Discussion: A response from the 'Core'

Abstract

First let me thank the editors for the opportunity to comment on these papers. Frankly, I learned a lot from them, particularly about the theoretical basis of Latin American archaeology, about which I was only dimly aware. In some ways, any concluding comment, of whatever kind, is presumptuous. The majority of the contributors to this volume speak from the 'periphery'; and the editors are correct in stating in their Introduction that '[peripheral] conditions tend to produce critical thought'. This response is written very definitely from the core. I sit, writing these words, in a pleasant study in a comfortable middle-class home in England; a location far from peripheral, whatever definition one cares to choose. Such comfortable conditions, by implication, will tend to produce sloppy, uncritical thought. © 2005 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.