We have always been proud of our Features section. It provides a place for articles of a more theoretical or methodological flavour and for reflections on the development of the discipline of archaeology. Scott Hutson presents an analysis of the discourse on prestige in American academic archaeology, which he has laced with statistics derived from a number of recent surveys of the discipline's practitioners. Is it the case, as he contends, that academicians will always vie for prestige, and the best we can do is to expose the contest, or can we restructure academic institutions along more egalitarian and communitarian lines? David Turner assails one of the most revered and enduring cultural identities in the Western historical 'metanarrative' -- Romanitas. He does so by unravelling the complexities of the definition of 'Byzantium', or the Eastern Roman Empire: why do Greeks still sometimes refer to their homeland as 'Romanness'? Read on.

STRATEGIES FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF PRESTIGE IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE
by S. Hutson

Abstract
Social, political, and economic concerns in the present govern the production of knowledge about the past. As such, archaeological discourse is ordered by a set of constraints and rewards. The order of discourse determines who is licensed to contribute knowledge and what types of knowledge generate academic capital. Since academic capital is unequally distributed, the struggle to define the system of constraints and rewards involves relations of power. By examining hiring practices, rhetoric, and access to publication, this paper embarks on a critical sociology of power relations within archaeology and illuminates discursive constraints and their strategic use in reproducing or transforming discourse.

RUMINATIONS ON ROMANISATION IN THE EAST: OR, THE METANARRATIVE IN HISTORY
by D. Turner

Abstract
This paper is a rumination on Romanisation and attendant problems of historical theory with relation to the eastern part of the Roman empire, where Rome survived as a political entity until 1453. A brief introduction discusses how the term Romanisation may be meaningful for the eastern Mediterranean basin in ideological terms, namely in the form of a 'metanarrative'. I argue that the Roman imperial ideology is of fundamental importance in any interpretation of Romanisation in the East, where the eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) continued to develop a universal metanarrative that originated not only in Rome but also in fourth-century BCE Greek and Persian metanarratives that fused to form the Hellenistic world. The subsequent history of the eastern Roman empire can be understood in terms of 're-Romanisations' rather than as a drawn out fragmentation or 'decline'. Some comments are also be made on how we can define a Roman material record. The conceptual model of the metanarrative may assist historians in understanding complex developments in the eastern Mediterranean and, by way of comparison and contrast, in defining the meaning of Romanisation in the West more clearly. It may also help radically to challenge the prevailing Western metanarrative which has a very specific political purpose.