This article argues that the notion of cultural biography presents a key to understanding the social and cultural practices that created archaeological records of domestic architecture, as it brings the close and dynamic relationships between a house and its inhabitants to the fore. To do so it presents a case study of the construction, habitation and abandonment cycles of late prehistoric farmsteads in the southern Netherlands. After discussing typical biographies of farmhouses and the way these are affected by a transformation from a ‘wandering’ to a stable settlement pattern, the perspective is broadened through a comparison with burial practices. These witness a roughly contemporaneous shift from monumental and communal to short-lived and dispersed cemeteries. Finally, it is suggested that we view these contrasting patterns in terms of a transformation of the perception of farmsteads as places in the landscape and land tenure practices.

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.

The subject of Gerritsen's paper and the way in which it is presented invite comment on three main aspects: firstly, his theoretical stance, secondly the methodology he uses and thirdly, his conclusions regarding the farmsteads which he seeks to understand. Since my own specialism lies well outside the area and period with which his paper deals, I shall focus my discussion on the first two aspects.

This is an interesting and important paper that argues in a reasoned and convincing manner for a new approach to an archaeology of houses. It uses as an archaeological case study the evidence from the southern Netherlands but the approach presented here has a much wider application and the results are directly relevant to a very large area of northern Europe. I originally heard this paper delivered as a lecture at a conference on settlement studies where it came amid a succession of papers debating detailed structural typologies of Iron Age long houses and others providing increasingly detailed scientific analysis of cattle byres. I had already made one abortive attempt to suggest there was a more interesting way of thinking about houses but this was most clearly demonstrated by the paper presented here.

Nevett, Sharples and Vellinga have commented on my paper in a heartening and inspiring way, and I would like to thank them for their comments of agreement as well as for the points of criticism that they raise. In my reply I will attempt to engage in discussion by addressing a few of their issues. Two points of my paper that appear to have created some confusion, notably in Vellinga's comment, may be dealt with first of all. With regard to the timing of the construction of a house, I did not intend to suggest – as hopefully the diagram of figure 2 makes clear – that new houses were always built subsequent to the abandonment of an old one. In fact, in the case of wandering farmsteads I would envisage this as the exception rather than the rule. This may seem a minor point, but it has some relevance to the topic of variability that I will address below. The other point of confusion concerns the ulterior aims of the paper and the biographical approach, which Vellinga takes as explaining the long-term transformation of the settlement patterns. I would not want to claim that the notion of a cultural biography in itself has enough explanatory force in this respect, and in the introduction I described it as a way of taking a first step along the road towards a more balanced understanding. The aims of the paper were precisely that, but Vellinga certainly makes a valid point in raising the issue of explaining long-term changes, and it deserves further consideration.

The paper discusses the religious undertones classical Greek heritage is vested with in Greece. Drawing on the argument that nationalism and religion need to be seen as similar cultural systems, we show that classical antiquities have become powerful emotive icons for performances of national memory in the process ot imagining the topos of the Hellenic nation. This process is open to all social actors and not simply to State bureaucrats and intellectuals. We offer an explanation of this phenomenon by examining the position of antiquity in the construction of the imagined community of the Hellenic nation, as well as the ways by which Orthodoxy and classical antiquity became enmeshed in the formation of Hellenic national identity.We finally explore some of the implications that this phenomenon has for archaeology as a discipline and as social practice.

The increasingly voluminous literature on nationalism and archaeology published in recent years is providing archaeologists with a firm basis to self-analyse the connection of their endeavours to the socio-political context of which they are imbued. Yet, the work undertaken is not beyond criticism, as the authors make clear in their introduction. Most studies, including this one, approach the topic adopting a historiographical perspective. Yet, trying to summarise two hundred years of politics and archaeology in a few thousand words is not an easy task. It makes it necessary to simplify usually very complex processes into seemingly neat sequences of events. In addition, writing for an archaeological audience does not make things easier. Most archaeologists have an understandable lack of knowledge on the complexities of the political aspect of the argument, a problem aggravated in the case of discussions of countries other than the one most of the readers are more familiar with. A detailed analysis of the intricate political context is simply unattainable and although references to other analytical works are often provided, it is difficult for authors to avoid giving the impression of adopting an objectifying position and a positivistic approach. Despite Hamilakis and Yalouri's awareness of this problem (p.115), on occasion their account falls precisely into the latter category (especially in the section ‘Imagining the nation in modern Greece’). As someone who has often been faced with this problem in my various publications on the relationship between archaeology and nationalism in Spain, I am still convinced of the validity of offering general overviews, despite the risks entailed. It is only after producing an intelligible outline, as they in fact have done, that it is possible to undertake a deeper and more sophisticated analysis of more concrete issues related to the connection between archaeology and nationalism.

In this elegant and wide-ranging essay, Hamilakis and Yalouri have offered us a sophisticated analysis of the utilisation of the ancient past in modern Greece. They have traced the powerful political connection between images of the past and contemporary political structures. They have described how different modalities of veneration have been conscripted for this task. Yet I want to offer a few conceptual clarifications and highlight some possible alternative social contexts that may – I hope – strengthen the central points that they make. These concern a tendency to reify ‘religion’ (specifically in this case specifically Greek Orthodoxy as a unitary phenomenon) and to privilege nationalism as the only socio-political behaviour that actively utilises the cultural capital of archaeology. The two points are closely related. For while the nationalistic use of archaeology may mimic the external forms and even literary topoi of religious veneration, State and Church are potentially competing power structures within a particular society. In many places, the cultural tensions between State and Church (or between rival States and Churches) are becoming increasingly intense. The recognition of those tensions may help us more effectively to problematise—to use Hamilakis and Yalouri's phrase—the socio-politics of archaeology.

Hamilakis and Yalouri make an important contribution to the recent growth in studies of Greek nationalism, which is part of a more general trend in history, anthropology and related disciplines to analyse nationalism as a cultural phenomenon, and the politics of ‘invented traditions’. By focusing on the sacralisation of archaeological remains, they add an important piece to the general picture of the uses of the past in modern Greece. While doing this they make their argument relevant to those authors looking at the power of objects and material remains to serve as sites for memory and historical consciousness, objects and/or rituals whose function is to ‘recall the past without enumerating it’ (Rappaport 1994: 76). In particular, archaeological remains resemble those ‘inalienable possessions’ which because of their power to symbolise continuity with ancestors, are withdrawn from the circuits of gift and commodity exchange (Weiner 1992). Objects from the past, much as we may attempt to preserve them behind glass cases in museums, have a ‘social life’ and are deployed in struggles for power and ideological legitimacy in the present. Given the sacred or ‘religious’ character that archaeological remains play in the Greek national narrative, Hamilakis and Yalouri sensibly argue that archaeologists, like historians and other scholars, must see their work as necessarily political. We cannot escape into objectivity; studies of the past are always in some way also reflections of the values of the present and the future. The authors rightly point to the hegemonic status of the ancient past in contemporary Greece. As I discovered during my research into historical consciousness on the island of Kalymnos, Kalymnians of radically different religious and political persuasions were united in the view that History should be read for what it revealed about the continuity in character of peoples and nations. Like archaeology, the narrative of Greek nationalism dominated written history on Kalymnos. Popular memories which conflicted with this narrative — for example, of women-led collective action — could still be found, but had none of the social capital to compete with ‘official history’, as written by an educated elite (see Doumanis 1997; Sutton 1998; 1999).

‘Sacralising the past: cults of archaeology in modern Greece’ appears within the framework of recent discussions on archaeology and nationalism and attempts to produce a reflexive and sophisticated analysis of the construction of nationalist discourses, both at the level of state and on an individual basis. Along these lines, Hamilakis and Yalouri argue that attitudes toward classical antiquity in modern Greece constitute what they term a form of ‘secular religion’ which presents distinct affinities with Orthodoxy. In constructing their argument the authors combine a number of analytical domains and touch upon a multitude of issues, all of which merit extensive discussion. However, the main point of their thesis concerns the relationship between the classical past and Greek Orthodox religion, a link forged during the creation of the modern Greek state. According to the authors, apart from being at the roots of nationalist state discourse, this link has also been a persistent, even dominant, feature in the popular perception of classical heritage.

We would like to thank all commentators for their engaging responses and their useful and constructive remarks. Their commentaries offer us a second chance to clarify some of the issues which, in the interest of brevity and due to the broad nature of our analysis, we were not able to develop in the paper. At the same time they point to some of the methodological, ethical, and political problems that this kind of analysis faces. Our article was deliberately broad ranging, both in terms of time-scale and categories of evidence. This breadth has allowed us to trace a phenomenon from its genesis to its subsequent development and persistence, despite variations, up to the present-day. It also allowed us to demonstrate that the phenomenon is encountered in both official and unofficial discourses. It is expressed in a number of media, from public rhetoric to archaeological discourse, the mass media, social practices, and political rituals involving antiquities. Furthermore, in our attempt to demonstrate the interrelationships of the phenomenon with a whole range of other parameters, we have touched upon a number of issues without further exploration. Some of these issues, which have been explored by others in length, were omitted from our analysis. This is the case for example with ‘disemia’ (Herzfeld 1987,95–122); the differentiation between the Greek self-presentation and the representation of Greek identity to (non-Greek) outsiders. This issue has been commented upon by some (Sutton, Alexandri) and, given its complexity, we would prefer not to discuss it within the limits of this commentary. We should note, however, that the phenomenon of the sacralisation of the past seems to be associated with both strategies. Given that the commentaries have largely focused on different issues, we have decided to treat them separately, making the links where appropriate.