We thank all of the commentators for raising crucial points that provide us with the opportunity to make important clarifications. Bernbeck and Pollock point out that in our work, only the people of the present matter, rather than those in the past. Although our discussion centres on living people, we also believe that the past is unfinished and that working with it allows us to build a different future. We also believe that archaeology has a responsibility towards the dead. We are, in a Derridean spirit, committed to “those others who are no longer or [. . .] not yet there, presently living, whether they are already dead or not yet born” (Derrida 2012: 18). There is, however, more than an ethical dimension to this; our plea for a new objectivity means that we are interested in the past qua past, not just in representations of the past in the present.

There can be few topics in Roman archaeology and history that are contested with such vigour and widespread interest as the Roman economy. In part, this present situation arises as a legacy of older debates on the significance of ancient economic growth and long-distance trade, in which key twentieth-century figures such as M.I. Finley, M. Rostovtzeff and K. Hopkins continue to loom large and provide compelling insights. More recently, the debate has been re-cast around questions of state involvement vs free markets, and the extent of market integration, as this pair of edited collections demonstrates. On the one hand, Trade, commerce and the state in the Roman World (edited by Andrew Wilson and Alan Bowman, hereafter TCS) takes a big picture view on the role of the Roman state in long-distance trade, arising from a conference that took place in 2009 as part of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, ‘The Economy of the Roman Empire: Integration, Growth and Decline’. In contrast, The economic integration of Roman Italy (edited by Tymon de Haas and Gijs Tol, hereafter EIRI) brings together a series of typically smaller-scale studies focused on understanding the impact of economic changes on rural communities in Roman Italy. It emerges from another conference, held in 2013, this time as part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research project ‘Fora, Stations, and Sanctuaries: the Role of Minor Centres in the Economy of Roman Central Italy’.

Although historical ecology has become a highly popular framework for contemporary archaeological research, archaeologists have always, in some form or another, been engaged with its study. Historical ecology and archaeology are inseparable; the techniques and methods of the latter are essential for accessing the deep time of human-environmental relationships, while interest in the former is implicated, whether explicitly or not, in all empirical, field-based archaeology. Two recent edited compilations, bringing together authors from a range of disciplines with a common interest in historical ecology, contribute significant theoretical and practical insights related to its study for archaeologists.

Following four centuries of Roman expansion, the Emperor Trajan led the Empire to its greatest extent by annexing Dacia (Transylvania), north-western Arabia and Sinai and, briefly, all of Armenia and Mesopotamia. He bolstered imperial administration, reformed provincial government, clarified certain principles of justice and encouraged a system of welfare, the alimenta (Bennett 2001). Last year, 2017, was the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of Trajan's death. The occasion was marked in various ways across Europe, and the opportunity to reflect on Trajan's legacy was particularly poignant in view of the continent's present troubles.

These three books range from the clinical (Hunt) to the folksy (Woodward and Hill), and might be seen as a progression. One travelling from the Hunt-edited encyclopaedia with its emphasis on new and exotic scientific analytical techniques, rigorous theoretical approaches and data analysis, through the Integrative approaches book using techniques and ideas that have proved effective for decades (this book is firmly within the mainstream of recent excellent pot books that have a very strong US contribution, as exemplified by Quinn 2009), to the English, and almost quaint, re-issue of Woodward and Hill outlining post-processualist concerns and quite devoid of any black box ‘gee-whiz’. Their combined 1200 pages, heavily featuring petrography, often alongside geochemistry, show that these sorts of ceramic studies, although often regarded as comatose-inducing, are in favour again.