What are the circumstances through which we become archaeologists? In April 2018, Rui Gomes Coelho met with his former adviser, Randall H. McGuire, and his adviser’s adviser, Michael B. Schiffer, for a conversation about the reasons why they became interested in archaeology, about mentorship and about how they connect their experiences to broader social questions. This conversation is an affective reflection that crosses the emergence of behavioural archaeology, Marxist archaeology, the postprocessual turn and the context that shaped the origins of the archaeology of the recent past.

This interview discusses the comparison that Klejn draws between archaeology and forensic science. This is a comparison that has been made many times previously by many different archaeologists (and crime writers), but Klejn is unusual in that he explores the implications of their similarity. In his view it is archaeology rather than history that is most closely related to forensic science. The difference between archaeology and history is important because when this difference was ignored, in the Soviet Union, it was to the detriment of both disciplines. Hence Klejn's continued concern – that the difference between archaeology and history is still, to some extent, ignored. Other subjects discussed include Klejn's view of the role of theory in relation to practice, his criticisms of New Archaeology and postprocessual archaeology, typology, the underlying principles of archaeology, ethnogenesis and the history of archaeology. Of course, in an interview of this length not all of these subjects are covered in great depth but it is hoped that enough is said that the reader may appreciate something of the nature and originality of Klejn's views.

Christopher Hawkes was one of the leading British archaeological theorists in the middle decades of this century. Much underrated, Hawkes is reassessed here in the broader development of processual archaeology in Britain.