It is uncommon for the prehistorian to engage in the writing of culture history in the wider sense of the term – that is, to comment on major works of literature and art in the light of contemporary experience, learning and values. As archaeology has become a more professional field of study, discourse in recent years has come increasingly to have a discipline-centred focus. There is a price to pay for the habit of looking inward: the loss of contact with cultural and intellectual developments in the world at large. What is attempted in revisiting Old Calabria, a classic that Norman Douglas wrote in the early part of this century, is an experiment at writing archaeological discourse that is less self-centred and instead tries to look outward.