Environmental determinism and archaeology. Red flag, red herring

Abstract

When first asked to comment upon the contribution of Arponen et al. on environmental determinism in archaeology – a red flag to many – I became excited that the topic is receiving attention again and, not least, that this attention is translating into printed debate. I commend the authors on their effort, also for bringing together multiple voices in their article. All too rarely do theoretical contributions translate into multiple authorship. I cannot in any way disagree with their key conclusions, namely that investigations of deep-time relations between humans and the environment are not just timely but important, and that archaeology should make full use of its rich array of data, cases and dissemination possibilities to investigate them and make them relevant in the present.