Frieman (2024) observes in her own, highly metaphorical language that one can offer an unbounded number of interpretations to explain the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. These interpretations offer different perspectives that can inform action—in Frieman's case an explicitly feminist understanding of the past informing the present. She provides two brief examples from the literature, suggesting that each embodies present-day biases: the distribution of Bronze Age swords relative to the provenance of ornamentation sets in Denmark and Germany, and the ‘Egtved Girl’, a Bronze Age burial of a young person of undetermined sex clad in a bronze-decorated tunic, associated with jewellery and the cremated remains of a child. Interpretations previously advanced for the first example include a patrilocal residence system wherein male warriors brought to their natal homes women ornamented with objects from their own homelands; from this interpretation we hypothesise the presence of patriarchal chiefdoms. The second example, the Egtved individual, has been characterised as a foreign bride, isotope analyses suggesting an itinerant life in the months prior to death. As each interpretation lingers in the literature, it becomes a certitude on which researchers build. Alternative interpretations go unimagined. But Frieman argues for the need for multiple, culturally complex interpretations that emerge from the gaps in the evidence, or the ‘unproofs’.

The peoples who inhabited the worlds discussed in these two books, either in reality or within our imaginations, are at once slippery and certain. We may believe we have a grip on what the Norse/Viking worlds were about, only to have new evidence or a new approach to existing data challenge our views. These two books, The Norse myths that shape the way we think and The Norse sorceress: mind and materiality in the Viking world, explore the ways in which medieval northerners understood and interacted with the sublime, the divine, the non-human within their worlds and, in turn, how these interactions shape our own imaginations.

I want to preface this response by noting that, while I think Bentley, O'Brien and I fundamentally differ in how we approach the archaeological record (2024), I am also convinced that the more perspectives on the past we can cultivate, the richer our interpretative garden will be. Moreover, the more narratives of past worlds we develop, the more nuanced and complex our image of the past will become and, hence, the messier and more human (Frieman in press). I therefore write in the hopes that we can disagree with care, so that all of our scholarship is enriched.

To start: I thank the responding authors for their generosity and thoughtfulness in engaging in this debate about ‘Attending to unproof: an archaeology of possibilities’ (Frieman 2024) and also the journal's editors for facilitating this discussion.

Today, Neolithic circular enclosures are generally regarded as evidence of the first monumental architecture in Europe. They are undoubtedly a topical subject in Neolithic research and also attract great interest from a broader audience. This has not always been the case. Just over 40 years ago, the few examples known then, mainly from Bavaria and Bohemia, were regarded as exotic and of no particular importance for the cultural-historical assessment of early farming societies in Europe. Thanks to aerial archaeology, the number of known sites increased rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s in Bavaria and Lower Austria. This has also been the case, since the 1990s, in East Germany and other countries of the former Eastern Bloc when political change made systematic prospecting flights possible. In addition, the development of geophysical prospection methods provided new insights into the structure and landscapes into which the enclosures were embedded. Finally, the increasing number of rescue excavations and large-scale scientific excavations have contributed to a better understanding of such sites as a characteristic component of Middle Neolithic societies in Central Europe.

I thank Bentley and O'Brien (2024) for their cogent review of issues associated with inheritance and intention in cultural evolution. Intent is, of course, present in cultural process and that begs the question as to when and how we concern ourselves with it as a factor in cultural evolution (Rosenberg 2022). Intent underlies our understanding of both micro- and macro-scale processes of cultural evolution. Lamarckian microevolutionary process depends on decision-makers choosing whether or not to accept and sometimes alter cultural traits (Boyd & Richerson 1985). Zeder (2009, 2018) points out that even long-term change may be affected by conscious infrastructural investments that alter capacity for socioeconomic production and, subsequently, canalise later developments.

In response to Bentley and O'Brien's (2024) article, I wish to focus on a specific aspect of cultural inheritance—that of technological innovation in later prehistory. In essence, I agree that “inherited social practices and knowledge” (2024: 1407) are indeed the backbone of technological transmission. Many examples can be cited where technological expertise (potting, metalworking, etc.) is passed down within a family or through apprenticeship schemes. For example, the first Ming Emperor of China (Hongwu, reigned AD 1368–1398) initiated in 1381 a census (the ‘Yellow Book’) in which households were classified for taxation purposes into one of four categories: general, military families, artisans and salt-producers. Artisans were classified by trade and the implication is that the family trade was fixed and inherited (Huang 1974: 32). This system continued until at least the end of the Ming dynasty (AD 1644).

The authors of this book are archaeologists who want to create a field they describe as ‘critical paleoeconomics’. Their quest is promising in several ways. For example, they are not averse to grand narratives and believe modern economic theory can offer insights into various features of ancient economies, including markets, trade, money and debt.