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.

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.

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.

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.

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.