis of a sound rather than other, equally problematic, assumptions found in Egyptian mummy studies. By focusing on the epistemological problems, it will be demonstrated that the issues of greatest concern are endemic to a general state of a considerable part of the discipline of Egyptology and its unreflective engagement with the material remains of the past, especially human remains.

As the authors situate the discussion in their offices, let me also begin in mine. On my way home from the office there will be many things around me. They will mostly be familiar and go largely unnoticed. I will take my keys off the desk and lock the door behind me. I will walk along the corridor, through the swing doors, down the stairs, unlock my bike, and so on. Desk, keys, door, carpet, windows, stairs, lock, bike – these are all objects with which I interact. But do I necessarily notice them? As long as there is ‘smooth coping’, as long as these objects are ready to hand (Wheeler 2005, 129), then they remain in the background. These are not objects that hold me in their gaze; I do not ‘encounter’ them, in the sense of encountering, meeting or bumping into a person.

First, a qualifier: the ‘response-to-the-response’ section of Archaeological dialogues is often the most entertaining part of the issue, but frequently the least intellectually rewarding. One feels Schadenfreude, partisan cheering and jeering, and bafflement in equal measure as contributors lock horns over this or that finer point of who has misrepresented whom. I am anxious to avoid readers reacting to what follows in such a manner, and so will concentrate on a very selective range of raised points that, to put it crudely, got me thinking.

Reading the ‘Lampeter Manifesto’ did rather conjure up a picture of a small huddle of Post-Processualists (I don't know the collective term, but ‘in the trade’ adherents of the wider movement to which their approaches belong - Postmodernists - are known as ‘Pomos’), gathered in a seminar room in the remote fastness of Lampeter University, nervously eyeing the horizon for rabid positivists and other Neanderthals on the intellectual rampage, while engaged in a process of mutual encouragement (‘consciousness-raising’?) for their chosen position within Archaeological Theory.

In my opinion, Slofstra's description of the recent developments in Dutch archaeology can be characterized as a rather subjective narratio of a small episode in the history of science by a participant observer. It is only in the last sentence of his paper that he – rather obligatorily – acknowledges his position. Primarily, the article is a compilation of personal experiences, memories and convictions based on a thorough study of the literature, but lacking interviews with the principal characters. It is very much a private account, even to such an extent that it would not be difficult for anyone involved in Dutch archaeology to point out the author. The paper tells us as much about Slofstra as about the history of archaeology and presents a very personal view on the development of our discipline: the disqualification of the cultural-historical approach persisting into the eighties, the myth of the deliverance by the ‘Historical-Anthropological Approach’, together with the uncritical reiteration of the greatness of Van Giffen, and the ‘conspiracy scenario’ towards the ‘academic establishment’ which can retard everything except demographical processes.

Harm Tjalling Waterbolk (1924) is regarded, together with Pieter J.R. Modderman (1919) and Willem Glasbergen (1923–1979), as the direct inheritor of the founder of Dutch archaeology Albert Egges van Giffen (1884–1973). From the middle of the 1950s, after Van Giffen's retirement, this troika shaped the rapidly growing academic archaeology in the Netherlands. Until well into the 1970s and 1980s they occupied the most prominent chairs at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Amsterdam. One look at Waterbolk's impressive list of publications (almost exclusively articles) tells us that for half a century he has been an authoritative participant in developments in Dutch archaeology. He has been involved, directly or indirectly, in the modernization of excavation practices, in changes in the organization of academic education and research, in the introduction of new methods and techniques and in shifts in theory and interpretation. He has made a valuable contribution to the development of large-scale settlement research, to the shaping of the Dutch legal foundation of university education (the study of prehistory in the Academisch Statuut), to the expansion of palynological research and the C14 method, and to the conceptualization of long-term continuity in the spatial organization of historical communities. His work is interesting because of the blending of a scientific interest in the history of the cultural landscape and a committed and critical involvement with the protection of such. Enough reasons to interview him ten years after his retirement. We meet Waterbolk in Meppel, a small town in south-west Drenthe, on one of the few hot days in the summer of 1996. It has been agreed that we will first pay a short visit to his birthplace in Havelte and to Van Giffen's grave in Diever. Before long it becomes clear that during the tour a web of named places and paths is gradually unfolding, each with its own historical tale and associated with personal memories. The afternoon is spent in the area between Balloo and Rolde, 5 kilometres east of Assen, the capital of the province of Drenthe. This area, which has an un-Dutch concentration of still existing and visible megalithic tombs, burial mounds, Celtic fields, and prehistoric roads, has recently become the subject of Waterbolk's interest (Waterbolk 1994a, and in press b).

The issue is not ‘why excavate?’, nor is it whether or not to excavate sites. Nor is it the numerous ancillary considerations mentioned at the round table and in the papers – too many sites, too few resources, too large a backlog of unpublished sites, or saving sites for future techniques. All – excavators, archaeologists, curators and cultural heritage managers – would agree. If there is a unique world-class site that will be destroyed in a few weeks, it should be excavated. One needs to excavate to preserve the heritage, information, artefacts and context.

The present article is a welcome contribution to the study of Mycenaean ceramics and to the study of East Mediterranean production, consumption and distribution systems. The general argument for an archaeology of value has wide-reaching relevance, while the specific case study usefully raises general issues of approach and methodology.

The study of architecture in relation to the social organization of space is a popular field of research within the discipline of anthropology and other social sciences. In archaeology, it has not played a significant role, although in recent years a number of publications have appeared and clearly the interest of archaeologists in this area of research is growing (Kent 1990; Samson 1990; Richards and Parker Pearson 1994).

First, I would like to thank the commentators, Beatrice Annis, Peter Fowler, Michael Herzfeld and Ovar Löfgren for their inspiring comments, and the editors of Archaeological Dialogues for providing us with the opportunity to engage in a debate about the politics of heritage (re) presentation. Naturally I am unable to pay attention to all the significant and interesting, and at times highly provocative suggestions. My reaction primarily addresses issues that have been raised by at least two commentators. As the debate continues, many of those suggestions neglected here will be picked up, by me or by others, in different contexts. Personally, Fowler's remarks about an archaeology of tourism, intrigued me most. It is, however, a subject so complex, that it cannot be addressed in a few sentences. Suffice it to say, that in my opinion, Eric Leed's The Mind of the Traveler, provides an excellent starting point for such an enterprise.

Unfortunately, I am unable in the limited available space to do justice to the perceptive and thoughtful critiques offered by the four commentators. There is too much ground to cover and there are too many venues to negotiate. While I wish to defend my position, I also wish to use this opportunity to keep this discussion going. It would be unfortunate if the exchange of views presented here led each position towards entrenchment and mutual exclusion. Thus, instead of providing a counterreaction to the objections raised, I will try to use these objections as leverage to pry deeper into the matters at stake. I do so with the hope that this will contribute to further discussion on matters that we all hold dear.

Assaf Nativ has written a bold and challenging paper and one which prompts a great deal of reflection. Although highly theoretical, it is also a paper that engages quite directly with the concerns of our discipline and is a good example of what one might dub philosophical (or meta-)archaeology rather than philosophy applied to archaeology. Moreover, Nativ has a very clear style of exposition that gives the reader a great deal to sink his or her teeth into. Which is precisely what I want to do now. And if what follows seems excessively critical or negative, I hope it will also be taken as a sign of my respect for his taking on a topic fraught with difficulties and a conviction that my commentary should try and match up to his own carefully argued text.

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’.

Asking different questions about and adopting an alternative perspective for understanding what happened in the past are rightly highlighted by François Richard as crucial to our understanding of colonial situations like that in 16th- to 18th-century West Africa. He frames his discussion with a speech given in Dakar by Nicolas Sarkozy, who in mid-2007 had just assumed the office of French president, and uses the strong reactions to those words very effectively to make it clear why thinking about the colonial past continues to matter, both in Africa and elsewhere.