Research into the iconography and symbolism of early modern funerary monuments provides an important new approach to this unexploited source. Here the remarkable monuments to Sir Henry Savile are explored.

The history Curriculum for Wales is a distinctive and politically sensitive document that has attempted to highlight features which will be of cultural relevance to those in the Principality. Unlike the English curriculum, there is a clear opportunity to consider some elements of prehistory, and this has been seized with enthusiasm by schools at Key Stage 2, for children aged between 7 and 11 (Welsh Office 1991; Howell 1994). Study Unit 1, the Earliest Peoples, runs up to the Bronze Age, but it is provision for Study Unit 2, The Celts, which is of particular interest here.

Aboriginal, Historical and Maritime archaeology have been taught in Australian universities since the 1960s, and archaeology has made major contributions to our understanding of Australia's past. Yet many Australians are still more interested in archaeology overseas than in Australia itself. This partly reflects Australia's history as a former British colony which currently has a minority of indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, many of whom regard archaeology as yet another colonial imposition which at best is largely irrelevant to their own understanding of their history. Present government policies empower Aboriginal people to veto certain kinds of archaeological research they do not agree with. At minimum this may require archaeologists to engage in what can become protracted consultation, with uncertain outcomes.

We are grateful for the opportunity to respondto Erickson's (1999) critique of our articles onhuman-environment interactions in the LakeTiticaca basin of Bolivia (Ortloff & Kolata 1993;Abbott et al. 1997; Binford et al. 1997). Hisdecision to publish this critique in ANTIQUITY,rather than in the journals in which our articlesappeared, permits us to reach a broaderaudience. Erickson labels our interpretationsa form of 'neo-environmental determinism', buthis rejection of our conclusions stems fromserious misunderstandings and is misleadingto readers who have not examined our originaldata. He (p. 634) claims:1 our research represents 'simplistic reductionistthinking' that treats humans as 'passivepawns' of environmental change;2 our dating of the chronic drought in the Andeanaltiplano after AD 1150 is impreciseand not correlated with the 12th-centurydisintegration of the Tiwanaku state; and3 the drought did not affect intensive agriculturalproduction.

The teaching of archaeology in higher education in Greece cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader realms of antiquity, archaeology and the past in modern Greek society and the context of Greek higher education. A growing body of literature has shown that archaeological antiquities have contributed substantially to the generation and perpetuation of a genealogical national myth upon which the modern nation- state of Greece was founded (e.g. Gourgouris 1996; Herzfeld 1982, 1987; Kitromilides 1989; Morris 1994; Skopetea 1988). This ideology of nationalism not only presented the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization for 19th-century Greece, but also presented the inhabitants of Greece as direct descendants of Socrates and Plato. Intellectuals and the emerging middle class merchants imported this western romantic ideology (so popular amongst the European middle-class of the time) into Greece.

In their reply to our recent paper (Blockley et al.2000), Housley et ~ l(2.0 00) make four substantialpoints. Firstly, they assert that our critique oftheir two-stage re-colonization model rests solelyupon radiocarbon calibration. Secondly, and consequently,they point to problems with Late Glacialcalibration curves. Thirdly, they argue thatradiocarbon calibration should be advanced onlyfor sound archaeological reasons. Finally, theystate that our approach is environmentally deterministicand that we have demonstrated onlya weak correlation between human demographicchange and rapid climatic amelioration.Housley et al. (2000) argue against the use ofLate Glacial calibration curves, and in particularstate that 'it is because the calibration data are soheavily smoothed that Blockley et al. dispute ournotion of a northward movement of people'

In 1995 Bruce Trigger dismissed the role of nationalism within the archaeology of south Asia (1995: 271), apparently ignoring even the archaeological nature of the crest of the new Indian republic — the Sarnath lion; and his comments have acted as a catalyst for this special number of papers, many of which explore the very real relationship between the south Asian nation-state and archaeology. We have expanded Trigger's tripartite division of nationalist, colonialist or imperialist archaeology (1984), to reflect the aspirations of additional units such as regions, religious groups and individual communities over the last 200 years. In so doing we have used the concept of identity, as offered by Northrup (1989: 63), to encompass these disparate groups:

This paper argues that Indian identity, as built within the colonial Indological framework of race, language and culture and its Aryan–non-Aryan dichotomy, is unacceptable to modern India and Indians. It is unacceptable because of its emphasis on the notion of Aryan invasion and the subjugation of, and interaction with, the native population. This notion, the key element of ancient Indian history, culture and archaeology, keeps a vast segment of Indian population away from a sense of positive participation in the country's past. Further, the key ingredient of this notion is the Indian Vedic literature, which thus makes it primarily a textual notion, and as long as it persists, the Indian upper castes, who ipso facto are given a place in the Aryan ruling order, have no particular reason to seek a primarily archaeologybased past for themselves. However, before we examine these twin formulations in some detail, it might be useful to look at how the question of identity is emerging as a major phenomenon in India in current years.

It is now well accepted that archaeology and education are inextricably linked (cf. MacKenzie & Stone 1994) and that the past is often represented as mirrored by the dominant groups in a given society. The late educator Paulo Freire warned that educators ‘need to use their students' cultural universe as a point of departure, enabling students to recognise themselves as possessing a specific and important cultural identity’ (interview in MacLaren 1988: 224). Both education and archaeology deal thus with the manipulation of present and past to forge identities useful for people in power and archaeologists and educators have been active promoters of critical approaches. Critical pedagogy has been concerned with student experience, taking the problems and needs of the students themselves as its starting point and fighting for pedagogical empowerment (Giroux & MacLaren 1986: 234–8).

The idea of indigenous people in South Asia is more complex than elsewhere, in part because it involves longstanding and intimate contact between ‘tribal’ and non-tribal peoples (Béteille 1998; Gardner 1985; Lukacs in press). Additional complications arise from the hierarchal and endogamous structure of Hindu social and ritual organization, including the plight of people who occupy the lowest stratum of the hierarchy — ‘untouchables’ (Charsley 1996; Delikge 1992; 1993). Because the system of socioreligious stratification known as caste does not encourage social mobility, new ethnic identity is often sought by groups whose position in the hierarchy is low (Dumont 1980; Klass 1980; Kolinda 1978). Biological anthropologists are interested in the caste system for the opportunities it offers to understand the interaction of cultural behaviour with the biological patterning of human genetic and phenotypic diversity (Majumder 1998; Majumder et al. 1990; Malhotra 1974). Although most Westerners perceive caste as an immutable category, in which membership is ascribed, and hierarchal rank is forever fixed, many accounts of castes changing their occupational and ritual status have been documented (Silverberg 1968). Some castes seek to elevate their ritual or economic position by claiming higher status and adopting an appropriate new caste name, while others lay claim to indigenous origins seeking to benefit from rights and privileges that accompany autochthonous status. Such claims often involve adopting new or different patterns of behaviour commonly associated with the new social, religious, indigenous or occupational position claimed. This process is sufficiently common in India to be labelled ‘Sanskritization’ when a Hindu caste emulates higher castes (Srinivas 1968), ‘Hinduization’ when tribal or non-caste groups emulate Hindu castes, or more generally, ‘elite-emulation’ (Lynch 1969).

Stewardship, diverse pasts, social relevance, ethics and values, written and oral communication, basic archaeological skills and real world problem solving — these issues are at the very core of archaeology as an evolving, dynamic discipline, in order to understand, interpret, manage, and protect the past. The profession and the people who practice it, in all its diverse applications, are and have been influenced by shifting paradigms and changing levels of understanding. We now use, every day, terms and technology that did not exist just a few years ago, in a constantly changing discipline.