This study addresses a longstanding historical and archaeological problem at the central Cretan urban centre of Knossos. This is the so-called ‘Archaic gap’, an apparent dearth of evidence for sixth-century BCE material culture across the extensively excavated city. The concept of a pronounced Knossian decline or recession at this time has been reaffirmed in recent years, with widespread repercussions for Cretan archaeology. By reconsidering ceramics from the Royal Road North and Unexplored Mansion excavations, as well as situating these deposits within their urban and regional contexts, I question the epistemological foundations of the Knossian gap and provide new directions for identifying sixth-century Knossian material culture. I propose that the apparent ‘gap’ is a product of several factors: (1) a relative disinterest in imports in sixth-century Knossos, (2) a dispersed, rather than densely nucleated, urban settlement pattern, and (3) a previously unrecognised conservatism in Knossian ceramics, where some of the ‘Orientalising’ styles traditionally dated to the seventh century were retained into the sixth. This phenomenon of conservatism differs in important ways from the ‘restraint’ or ‘austerity’ that has been previously proposed as characteristic of Archaic and Classical Crete.

Archaeology in the United States is caught in a “curation crisis” (Childs 1995; Childs and Warner 2019; Marquardt et al. 1982; SAA Advisory Committee on Curation 2003; Trimble and Marino 2003) and a “digital data crisis” (or “deluge”) more specifically (Bevan 2015; Clarke 2015; Kansa and Kansa 2021; Katsianis et al. 2022; Kersel 2015; McManamon et al. 2017:239–240; Rivers Cofield et al. 2024). Recent estimates suggest that, collectively, over 1.4 billion dollars are spent annually to support archaeological work that is mandated by federal law (SRI Foundation 2020). Although substantial efforts are underway to generate and provide mechanisms for managing, curating, and sharing the resultant digital data, we suggest that a critical step that has yet to be taken is to describe and visualize the components, connections, and causal dynamics of the US digital data system as it currently functions. Here, we specifically apply a “systems thinking” approach to produce such a high-level model of this system. We argue that understanding and visualizing this system will help us all “think bigger” (Heilen and Manney 2023); identify sources of knowledge, opportunities for critical analysis, collaboration, and capacity building; and increase much-needed archaeological digital literacy (Kansa and Kansa 2022). We conceptualize this as bringing “equilibrium” to the system, and in this article, we make several suggestions on how to bring this about. These insights can enable practitioners to better understand their roles in and contributions to the overall system and to evaluate efforts to improve data sharing, management, and curation practices not only within their organizations and departments but beyond.

I want to begin by thanking Craig Cipolla, Lindsay Montgomery, Susan Pollock, Kathleen Sterling and Christopher Witmore for their responses. I am honoured to be in conversation with such thoughtful and insightful scholars. In my reading, two main themes emerged from their comments—citational politics and what the future of posthumanist archaeologies might look like. To conclude our discussion of archaeology, Black studies and posthumanism, I will address each in turn.

Greer offers an excellent primer on some Black Studies scholars’ critiques of humanism, for which he uses the label ‘counter-humanism’ after Erasmus (2020), distinguishing these approaches from ‘posthumanism.’ He identifies two primary strains of posthumanism relevant to archaeological interpretation, symmetrical archaeology and posthuman feminism, though examples of the latter are drawn from a broader body of academic literature and are subject to less critique. Posthumanists are shown to prioritize dismantling a human–object divide, while counter-humanists critique the human–non-human split. This may appear to be more or less the same project, but the framing of ‘A/not-A’ rather than ‘A–B’ emphasizes the hegemonic relationships between these categories, the continuity within, and makes more explicit the fact that people are included in both the non-human and object categories.

In ‘Humanist Missteps’, Matthew Greer makes the pointed observation that non-anthropocentric frameworks, including symmetrical, object-oriented and posthuman feminist archaeologies, have primarily focused on deconstructing the human–non-human binary while failing to problematize humanist assumptions about who counts as Human. At the core of Greer's argument is the matter of citational practice: which social theorists are archaeologists referencing in their efforts to craft relational approaches to humans, things, animals and plants? In answering this question, the author points to a notable lack of Black Studies theorists, particularly the work of Sylvia Wynter, Zakkiyah Jackson and Tiffany King, in posthumanist archaeologies. While I agree with Greer's critiques, his essay stops short of explaining this citational silence. In this brief commentary, I suggest that this absence of Black Studies scholarship reflects the fact that the discipline of archaeology remains a ‘white public space’ (Brodkin et al. 2011: 545) and maintains an artificial division between analysis and activism.

Does non-anthropocentrism necessitate a turn away from marginalized people? This is a crucial question, asked lately by a growing number of archaeologists. Some see a turn toward things as a turn away from people, while others take a more nuanced view. Greer falls into the latter group, exploring this question by highlighting important contributions and corrections from Black Studies. Although the paper is framed as a challenge to posthumanism, I read it as a broad critique of non-anthropocentric approaches; after reflecting on these relationships over the last few years, I no longer draw strong associations between posthumanism and symmetrical archaeology, entanglement theory, or even ANT; for me, posthumanism involves a relatively greater degree of social and political concern than the others.

Posthumanist archaeologies have attempted to move beyond humanist conceptions of the human for over a decade. But they have done so by primarily focusing on the ontological split between humans and non-human things. This only addresses one part of humanism, as Black studies scholars have long argued that it also equates humanity writ large with white, economically privileged, cis-gendered, heterosexual men, thereby excluding everyone else from the category of the human. They further argue that the violence and oppression inflicted on those excluded from humanism's definition of the human allows this ontological category to come into being. This article introduces Black studies’ critiques of humanism and applies them to posthumanist archaeologies. Ultimately, it argues that by not attending to the critiques raised by Black studies scholars, posthumanist archaeologies have inadvertently made humanist missteps wherein they continue using elements of humanism's definition of the human in their attempts to move beyond humanism.

The capacity of northern European gentlemen scholars educated in the love of wisdom, human dignity, friendship and rationality to treat their fellow human beings with irreconcilable prejudice and hold to ghastly beliefs of racial superiority, which legitimated violence, exploitation and extermination elsewhere, is one of the great tragedies of humanism. That the images of the human cultivated in texts were at variance with the lived experience of those who were treated as other than human was rarely noted in the books they read. I appreciate Matthew Greer's efforts to bring these concerns to the fore. I am grateful for the opportunity to read Sylvia Wynter, among others, and to think about their work in counter-humanism. I stand with Greer who reminds us that, as archaeologists, we must do more than critique ideologies, fight for inclusion, and engage in dialogue as demanded by a radical pluralism (Shanks & Tilley 1992, 246). Equity, social justice, openness, and decolonization demand the sustained effort of us all, both in our capacity as archaeologists and as readers of texts.

Matthew Greer offers us a powerful, refreshing and thought-provoking critique of posthumanist approaches in archaeology as he sees them through the lens of Black Studies. He asks us to leave aside—temporarily—concerns with anthropocentrism to concentrate instead on the human side of the equation, while nonetheless positioning himself in line with posthumanist efforts to dismantle the human–non-human divide. The crux of Greer's arguments is that posthumanist approaches do not go far enough in distancing themselves from humanism for two reasons. First, humanity remains (tacitly) equated with white, heterosexual, economically well-off men, a single group that forms the scale against which all other people are measured. Second, posthumanist approaches do not acknowledge that racism and related forms of oppression were integral to the emergence of humanism and not a by-product of it.

Predicting coastal change depends upon our knowledge of postglacial relative sea-level variability, partly controlled by glacio-isostatic responses to ice-sheet melting. Here, we reconstruct the postglacial relative sea-level changes along the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of northwestern South America by numerically solving the sea-level equation with two scenarios of mantle viscosity: global standard average and high viscosity. Our results with the standard model (applicable to the Pacific coast) agree with earlier studies by indicating a mid-Northgrippian high stand of ~2 m. The high-viscosity simulation (relevant to the Caribbean coast) shows that the transition from far- to intermediate-field influence of the Laurentide Ice Sheet occurs between Manzanillo del Mar and the Gulf of Morrosquillo. South of this location, the Colombian Caribbean coast has exhibited a still stand with a nearly constant Holocene relative sea level. By analyzing our simulations considering sea-level indicators, we argue that tectonics is more prominent than previously assumed, especially along the Caribbean coast. This influence prevents a simplified view of regional relative sea-level changes on the northwestern South American coast.