This issue of Archaeological dialogues features a discussion article by Kristian Kristiansen on the widening theoretical gap in archaeology between people focusing on ‘genes’ and those on ‘agents’. Kristiansen's thought-provoking essay is flanked by comments from Ulrich Veit, Stephen Shennan and John Robb. We believe that the question is a broad one that merits further and open debate. Readers are therefore invited to participate in this discussion and send us their reactions in the format of a discussion comment (maximum 2,500 words). As Archaeological dialogues continues to be a journal for debating archaeology, we very much welcome your comments.

It is argued that archaeological theory during the last decade has lost its theoretical nerve by accepting the development of epistemologically incompatible approaches. Two recent books exemplify the widening theoretical gap in archaeology between different schools of thought, with different interpretative interests. They are Steve Shennan's Genes, memes and human history. Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution (2002), and John Robb and Marcia-Anne Dobres's edited volume Agency in archaeology (2000). To overcome this theoretical divide it is necessary to revive the theoretical debate, based upon epistemological principles relevant to archaeology as a historical discipline.

‘Theoretical archaeology’ as it exists today is – as we all know – primarily a product of anglophone archaeology. It developed as a challenge to traditional archaeological thinking in the 1960s under the label ‘New Archaeology’ and it flourished in the late 1970s and 1980s with the productive confrontation of ‘processual’ and ‘postprocessual’ approaches. In these ‘wonderful years’ theoretical archaeology gained reputation and influence far beyond its early centres. All over Europe and beyond mainly younger archaeologists found it useful and fascinating to join these debates (Hodder 1991).

It is always intriguing, and occasionally horrifying, to see what one has written refracted through another person's eyes. This is all the more so in academic writing, in which people often become identified with (or even fashion themselves into icons of) a given idea, and the act of refraction adds a political or positional hue. Meditating on this fact gives us a starting point for a brief exemplary consideration of agency.

Kristiansen's paper represents a typically stimulating and thoughtful response to some of the recent theoretical trends in archaeology, and it is equally characteristic of his now long-established ‘public intellectual’ role in European archaeology that he should want to bring his concerns into the arena of open debate and to explore common ground between different perspectives. I find myself in agreement with many of his conclusions, of course without accepting his view that they are largely incompatible with the Darwinian view that he criticizes. In what follows I want to respond to some of his criticisms and address what I see as some of his misconceptions about the nature of evolutionary approaches and their implications for understanding the human past.

Is it possible to enter a dialogue across discursive boundaries? Some comments suggest that agents engaged in defining the discourse, or some section of it, tend to guard the gates of their discourse against hostile intrusions (critique). They therefore do not engage in dialogue. The comments by John Robb provide an example of the power of discursive constraints, while Stephen Shennan is willing to open the gates enough for a good discussion. Ulrich Veit provides a critical overview that situates my critique within a wider postprocessual/postmodern framework.

Deeply embedded in much of archaeological thought is an epistemological scheme of the ‘field’ as separate from the ‘home-base’, whether laboratory, archive or study. This modernist division is inadequate, for it fails to account for the interconnected and nonlinear process of archaeological knowledge construction. Taking direction from science studies and specifically from the work of Bruno Latour, this article sketches a model of multiple fields, which may serve as an alternative to this divide. Through the effective juxtaposition of two case studies from the Greek Peloponnesus, it explores two disparate yet complementary cases of how multiple fields make up the epistemological terrain of archaeology. The first case study traces the strains of an early 19th-century web, which situates the process of knowledge production at that time, while the second focuses on the archaeological process by closely following the transformation of things into documents during a regional survey. By recasting and multiplying the ‘field’ in archaeology we move from an oversimplified and bounded modernist scheme to one that allows for the complexities of archaeological practices which involve the action of instruments, media and human beings.

This paper is an attempt to understand how people, in the daily practice of interacting with material culture, created, dealt with and interpreted complex and socially stressful historical processes. A 16th-century timber-framed burgher house, the Reformation and industrialization are the focus of attention. Today the house stands in a museum of cultural history in the south Scandinavian town of Lund, but it once was built in the nearby city of Malmö. Through studies of architecture and spatial analysis, as well as studies of alterations to the house and its surroundings, the biography of the house is followed back to its physical and mental origins. The architecture as well as changes in its appearance can be understood by the use of space as well as the concept of topophilia. The paper ends by relating results to contemporary sociological theories. It is argued that humans structure society through material culture, history (remembrance) and space.