This paper sets out to examine issues of continuity and change in the social hierarchies of the peoples of the Gallic interior, between the late Iron Age and the early Roman period. This part of the empire is one in which we might reasonably expect to find substantial continuity of social structure. Many scholars have argued that this is indeed the case, notwithstanding the evident changes in material culture. This paper argues that the opposite was true. Apparent similarities, I suggest, reinforced by the ways we have studied provincial cultures, have masked dramatic changes in the basis of social power. That conclusion has implications for other provincial societies, and for Roman imperialism in general.

Archaeology has to re-think the terms of its practice, because current debate tends to intervene at the level of theory, which leaves the discipline ungrounded in a theory of practice or a conception of the historical coming into being of archaeology as a discipline. From a South African perspective, its grand narrative is primarily concerned with the development of social theory in the West but it does not provide - it cannot provide – an account of the formation of the discipline as a social and signifying practice situated in a broader social and political context. Central to this re-thinking, I argue, are questions of social value, and the role played by archaeology in projects of restitution, social justice, memory and identity.

This paper is a plea for the rehabilitation of the concept of Romanisation in the discussion about socio-cultural change resulting from the confrontation of (proto-)historical peoples with Roman power and an often dominant Roman culture. In the theoretical introduction, first of all an attempt is made to identify the social mechanisms of Romanisation; this is followed by a discussion on a model of dimensional analysis attuned to the dynamics of specific processes of Romanisation.

The major part of the article is devoted to an outline of the Romanisation process in the northern frontier zone of the Roman Empire, the Lower Rhine region. It focuses on the political and cultural interaction between the Batavian tribe living here and the Romans in the period between the Gallic war and the 3rd century A.D. The paper attempts to explain the differences between the process of Romanisation in the central part of Gaul (‘Interior Gaul’ in Greg Woolf's terminology) which had already been ‘civilised’ early on and the military frontier, where tribal traditions still continued to play an important part, certainly until the Batavian revolt of 69/70 A.D.

Among the influences that have altered the nature of archaeology over the past two decades, two major trends are singled out for discussion here. The first is the emerging interest in understanding the subjective experiences and perceptions of life in the past. The second trend is the growing concern with making archaeology more meaningful and accessible to a wider public. Some of the characteristics of these two trends will be considered in turn. It is then argued that, although these two movements are generally considered as quite separate issues, they stem from shared social and historic roots. The recognition of the inseparability of these two areas of concern has far-reaching implications for the nature and role of future archaeological practice.

G. Woolf argues that the transformation of the aristocracies of Interior Gaul was not so much caused by the conquest itself as by the fact that from that point in time these aristocracies became involved in the transformations of Roman society following the introduction of the Principate and other subsequent changes in Roman politics (novel ways of elite competition and gaining popularitas). Tacitus discusses these developments at length. In addition, this process took place in a provincial area where outside interference was rare.

Both Greg Woolf and Jan Slofstra have written articles that consider the theoretical agendas of archaeologists constructing narratives of the early Roman period. Then, both go on to construct their own narratives of change in two contiguous, but rather different areas of temperate Europe. In general I find the first part of their narratives as constructed more theoretically in harmony than their discourse on theory would suggest. I would like to pick up on three themes which I felt cross both papers: first on the nature of memory and kingship; secondly on the issue of Romanisation; and finally on the development of rural settlement or ‘villas’.

Archaeology is not just about writing reports and interpreting ancient societies and their social structures, but it is also a process which should aim at the creation of a clear communicative message to the general public. Thus, archaeologists should be aware of every possible medium of communication – verbal, written, visual, sound – to express re-constructions of ancient pasts. In this essay I express some ideas about how archaeologists could collaborate with experts, for example theatre directors, in defining artistic way of communicating the past. Finally, I focus on the relationship between academia and fringe archaeology and I look into the political role of archaeologists in modern society.

It is a rare opportunity to be invited to comment upon two papers at the same time: the temptation is then to either search for common threads, or to directly compare them. Individually, both Slofstra and Woolf offer an interesting perspective on the process of Romanisation in Gaul and the Rhine delta, but taken together, they become a dialogue on how we tell the story of Romanisation: the problems and conventions inherent within it. Both Slofstra and Woolf are telling the story of cultural change. Although they take opposing stands on whether to call this Romanisation or not, essentially it is the same story, and it requires the same techniques for telling it. As change, it can be viewed as a process taking place over time, and which therefore requires a temporal framework, and (like all good stories) a beginning, a middle and an end. These are not unproblematic, and the choices made (or in some cases enforced) are not without consequence.

Why do we still speak of foragers and farmers? The division of societies into categories including ‘savage’ hunter-gatherers and ‘civilised’ farmers has its roots in seventeenth-century northwestern Europe, but has implications for archaeologists and anthropologists today. Such concepts still provide the frameworks for much intellectual labour including university courses, academic conferences and publications, as well as providing the basis for moral and political evaluations of contemporary societies and practices for a wide range of people, from governments to development agencies, ‘alternative’ archaeologies and parts of the Green movement. This paper examines some of the currents which contributed towards their establishment, and argues that writing ‘across’ such deep-seated categories may be the only way to challenge their hegemony and develop new questions. As an example recent trends in data and interpretation of the ‘mesolithic-neolithic transition’ in western Europe are discussed.

Jan Slofstra and Greg Woolf have written very stimulating papers about the changing character of societies, and especially of their elites, in Interior Gaul and on the Rhine frontier. The contrast between these two regions provides a valuable arena for considering larger questions of change in Gaul, with emphasis on development of civic society in Central Gaul and of a militarised society on the frontier. I shall first comment on a few of the important issues that these papers raise, then suggest some additional and alternative ways of thinking about the problems. Woolf's discussion of cultural practice shows how this approach can help to focus future research on subjects related directly to the actual changes. His review of expressions of status differences in earlier circumstances, back into the early Iron Age, provides a useful long-term context for considering the changes that accompanied and followed the Roman conquest. The distinction he draws between the mainly public display of elite status in late Iron Age contexts, and more private displays in the Roman period, is important and merits further investigation. In Slofstra's paper, I find the discussion of the relationships between structure and agency very useful in this context. His emphasis on the interplay between the categories power, culture, and identity is highly pertinent. His explication of the differences in Roman policy and native reaction between pre-Augustan and post-Augustan times is instructive. The contrasting patterns he outlines between changes in Central Gaul and those on the Rhine frontier, and the three-level interpretation he presents for understanding the Batavian revolt, are valuable models for formulating future research strategies.

Mark Pluciennik's paper offers an insightful review of those seventeenth-century philosophical issues that influence archaeological theory, even today. I am in broad agreement on the significance of the seventeenth century, though I prefer to see that century as a prelude to the eighteenth. To my mind, it is only in the eighteenth century that hunter-gatherers become ‘invented’ in a form that is fully recognisable in modern archaeological terms (Barnard 2002a). In this commentary I shall concentrate on that issue with reference to Pluciennik's ‘six inter-related factors’, commenting but briefly where appropriate on his attempt to ‘write across’ boundaries through his example of the interpretation of the mesolithic-neolithic transition.

Archaeological dialogues are not always genteel affairs. I have been very fortunate in the care with which the commentators have read my paper and the generosity with which they have responded to it. Collectively, their remarks raise more issues than I can adequately respond to in my turn.

Mark Pluciennik has presented us with an excellent and original piece of research. His conclusion that the current categorisation of pre-industrial societies into hunter-gatherers and farmers is, effectively, a modern invention represents a continuation of his earlier investigations into this subject (1998; 2001). He supports this conclusion with very convincing arguments, and offers a historically contingent explanation in terms of the coalescence of several ideological and economic ‘currents’ which, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, led to the establishment of a categorical distinction between ‘savage hunter-gatherers’ and ‘civilised farmers’. In my comment, I would like to focus on two issues, broadly following the structure of his paper: (1) in general terms, are we really dealing with yet another ‘invented tradition’, spawned by the need for an ideological justification for the supremacy of western capitalist ideology and economic order? (2) How do we categorise early farming, fishing, hunting and gathering communities in the past, if at all?

Although the title of Pluciennik's essay refers to hunter-gatherers, his description of the genealogy of that concept hardly mentions them in these terms; rather, seventeenth and eighteenth century European perceptions of non-peasant pursuits and primitive societies are discussed. Certainly, the labels themselves are unimportant, it is their meaning that matters, in this case the Image of the Other. Pluciennik avoids the noble savage strand of European thinking, and instead emphasises the primitive, un-civilized counterstrand. He must have had a great time in the amassing of seventeenth century quotes on the forests and wildernesses and their most profitable use in the eyes of European merchants and their grooms. Yet most of this ground has been covered previously with a balanced account of especially the noble and the primitive aspects in Adam Kuper's 1988 essay subtitled The transformation of an illusion with a title almost identical to that of the present paper: The invention of primitive society.

I would like to thank Michel Christol, John Creighton, Louise Revell and Peter Wells for their stimulating comments on the two articles under discussion by Greg Woolf and myself. Since Christol and Wells mainly confine themselves to remarks on the cultural changes in Interior Gaul, my reply will focus on Revell and Creighton's critical comments on my paper. The most provoking of these, to me, was the term ‘story-telling’, as used by Revell. It is not, on first thoughts, a desirable designation for articles with a certain theoretical ambition. After all, the term evokes associations with the narrative traditions of the ‘pre-theoretical’ phase of Roman archaeology (Laurence 2001). This kind of story-telling does not belong in a theoretical journal such as Archaeological dialogues.

Mark Pluciennik has correctly pointed out that many of our current views of social and economic development in prehistory have their roots in the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His critique focuses on the assignment of primacy to subsistence change as a way of dividing pre-state societies into meaningful categories. Although he and I probably approach archaeology from very different theoretical positions, I must confess that I have also marveled (privately) from time to time at the amount of attention that archaeologists pay to food-getting and consumption. This may be a bit surprising to the reader, since my research has been focused on early farming societies and my analytical specialty is the study of animal bones. Thus, it would be fair to conclude that I must have some intellectual stake in maintaining the conceptual distinction between foragers and farmers.

The interesting point in Pluciennik's paper, other than the well documented and useful part on the philosophical origins of the deep-seated categories of foragers and farmers and hunting and farming practices, is the focus placed on the opposition of the two terms and its ideological bases. He reviews the shift from foragers to farmers (from social evolution, progress systematised as universal schemes of human development defined by subsistence categories) following six inter-related factors relevant to him: the rise of individualism, the growth of modern economic theory and materialism, the birth of Reason and Science, the concepts and practices of improvement, the decline of Biblical authority, and tropes from classical authors.