We thank all of the commentators for raising crucial points that provide us with the opportunity to make important clarifications. Bernbeck and Pollock point out that in our work, only the people of the present matter, rather than those in the past. Although our discussion centres on living people, we also believe that the past is unfinished and that working with it allows us to build a different future. We also believe that archaeology has a responsibility towards the dead. We are, in a Derridean spirit, committed to “those others who are no longer or [. . .] not yet there, presently living, whether they are already dead or not yet born” (Derrida 2012: 18). There is, however, more than an ethical dimension to this; our plea for a new objectivity means that we are interested in the past qua past, not just in representations of the past in the present.

Following four centuries of Roman expansion, the Emperor Trajan led the Empire to its greatest extent by annexing Dacia (Transylvania), north-western Arabia and Sinai and, briefly, all of Armenia and Mesopotamia. He bolstered imperial administration, reformed provincial government, clarified certain principles of justice and encouraged a system of welfare, the alimenta (Bennett 2001). Last year, 2017, was the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of Trajan's death. The occasion was marked in various ways across Europe, and the opportunity to reflect on Trajan's legacy was particularly poignant in view of the continent's present troubles.

These three books range from the clinical (Hunt) to the folksy (Woodward and Hill), and might be seen as a progression. One travelling from the Hunt-edited encyclopaedia with its emphasis on new and exotic scientific analytical techniques, rigorous theoretical approaches and data analysis, through the Integrative approaches book using techniques and ideas that have proved effective for decades (this book is firmly within the mainstream of recent excellent pot books that have a very strong US contribution, as exemplified by Quinn 2009), to the English, and almost quaint, re-issue of Woodward and Hill outlining post-processualist concerns and quite devoid of any black box ‘gee-whiz’. Their combined 1200 pages, heavily featuring petrography, often alongside geochemistry, show that these sorts of ceramic studies, although often regarded as comatose-inducing, are in favour again.

These volumes treat economic and social themes of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean; all touch on Egypt, but the volume on Egypt itself limps way behind in both quality and scope. Taking these three volumes together, one has the impression that the unresolved problems of the last five decades of turmoil in archaeological thought have left not merely unhealed scars, but also badly set broken bones.

Our understanding of the interactions between the Roman Empire and indigenous societies (or ‘barbarians’) that lay within or surrounding its borders has undergone considerable advances over the last 30 years. Stemming initially from a colonial perspective, which saw the Roman Empire as ‘civilising’ those who were subsumed into it, the study of these interactions now includes a wealth of diverse post-processual or post-colonial approaches that stress the complexity of interactions within and between these social groups. Even with these advances, the self-imposed opposition between prehistoric and Roman studies, whether in theoretical stance, approach or research frameworks, remains constant in modern scholarly debate (Hingley 2012: 629). As a consequence, and despite extensive debate to the contrary, the divide between ‘Romans’ and ‘natives’ endures in our current interpretations of the contact between pre-Roman and Roman society.

And so to my next NBC, the difficult second album, the sophomore slump. As an antidote to any jitters on my part, in this issue we tackle a range of books investigating creativity and innovation in the past. Innovation is enjoying something of a ‘moment’ in archaeological thought at present, with several large, multi-disciplinary projects underway in Europe and sessions devoted to the topic at major US and European conferences over the last few years. As with the current concentration on inequality, this interest can be traced to the social and political climate of the present and concerns over rapid technological change, economic growth and productivity. Innovation can be both productive and profoundly disruptive, and as such, it is of central concern in understanding social change in the past and predicting its effects in the future. The first four volumes discussed below deal directly with innovation, creativity and learning. The fifth, written by political scientist James C. Scott, invites us to consider the negative consequences of certain kinds of innovation and the implications for the sorts of complex societies that we live in today.

Newly discovered prehistoric sites in the Seimarreh Valley in Iran provide the first evidence for Palaeolithic human habitation in this region of the Central Zagros.

The ‘Karaburun Archaeological Survey’ project aims to illuminate the lifeways of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene foragers in western Anatolia. A recently discovered, lithic-rich site on the Karaburun Peninsula offers new insights into a currently undocumented period of western Anatolian prehistory.

Recent excavations at Mala Pećina Cave in Croatia have provided new evidence for social and cultural interaction between mobile groups during the Balkan Early Neolithic.

Salvage excavations in Tehran have provided a small lithic assemblage of probable Aceramic Neolithic date. This may offer the earliest evidence for the spread of Neolithic culture across the vast Iranian Central Plateau.