Symbolism, symbolically mediated culture and the production of symbolically charged artefacts are today almost unanimously accepted in palaeoanthropology as the defining hallmarks of cognitively and behaviourally modern human beings. This orthodoxy, however, suffers from a number of serious problems, including pervasive dualisms, an internally contradictory methodology and an unwillingness to grapple critically with the symbolism concept. It is suggested that the symbolism paradigm originated in the ideas of Leslie White in the 1940s and 1950s, but did not become a serious presence in palaeoanthropology until the 1980s. This is explained in terms of the adoption of cladistic phylogenetics in that period, and by reference to new evidence that removed Neanderthals from the ancestry of living peoples. The implications of the growing body of evidence for Neanderthal symbolism are discussed. It is concluded that the symbolism paradigm is essentialist and ahistorical, and has acquired the character of an origins myth.

The existence of regional traditions, in terms of methods and practices, has been an accepted fact in social sciences with a longer history than archaeology. In disciplines like anthropology and archaeology, with their strong emphasis on the description of phenomena that are peculiar to a given regional context, the development of a set of methodologies common to scholars dealing with the same region (a methodological ‘local knowledge’) has long been regarded as a natural tendency. It was only as a result of the main thrust connected with the appearance of processual archaeology that the idea (or should we say the myth?) of a universal methodology, i. e. one applicable to all contexts and periods, was developed. Thus, between the 1960s and the early 1980s, in parallel with a very positive standardization and intensification of archaeological techniques, a great effort went into the quest for an ultimate and universal field methodology (Binford 1964). As a result, a very wide agreement was reached fairly soon in some areas; for instance, as far as excavation is concerned, a kind of common practice was established, thanks to figures like Ph. Barker (1977) and E. C. Harris (1979). For some reason field survey has experienced a far less unilinear evolution, with sharp debates arising ever since the earliest attempts at a definition of a modern methodology (see for example the entertaining Hope-Simpson versus Cherry controversy, or the even more amusing debate imagined in Flannery 1976, 131–136).

Can, or should, archaeologists adopt the mantle of the public intellectual and bring archaeology to bear on contemporary issues within divided societies? The line between the archaeologist and the citizen is never clear-cut. How do we balance the recognition that our knowledge and expertise allow us to exert influence with the necessity to act as responsible members of our own societies? I define a public intellectual as one who is not afraid to step outside professional circles and comfort zones and to engage, challenge and comment on issues of broad relevance in the present. Employing Northern Ireland as a case study, I argue that archaeologists have a responsibility to provide leadership and commentary regarding the fraught relationship between past and present.

In the 1920s, and especially during the Third Reich, the ‘lunatic fringe’ of prehistoric archaeology – in this case a group of pseudoscientists that used and created archaeological evidence to found their religious and political visions of the early past – has had a great influence on German archaeology. This group, often called archaeological Schwarmgeister (‘fanatic dreamers’), attempted with varying success to gain influence by occupying party positions and by initiating excavations that might not have occurred otherwise. By focusing on the activities of two pseudoscientists – Wilhelm Teudt and Hermann Wille – as case studies, it becomes clear that they reinforced the existing division (Ahnenerbe versus Amt Rosenberg) within professional archaeology. The reactions from academic archaeologists turn out to have been diverse. The theories of Wilhelm Teudt on the Germanic Externsteine were accepted by some professional archaeologists. At the megalithic graves in the Oldenburg area, where Hermann Wille was active, this did not happen. After 1945 their work was used in the accusations that the assistants of Amt Rosenberg especially had been involved in unscientific research. This accusation did not correspond with contemporary reality but was the result of the struggle for power and influence within the group of academic archaeologists that continued in post-war Germany.

In her article ‘A taphonomy of a dark Anthropocene’, Alexandra Ion responds to and criticizes my discussion around the topic of archaeology and the Anthropocene recently published in this journal. She takes issue with most of my central arguments and especially with my leaning towards object-oriented ontology, speculative realism and the like, describing my perspective as one that is literally dark and depressing and which may lead nowhere but to a dead end. While I make it clear that I will neither answer for nor shield myself behind other peoples’ articulations of OOO, I will in what follows react to Ion's rather harsh critique and use the opportunity to sharpen my arguments further by focusing on three central themes: first, OOO and the archaeological object; second, darkness, dead ends and knowledge of things; and third, ethics, politics and responsibility.

I ‘full-heartedly’ agree with Harris and Sørensen that archaeologists are in need of fuller ‘appreciation of how the encounter with the material world is inherently affective’ in order to more effectively understand ‘how human beings and material things are co-constitutive’ (p. 146). Further, but assuredly not ‘foolhardily’, I would argue that in refining our appreciation and understanding of these matters of matter and emotion and being, we can make an important contribution to contemporary dialogues on emotion beyond ‘archaeological dialogues’; in particular, dialogues with psychological anthropologists.

Drawing from colonial documents and archaeological evidence, this article challenges our conceptions of the Maroon colonial social category. The article focuses on Maroon testimonies recorded by colonial officials and the archaeological record of a Maroon group that settled Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Morenos de Amapa, from 18th-century Spanish colonial Mexico. By reconstructing how Maroons practised and altered Spanish colonial social and geographic landscapes, this article demonstrates that Maroons were not constrained to the ‘inaccessible’ areas that colonial officials attached them to and that present-day studies of Maroons have habituated. Amapa's absent archaeological record and the complaints waged against the Maroons concerning the absence of civility in the newly established town also challenge straightforward notions of Maroons and space.

This paper discusses the emergence of an archaeology of the contemporary era in a Middle Eastern country, Iran. Far from North America and Europe, where the subfield was introduced, appreciated and developed by academic archaeologists, this archaeology is now also becoming established in Iran in spite of academic reluctance and (indirect) political pressure. The most encouraged form of archaeology in Iran remains nationalist and conservative, supported by the current political structures. However, the archaeology of the contemporary past is increasingly practised on a limited scale and has gradually extended its scope and subjects. Highly dependent on context, it has enriched the ways and methods of archaeological practice under dictatorship. The archaeology of the contemporary past is still in its infancy in the Middle East, but the pioneers of the subfield try to take up the challenges of smoothing the way for the future of this interdisciplinary archaeology in Iran and the Middle East. Iranian contemporary archaeology not only aims to investigate conflict, tensions and political (and armed) opposition, but also studies everyday life and disastrous contexts.

In recent years, ethnoarchaeology and the use of ethnographic analogy have come under increasing criticism. Analogy seems necessary because, as post-industrial academics, archaeologists worry that they do not possess the knowledge necessary to interpret archaeological materials directly and thus must consult with coeval ‘premodern’ peoples to develop interpretive baselines. In this paper, we draw attention to a form of scholarly enquiry – 19th-century Bible customs books – that faced a similar challenge and used methodologies that parallel archaeology's use of ethnoarchaeological data. These were books written by missionaries who lived in Palestine for extended periods of time and studied Palestinian life to make sense of obscure elements of the biblical text, believing that life there had remained fundamentally unchanged for the past three thousand years. Using the Bible customs books as a kind of ‘cautionary tale’ typical of ethnoarchaeology, we argue that a consideration of this literature brings into focus some of the challenges faced by archaeologists’ use of analogy. Specifically, Bible customs books expose significant issues in how relations are conceptualized between archaeologists, others and ancients, and show how a strict empirical focus in ethnographic research can insulate key assumptions from critical scrutiny.

The emergence of modern humans during the Late Pleistocene and the phylogenetic fate of the northwestern Eurasian Neandertals have been closely linked to our perceptions of the behavior and abilities of those late archaic humans, the Neandertals. In the past several years, several lines of evidence, including radiometric dating of archeological assemblages, taphonomic analyses of faunal remains, stable isotope analysis of Neandertal remains, the dating of late Neandertal remains, considerations of initial Upper Paleolithic associations and chronologies, and reassessments of Neandertal to early modern human phylogenetic relationships have tended to minimise the perceived behavioral differences between the Neandertals and early modern humans across Europe. Into this context, the discovery of an earlier Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) early modern human child's skeleton at the Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Lapedo Valley, Portugal with distinctive Neandertal features provides further support for the de-dehumanising of the Neandertals. Its anatomical evidence for population blending when early modern humans spread into southern Iberia after 30,000 B.P. indicates that the behavioral differences between the local Neandertals and in-dispersing early modern humans were subtle and did not preclude them from regarding each other as human.

Scholars writing within symmetrical archaeology, or speculative realism, have lately claimed that archaeology should strive to grasp the thing-in-itself. This paper questions the rationale of this claim. It presents the philosophical definition of the concept of a thing-in-itself and a short presentation of its reception. The author argues that the concept of the thing-in-itself has nothing to offer archaeology, and questions why contemporary theoretical archaeologists show such an interest in this term.

In this reaction article I reflect on criticism raised by Torill Christine Lindstrøm and Artur Ribeiro in recent issues of this journal. I attempt to identify the source of our disagreement, and focus on three particular aspects of their previous reactions: (1) their framing of agency in Alfred Gell and symmetrical archaeology, (2) their basis for declaring symmetrical archaeology redundant and (3) their identification of the terminology of symmetrical archaeology as inflated and crammed with ‘buzzwords’ and ‘neologisms’.

Lemaire's reflections on the concept of landscape struck a chord with me, and I found myself nodding in agreement with much of what he has to say. I did, however, have some difficulty in coming to terms with the idea that the landscape is wholly an invention of bourgeois sensibility. Moreover, in his emphasis on the landscape as an object of contemplation, ‘totalized by a human gaze’, I feel that he neglects the activity of depiction – whether this be painting, drawing, writing or musical composition – in favour of the end products, finished works. I should like to focus my comment on these two points.

Since its discovery, Çatalhöyük's iconography has provoked interpretative comment. In a series of writings, Hodder critiqued earlier interpretations of the Çatalhöyük corpus, arguing for asymmetrical gender relations of an enduring and particular type in the European past. While recent research at Çatalhöyük appears to have tempered some of Hodder's interpretative oppositions and scope, it is worthwhile to propose an alternate contextual approach to his original oppositions. This begins with the multiple examples of small carnivores' heads encysted in what may be clay effigies of human breasts and reads the same corpus as involving gender not solely with danger or death, but also with food and fleshly transformation. In this interpretation, the roles and essences of wild and domestic animals, women and men, food and death, are more complex, interpenetrating and mutable. Building on recent work at the site, it is possible to propose the existence of zones of transformation within households.

This contribution will consider how the practice of archaeology ‘brings a public into being’. Drawing on examples of the excavation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the First World War, particularly those cases resulting from activism on the part of memory campaign groups, this paper considers how the act of excavation can serve as a catalyst for members of the public to coalesce and deliberate the complex and far-reaching questions associated with the post-mortem treatment and commemoration of the dead. The necessity to fulfil the aims of particular constituencies, such as the relatives of the dead, or the need to maintain a position of impartiality, may militate against the archaeologist's full intellectual engagement with these questions, resulting in the archaeologist's role being defined primarily by their technical or practical contribution. The concept of the issue network is explored as a way to understand the formation of memory campaigns and the archaeologist's relationship with the public. The idea of the network underlines the potential for the archaeologist to make an intellectual contribution that develops and democratizes the debate surrounding an excavation, even if their position is contested, and so bring a wider public into being.

In the midst of ardent calls for decolonizing and building a more anti-racist archaeology, whiteness has gone largely unacknowledged in the history of disciplinary thought and practice. As a point of departure, this article asks: why are there so many White archaeologists? In addressing this question, I suggest that the development of early archaeological method and thought was deeply affected by White supremacy. In presenting the two case studies of Montroville Dickson and Flinders Petrie, I suggest that a radical new history of archaeology is needed if we are to build a more equitable, anti-racist field in the future. Central to this process to recognizing the role that whiteness has played and continues to play in archaeological practice and pedagogy.

The classic idea of the Roman army, especially of the legions, is that of a man's world, where discipline and military drill dominate, and where there is no room for women, whatever their social status or function. This idea has been fostered by the picture painted by the antique authors, in which fighting by women is reserved to goddesses (Athena/Minerva) and exceptional personages. The normal female is described as a mother or wife, whose chief occupations were confined to the organization of the household, the up-bringing of the children, spinning and weaving (Marquardt 1975, 58). This role model fits in excellently with the social structure of 19th-century Europe, where women were also absent from military camps. This, in turn, can be traced back to the to the Prussian view of military virtues, which would be diminished by the presence of women. Many concepts of Roman military archaeology have their origin in this period. In many ways these traditions still influence our views on Roman life, as analyses of the roles of women and children in archaeological illustrations have shown (Röder 2002; Becker and Hölschen in press). German archaeological research, especially, concentrates on questions of building-structures, military units or dating, whilst social aspects of life in the camps or on the frontier are normally neglected.

In this paper I argue that we should attend to why and how forgetting happens in concert with the construction of social memory, history, identity and heritage. Through a focus on processes of forgetting, this discussion offers a new set of interpretations of early colonial Sylvester Manor, a 17th-century plantation site in coastal New York. More specifically, the construction of racial categories over several centuries implicates social memory and forgetting, and introduces issues to the manner in which we remember the site where people of European, African and Native American ancestry met. This analysis views memory and forgetting not only as historical vectors in racialization, but also as factors in current identity politics.

Duncan Garrow's article is a thought-provoking review of the concept of structured deposition and I agree with several of the points he makes. Thinking along the same lines, I would like to make a few additional remarks on structured deposition.

Despite widespread attention to the recent past as an archaeological topic, few archaeologists have attended to the particular social and ecological stakes of one of the most defining material features of contemporary life: the long-term effects of toxic industrial waste. Identifying the present era as the high Capitalocene, this article highlights the contemporary as a period caught between the boom-and-bust cycles of capitalist production and the persistence of industrial waste. Drawing on an archaeological case study from Edmonton, Alberta, we outline how the working-class shanty town community of Ross Acreage (occupied 1900–1950) was formed in relation to the industrial waste that suffused its landscape. Drawing on data from both archaeological excavation and environmental testing, this article argues that the community of Ross Acreage was defined materially by its long-term relationship with industrial waste, what we term a ‘fence-line community’.