How ‘progressive’ have archaeologists been in the progress made on gender studies during the 1990s? All archaeologists, male and female, must accept the need to theorize gender, and to rethink accordingly their traditional research priorities. Feminist theory is essential for the study of gender in archaeology because it has paid closer attention to gender as an analytical category than any other body of theory, and at the same time made important links within and between disciplines. Most male archaeologists have been recalcitrant if not loathe to focus on gender as a key concept in archaeological theory, even though writers treating ‘masculinity’ in the social sciences and literary theory have been active in this field for over a decade. This study discusses masculinist reactions to feminism and suggests that ‘masculinist’ approaches are derivative of feminist scholarship. Perhaps the most important contribution of masculinist scholarship has been to insist upon the existence of divergent, multiple masculinities, and by extension femininities, as opposed to binary oppositions or ideal types. The study of men and masculinities, of women and femininities, involves consideration of social and gender issues that should not become the exclusive domain of either women or men – the goal is an archaeology informed by feminism, one that looks critically at theories of human action and allows archaeological data to challenge existing social theory.

When can we say that a Bantu smith knows the ‘meaning’ of iron smelting - only when he explicitly recognizes the underlying sexual structure of it or simply when he knows how to go on smithing? Is structuralist theory, which considers meaning as codic and diacritical, really incommensurable with a phenomenological view of meaning as something primarily experiential? In this posthumous paper, Stefan Bekaert argues that the differences between both perspectives are gradual rather than fundamental. Drawing on the sexual metaphors in Sakata iron technology, he presents a tentative scale of meaning levels: the level of typified experience, the level of pragmatic motive, the level of (meta)physical intervention, the level of experiential gestalt, the level of explicit metaphor, and the level of codic oppositions. Rejecting the ‘one-world-ism’ predominant in many social sciences, he argues that humans inhabit and draw on many worlds at once. (DVR)

Orville's foot sank in the soft ground and once he was out of the brush and onto the tarmac, he spent a minute scrapping the sole clean. There was a red pick-up pulled up in front of the estate gates, right under the flag-pole. It was a big American pick-up, a Chevy with fat wheel arches in the back and wide double-sized knobbly tires. The kind of thing which had been designed for off-roading but, in reality, which never ventured far from the pub car-park.

In their jointly authored paper ‘Relativism, objectivity and the politics of the past’ which was published in Archaeological Dialogues 4.2 (1997, 164–184), the ‘Lampeter Archaeology Workshop’ argued that there has been an increasing tendency for authors to characterise ‘post-processualists’ as proponents of relativism, understood as the inability to evaluate different versions of the past or present. This naive view of relativism as ‘anything goes’ (known philosophically as judgemental relativism) was rejected in favour of a more nuanced understanding of different forms of relativism and the criteria which archaeologists can and do use to evaluate versions of the past. They also discussed the relationships between epistemologies, ethics and politics in this context, and suggested that there are implications for the ways we might engage in archaeological debates. This paper was commented on by the philosopher Diederick Raven and the archaeologists Ulrich Veit and Ian Hodder in Archaeological Dialogues 4.2 (1997, 185–194). Below, more comments are provided by the archaeologists Philip Kohl, Reinhard Bernbeck, Susan Pollock and John Bintliff. Finally, the Lampeter Ar

We welcome the Lampeter Archaeology Workshop's (LAW) attempt to clarify the ways in which they understand relativism in post-processual archaeology and especially their distinctions among several kinds of relativism. We would like to comment on links between epistemological relativism and a particular view of history (or, more generally, the past) that the LAW's discussion raises. In particular, we draw attention to several implications of their positions, including the relative emphasis placed on the past and/or the present in archaeological interpretations, different ways of linking past and present, and the political implications of such links

There is nothing inherently new, of course, about the study of men in archaeology. For example, in his important history of the creation of modern European masculinity George Mosse (The Image of Man, Oxford, 1996) describes one objective of eighteenth-century archaeologists as entailing the rediscovery of ancient Greek sculpture. Among other things Mosse demonstrates how an ‘ideal of masculine beauty took its inspiration from Greece’ and from the Greek statues in which the male body is deified, to such an extent that ‘the noble soul of each youth manifests itself through the harmonious position of his naked body during gymnastic exercises, foreshadowing the important role that gymnastics will play in shaping modern manhood’.

Knapp's paper deserves recognition not only for its contribution to the burgeoning discourse on gender archaeology, but for enriching discussion with a masculinist vocabulary drawn from wider sources within and outside the academy. Despite the well-intentioned and sympathetic discussion, however, one must ask whether we are any better informed from the paper as to what a masculinist approach to archaeology might look like.

Reading the ‘Lampeter Manifesto’ did rather conjure up a picture of a small huddle of Post-Processualists (I don't know the collective term, but ‘in the trade’ adherents of the wider movement to which their approaches belong - Postmodernists - are known as ‘Pomos’), gathered in a seminar room in the remote fastness of Lampeter University, nervously eyeing the horizon for rabid positivists and other Neanderthals on the intellectual rampage, while engaged in a process of mutual encouragement (‘consciousness-raising’?) for their chosen position within Archaeological Theory.

Firstly, we would like to extend our thanks to the editors of Archaeological Dialogues and those authors who took the trouble to consider our article and write their responses to it. This discussion is a welcome extension to the workshop we had in Lampeter, and represents the open debate and pluralism which we believe is vital for an active and self-critical discipline. In this reply we would like to concentrate mainly on substantive issues raised by the respondents, rather than engage in point-scoring against individual participants. Nonetheless, there are a number of what we feel are mis-readings or mis-representations of our original article, which in themselves may be symptomatic of the type of ‘debate’ which has unfortunately characterised much of the discussion of recent theoretical and political issues, particularly within Anglo-American archaeology. In particular, it is regrettable that several commentators discussed our paper very much in the context of the old dichotomy of processual and postprocessual archaeologies. While Veit (p. 192), Bintliff, Kohl and, to some extent, Raven considered the paper as an attempt to moderate a single, established postprocessual position which may go some way towards a ‘convergence’ of both camps, Veit also viewed it in terms of a ‘counter-attack against processual archaeology’ (p. 189). We would like to emphasise that our multivocal discussion should not be seen as being written by, or on behalf of a certain ‘camp’ within current debates in our discipline, but by a diverse mix of theoretically interested archaeologists with a wide range of opinions, some of which conflict with one another. Other issues of polemic, rhetoric and form are dealt with at the end of this reply. At this point, however, it may be helpful to reiterate the origins and aims of our article.

I thank the respondents for their quite diverse reactions to my paper. Gutmann begins by noting that any engagement with feminist theory in archaeology needs to reassure the world of gender studies that there is no intention of undermining the ‘foundational premises’ of a feminist archaeology; by so doing we would jeopardize its explanatory power and damage its political potential to critique gender inequality. Throughout my paper, I was at pains to emphasize the feminist underpinnings of masculinist theory, and at the same time to note that we must ensure that ‘reactionary masculinities’ like those of Iron John must be differentiated from the concept of masculinity as understood by sociologists, sociocultural anthropologists, psychologists and others. Gutmann succinctly expands but equally makes my point by noting that the contemporary study of men and masculinities reveals a ‘nuanced attempt to cope with structural and ideological contradictions involved with masculinity through time and space’, and that notions of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities have been used very effectively ‘in studying various contradictions relating to ethnicity, race, sexual preferences, and even platonic friendship as they manifest themselves in male-male relations.’ These are not masculinist reactions against feminist theory or a feminist archeology but rather responses to them, intended to expand the dialogue and engage all archaeologists in the pursuit of a gendered archaeology.

This paper suggests that the goddess movement is becoming increasingly intertwined with mainstream archaeology, an illustrative case being Çatalhöyük. This is another salient example of the public's avid consumption of archaeology and its multivalent imagery. Yet there are additional, fundamental issues of a more philosophical nature to consider. For example, feminist practitioners might consider interrogating the very ontological bedrock on which goddess narratives are layered. They reinforce three pervasive dualisms which feminists have sought to dispel: nature:culture, mind:body, reason:emotion. Additionally, masculinist theorists might find many of the underlying concepts sexist against men, since they seek to highlight and restore the primacy of women. Despite the positive overtones of the movement, I argue that it is often reactionary, anti-feminist and it essentialises the roles of women and men.

This paper is a review of recent academic debate dealing with the relationship between perception and landscape. It is suggested that there are two ways in which the perception of landscape is considered: the explicit and the inherent approach. The explicit approach isolates perception within the landscape as something between the observed and the cognitised. While an inherent approach does not isolate perception because it is embedded within ways of living - or being. The discussion is illustrated with archaeological examples.

The late Neolithic monument complex at Avebury, Wiltshire, continues to elicit much curiosity and attention. However, with excavation unlikely to occur in the near future, new and non-destructive means of exploring the monument complex are required. Although a number of such investigations have been undertaken, to date no concerted effort has been made to consolidate the results within a single framework. The opening stages of such a project, involving innovative research using GIS and Virtual-Reality technologies within an explicitly theoretical interpretative agenda, are described here.

The British Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland in the nineteenth-century was an official systematic survey which created a picture document of the landscape and the past. While the maps influenced the institutionalization of archaeology, the documenting of an archaeological record on the maps shaped their look and language. Within a setting of the political contest between British colonialism and Irish nationalism, both the Ordnance Survey maps and the archaeological past they recorded became powerful tools that helped to construct Irish identity and a sense of place and heritage.