Edited volumes on archaeological theory can be difficult for editors to balance as theoretical perspectives may be specific, personal, defensive or combative and may reflect contrasting national and/or institutional backgrounds. Such works are necessarily volatile as perspectives can change on relatively short timescales. Bintliff and Pearce's short volume of collected essays illustrates a number of these characteristics, notwithstanding having just seven contributors and numbering only eighty-nine pages. The volume developed from a European Archaeological Association (EAA) conference session held in 2006 and one can only imagine from the range and style of these published papers that the session must have been a raucous affair. This is particularly evident in the different lengths, forms and critical engagements that can be seen throughout the volume – from more extended and objective approaches in Pluciennik (pp 31–48), Gramsch (pp 48–72) and Pearce (pp 80–9) to shorter, more personal, opinion pieces such as Flannery and Marcus (pp 23–31) and Kristiansen (pp 72–80).

The Death of Archaeological Theory? is contextualised by an interesting and wide-ranging introduction written by the two editors, who emphasise a number of key issues that are dissected and extended in later papers. These include the need to explore the impact of cultural traditions on the form and development of archaeological theory, the relationship and balance between theory and method and the role of ideology in theory. They conclude by suggesting that the best future course of action is to ‘fill your brains with all the possible models and methods for your research case-study, then search for the fit between ideas and patterns …’ (p 20). This concept is extrapolated in the concluding chapter, also by Pearce, where he highlights the contemporary lack of emerging paradigms and suggests using Lévi-Strauss's concept of a ‘bricolage’ (p 80) or, more prosaically, ‘mixed methods research’ (p 85). In coming full circle this paper perhaps shows the greatest compromise in promoting the various benefits of the different theoretical paradigms current in contemporary archaeology.

For its size, the volume includes a wide international range of opinions with contributions from Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the most telling papers, by Gramsch, notes that in central European archaeology there has been a traditional hostility to theory – and distrust of the import of ‘Anglo-American discourse’ (p 58) – meaning that theory is often implicit and related to ‘a particular way of doing archaeology’ (p 50). In contrast some American archaeologists, such as Flannery and Marcus, believe that ‘archaeological theory cannot die, because archaeological theory never really existed’ (p 23), owing to its being predominantly borrowed from elsewhere in the American tradition of discourse. Pluciennik provides a grounded British perspective when he emphasises the importance of ‘present day concerns’, including the impact of specialisation in fieldwork and the role of striving for funding and awards when proposing new theories (pp 36–8). As is appropriate to the fluidity of theory, the assembled papers indicate that the ‘death of archaeological theory’ is conceived from different perspectives of what theory was, is, could and should be.

This volume, although an enjoyable and engaging read, does, however, contain a rather one-sided debate, without the inclusion of established post-processual voices to provide an alternative perspective. The contributors bemoan, for example, the impact of what is perceived as a dominant ‘ideology’ and its emphasis on context and narrowing of perspectives (Kristiansen, p 76). In some of the papers there is a distinct lack of explanation as to why such post-modern questionings arose and what they have brought to the wider discipline. Despite these shortcomings this volume provides much food for thought, drawing attention to different concerns from different archaeological cultures and societies and containing a number of valuable perspectives that are well worth our reflection as they highlight the contemporary state and the possible future of the discipline.