The discussion by Arponen et al. inserts itself into long-standing debates about the place of causality and determinism in archaeological interpretation. While some of the discussion might feel like retreading familiar ground in those debates, the authors bring a refreshing clarity of exposition to the problem, and more importantly they propose several promising directions for future research. For example, their exhortation to ‘see the human–environment relationship as always already sociocultural’ (p. 8) should be firmly established by now, but I agree with their assertion that this perspective ‘seems underdeveloped in archaeology’ (p. 8) and that looking to anthropology is one especially productive route for developing such a sensibility. In the following I wish to extend and respond to their arguments by (1) addressing how anthropological approaches might best be incorporated into archaeological research on palaeo-environments and coupled human–environment systems, and (2) highlighting the ethical and moral dimensions of this process as integral to it.

Certainly, calls for integrating anthropology into interdisciplinary work on human–environment interactions entrain methodological concerns, but they also elicit ethical concerns as well. Indeed, reading between the lines, I found the ethical and moral dimensions of archaeological research to be implicit in much of the authors’ argument. Sometimes these dimensions are overtly stated too, for example when the authors note that the temporal scope of archaeological research design prompts questions of responsibility, insofar as archaeology is offering something ‘beyond archaeology’ for thinking about the human–environment relationship. As such, the authors note, ‘the scientists bear some political responsibility for where they see the crux of the matter, whether in posterior adaptation to external events or in the prior social production of vulnerability’ (p. 9).

However, the ethical implications in the text reach much farther: the authors’ focus on research design foregrounds how and why archaeologists decide which research is worth doing to begin with, which questions are worth asking, and which answers suffice. This returns us to what archaeology is offering to the realm ‘beyond archaeology’, to interdisciplinary knowledge production and policy making, and to society more broadly. What is entailed in that socio-moral space ‘beyond archaeology’, and how do we choose to engage with it? How will it shape the ethics of archaeological research? These are big questions, of course, but they are becoming increasingly urgent in a world grappling with anthropogenic climate change.

In perhaps one of their most perceptive and important statements, the authors note that ‘an exploration of the core of the determinism debate will turn out to concern at least as much the self-referential foundations of our own scientific conduct as the causal foundations of prehistoric transformations’ (p. 2). Is this not always the case – and yet how rarely is it examined? The authors’ suggestion to incorporate anthropological knowledge offers an even more visible and clear-cut means for taking stock of how archaeological research itself (and scientific research more broadly) is ‘always already sociocultural’. In highlighting these facts and conditions of archaeological research we can better fit archaeological knowledge to the present needs of society.

Arponen et al. make several suggestions about how to use anthropological insights, specifically on the social basis of hazards and the social production of vulnerability. They propose focusing on governance systems, from decision making, resilience and institutional flexibility for adaptation, to marginalization and social exclusion. Approaches focusing on resilience and adaptation are not without their own issues, for example in preferencing status quo relations. However, analysing governance systems and social marginalization is very useful for moving debates beyond determinism and unidirectional causal pathways to instead think more broadly in terms of complex webs and systems of relationships. My primary concern is the ways in which the authors suggest applying anthropological insights to the archaeological past, which include returning to comparative, typological, generalizable, even ‘testable’ approaches. I would like to suggest that there are more productive, or at least anthropological, ways to go about this, under a theory of science attuned to accountability.

Compared to other social sciences, anthropology is particularly suited to studying systems of relationships, or what have been called ‘non-statistical social facts’ (Malkki Reference Malkki, Cerwonka and Malkki2007, 167, citing Leach Reference Leach, Jongmans and Gutkind1967, 76–77). Anthropology is invested in producing ‘situated knowledge’, a scientific approach that embraces the limited and fractured perspectives espoused in Donna Haraway’s (Reference Haraway1988) feminist theory of science. Anthropologists typically prefer to generalize within individual cases, rather than between. They are interested in holistic accounts of the dense networks of relationships that form a specific context. Studying vulnerability, social marginalization and governance systems will quickly disabuse any researcher from speaking about ‘human’ (i.e. species-level) interactions with the environment, as they are sensitive to the significant heterogeneity within individual societies and the diversity between different cultures. Following the authors’ suggestion to create typologies of governance systems for comparative purposes might give some sort of answers, but it flattens our understanding of what is going on in the past, and – let us be clear – the answers will say more about ourselves, as the practice of such peg fitting and ‘butterfly collecting’ (Leach Reference Leach1961) privileges a priori assumptions in the research design.

Anthropologists have learned to embrace the fact that all research design begins from the researcher, whose individual personhood and social lenses can never be extracted from the process of knowledge production. This recognition is a key component of ‘situated knowledge’. In this respect, too, research is understood as a dialogue between the observer and the observed, expanding the universe of conversability (Geertz Reference Geertz1973), and providing a ‘moral science of possibilities’ (Carrithers Reference Carrithers2005). So archaeological research should be understood as a dialogue between past and present, especially when employing anthropological methods. It is simply impossible to be a one-way street, simply or only applying anthropological insights to the past, but requires full attention to how archaeological knowledge also contributes and is bound up within the present, being ‘always already sociocultural’.

Importantly, ‘situated knowledges’ build from a theory of science that, in the pursuit of more powerful forms of objectivity, seeks accountability more than predictability. In other words, situated knowledges produce accountable objectivity, and as such offer better accounts of the world. Haraway’s theory of science calls for ‘accountable scientific visions’ which are ‘scientific accounts more aware of the social world in which they arise and which they in turn participate in forming’ (Stephens Reference Stephens1994, 71).

How different would environmental archaeology look if talk about determinism and causality were retired and instead research was designed around questions of accountability? Asking this question raises several others. How well is the causality paradigm serving archaeology? Maybe quite well, because it offers relatively ‘easier’ or apparently straightforward answers. But how well is the causality paradigm serving the usefulness of archaeological knowledge for society? In this case the answer may be not very well, and in fact even serving dangerously.

Incorporating a paradigm of accountability proceeds on two fronts. First, with respect to knowledge about the past, governance systems and social marginalization are areas of research that lend themselves well to reframing archaeological interpretations around accountability, around the complex webs of relationships, alliances, embodiments and exclusions that might compose an archaeological analysis of accountability. Viewing social and political analysis through the lens of accountability long precedes Haraway, at least for anthropological theories of society. For example, the historically informed work of E.E. Evans-Pritchard analysed political systems according to a rubric of accountability, identifying internal arbitration as the internal ‘glue’ of accountability that held societies together, and defining societies externally by where accountability broke down.

Second, pursuing ‘situated knowledge’ about socio-environmental relations in the past will, as discussed above, necessarily involve accountability to the social needs of the present, and accountability for how archaeological knowledge is produced and used. These needs are set within a moral universe shaped by the socio-environmental challenges of our time. Focusing on how anthropological approaches might best be brought to bear on archaeological research on palaeo-environments and coupled human–environment systems has highlighted the ethical and moral dimensions of this work, especially under the shadow of anthropogenic climate change. The authors note that the determinism debates are

With the clarity of future hindsight, how else might we understand the determinism debates today but as some scientistic ouroboros of climate anxiety, of an archaeological discipline coming to terms with the anthropogenic nature of present climate change and how the discipline might address it?

Overall, climate change research across the disciplines is increasingly understanding anthropogenic climate change as, at base, a fundamentally moral issue (Broome Reference Broome2012; Gardiner Reference Gardiner2011). Archaeological research can contribute to explicating these moral foundations through research on accountability and governance in the past, and how historical cases might illuminate accountability and governance issues in the present. At the same time, archaeology can contribute by making explicit the accountability of archaeology to society, including how archaeology itself contributes to the drivers of climate change, and is implicated within the social production of vulnerability and social exclusion that will exacerbate the impacts of climate change for many.