Post-processual theorists have characterized landscape archaeology as practised in the second half of the twentieth century as over-empirical. They have asserted that the discipline is sterile, in that it deals inadequately with the people of the past, and is also too preoccupied with vision-privileging and Cartesian approaches. They have argued that it is therefore necessary to ‘go beyond the evidence’ and to develop more experiential approaches, ‘archaeologies of inhabitation’. This article argues that such a critique is misguided, notably in its rejection of long-accepted modes of fieldwork and argument and in its annexation of Cosgrove's rhetoric. ‘Post-processual’ landscape archaeology has involved the development of phenomenological approaches to past landscapes and the writing of hyper-interpretive texts (pioneered by Tilley and Edmonds respectively). It is argued that phenomenological fieldwork has produced highly questionable ‘results’. Some of the theoretical and practical consequences of adopting post-processual landscape archaeology are discussed; it is concluded that the new approaches are more problematic than their proponents have allowed. Although new thinking should always be welcomed, it would not be advisable to abandon the heuristic, argument-grounded strengths of conventional landscape archaeology.

Archaeologists have usually glossed over parietal finger flutings, especially non-figurative and non-symbolic lines. This article develops a nomenclature and defines four forms to provide a descriptive structure from which to build analyses. It then develops methods for such investigations, using experiments and studies of physiology to derive information about the fluters from the flutings. The methods are applied to each of the four forms of fluting, showing which approaches may be most useful for each form. Broader questions and applications are touched on, including approaches to meaning, figures, and other families of parietal markings such as hand stencils. This approach to flutings augments other approaches to prehistoric ‘art’ by seeking to know about the artists themselves, their gender, age, size, handedness, and the number of individuals involved in creating a panel.

This article examines a range of practices involving the deliberate fragmentation of human bodies and objects in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain. Focusing on evidence from settlements and mortuary sites, it is suggested that metaphorical links were drawn between people and things, and that productive processes such as potting and metallurgy provided potent metaphors for the construction of the human self. Building on these points, it is argued that current models which posit the rise of an ideology of the ‘individual’ during the Bronze Age may be inappropriate in this cultural context.

The development of social hierarchy during the European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age is often taken for granted in the literature. The Bell Beaker culture has been given a primary role in this picture as it would correspond to the large-scale diffusion of prestige goods and associated individualistic values. On the basis of the French Midi sequence, this article seeks to demonstrate that the prestige model rests upon a simplistic and abstract perception of the data. Rather than the climax of social competition, the Bell Beaker culture marks the building of new fluid social networks which allowed better circulation of knowledge and people.

Archaeological studies of the material and historical conditions of life have in recent years stimulated discussion of the relationality of people and material culture. Engagement with the material world is one context in which senses of personhood and identity emerge and are transformed. People and materiality are interanimated in the more or less transient events and actions of daily life. Personhood and the material world are loaded with sense and made meaningful through citation and reanimation of cultural values and tradition. This contribution discusses the contingent and possibly transient senses of personhood that may have been constituted in some specific material and historical circumstances relating to early Neolithic monuments in southern Britain. A case study focuses on the relationality of people, animals, earth, stone, architecture and material culture.