Harm Tjalling Waterbolk (1924) is regarded, together with Pieter J.R. Modderman (1919) and Willem Glasbergen (1923–1979), as the direct inheritor of the founder of Dutch archaeology Albert Egges van Giffen (1884–1973). From the middle of the 1950s, after Van Giffen's retirement, this troika shaped the rapidly growing academic archaeology in the Netherlands. Until well into the 1970s and 1980s they occupied the most prominent chairs at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Amsterdam. One look at Waterbolk's impressive list of publications (almost exclusively articles) tells us that for half a century he has been an authoritative participant in developments in Dutch archaeology. He has been involved, directly or indirectly, in the modernization of excavation practices, in changes in the organization of academic education and research, in the introduction of new methods and techniques and in shifts in theory and interpretation. He has made a valuable contribution to the development of large-scale settlement research, to the shaping of the Dutch legal foundation of university education (the study of prehistory in the Academisch Statuut), to the expansion of palynological research and the C14 method, and to the conceptualization of long-term continuity in the spatial organization of historical communities. His work is interesting because of the blending of a scientific interest in the history of the cultural landscape and a committed and critical involvement with the protection of such. Enough reasons to interview him ten years after his retirement. We meet Waterbolk in Meppel, a small town in south-west Drenthe, on one of the few hot days in the summer of 1996. It has been agreed that we will first pay a short visit to his birthplace in Havelte and to Van Giffen's grave in Diever. Before long it becomes clear that during the tour a web of named places and paths is gradually unfolding, each with its own historical tale and associated with personal memories. The afternoon is spent in the area between Balloo and Rolde, 5 kilometres east of Assen, the capital of the province of Drenthe. This area, which has an un-Dutch concentration of still existing and visible megalithic tombs, burial mounds, Celtic fields, and prehistoric roads, has recently become the subject of Waterbolk's interest (Waterbolk 1994a, and in press b).

Among the most common questions asked by archaeologists who study past agrarian landscapes are the following:

1) How did farmers use land (in terms of the activities by which they made a living)?

2) On what basis did they claim the right to occupy and use land (in terms of territorial possession, ‘ownership’, common rights, etc)?

3) In what sequence was land occupied, and what general principles governed sequences of colonisation, ‘intensification’, and territorial sub-division?

4) To what extent were territorial patterns stable over long periods of time? How frequently did political and social action take place in the context of a relatively unchanging political geography?

5) Was there a hierarchy of places and communities, rooted in history, which influenced their relative social, political and economic power?

To place ‘regional projects’ and ‘cultural identity’ next to each other in the title of a conference session is extraordinary, indeed baffling: questions of cultural identity have hardly ever been addressed in conjunction with a regional project. In fact, many of us who were attracted to regional research some time ago saw in it an opportunity to escape from the quest for identity which, in the form of ethnogenetic concerns, had dominated the practice of archaeology since 1900 and to explore instead issues of an entirely different nature: adaptation to the natural and social environment, economic rationality and its long-term effects on such adaptation, the formation of hierarchical polities, and the like.

The aims of Andrew Fleming's paper on medieval Swaledale have been to establish the degree of stability of the pattern of settlement there and to demonstrate the value of a comprehensive approach to the study of political geography and settlement history. Restrictions of space, however, have led to the omission of a treatment of agricultural activities and readers might not realise how little both the pattern of settlement and agricultural practices have changed in the course of time.

Before developing my comments on the Heidegger theme I would like to express my admiration for the project Julian Thomas presents in Time, culture and identity. With his point of departure in Heidegger's early reasonings, Thomas is underway on the important path of a deconstruction of the Cartesian/modern dichotomies between past-present, mind-body, nature-culture and subject-object that dominates contemporary archaeology. In short, Thomas points towards an approach, where the connection between experience-time-existence and the crucial relationship and interdependence between human being and other beings (things/artefacts), provides a powerful alternative to the traditional approaches towards these dichotomies. This alternative partly situates itself between idealism and empiricism, between subjectivism and objectivism. Thomas' project also contributes to the deconstruction of the exaggerated modern/postmodern combat that in some ways seems to have led the theoretical discourse within archaeology to a dead-end. Therefore I can only agree with the main orientation of Thomas' reasonings put forward both in his book, and in his précis of Time, culture and identity, presented in Archaeological dialogues 3.1 (Thomas 1996).

I am grateful to Håkan Karlsson for his thoughtful commentary on some of the issues concerning Heidegger and archaeology which were raised in a previous issue of this journal, and find myself fascinated by his project of a ‘contemplative archaeology’. However, one or two points of clarification could be made in relation to Karlsson's contribution. Firstly, as a number of authors have pointed out (e.g. Anderson 1966, 20; Olafson 1993), the gulf between Heidegger's early work and that which followed the Kehre may have been more apparent than real. While his focus may have shifted from the Being of one particular kind of being (Dasein) to a history of Being (Dreyfus 1992), the continuities in his thought are more striking. Throughout his career, Heidegger was concerned with the category of Being, and the way in which it had been passed over by the western philosophical tradition. It is important to note that in Being and time the analysis of Dasein essentially serves as an heuristic: the intention is to move from an understanding of the Being of one kind of being to that of Being in general. What complicates the issue is the very unusual structure of this specific kind of being, for Heidegger did not choose to begin his analysis with the Being of shoes or stones, but with a kind of creature which has a unique relationship with all other worldly entities. ‘Dasein’ serves as a kind of code for ‘human being’ which enables Heidegger to talk about the way in which human beings exist on earth, rather than becoming entangled in biological or psychological definitions of humanity. In this formulations, what is distinctive about human beings is that their own existence is an issue for them; Dasein cares, and this caring is fundamentally temporal.