caa a22 4500 388110740 CHVBK 20180307125352.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199912 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S1380203800001458 doi S1380203800001458 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S1380203800001458 Gerritsen Fokke A house built on rock? A reply to nevett, sharples and vellinga [Elektronische Daten] [Fokke Gerritsen] Nevett, Sharples and Vellinga have commented on my paper in a heartening and inspiring way, and I would like to thank them for their comments of agreement as well as for the points of criticism that they raise. In my reply I will attempt to engage in discussion by addressing a few of their issues. Two points of my paper that appear to have created some confusion, notably in Vellinga's comment, may be dealt with first of all. With regard to the timing of the construction of a house, I did not intend to suggest - as hopefully the diagram of figure 2 makes clear - that new houses were always built subsequent to the abandonment of an old one. In fact, in the case of wandering farmsteads I would envisage this as the exception rather than the rule. This may seem a minor point, but it has some relevance to the topic of variability that I will address below. The other point of confusion concerns the ulterior aims of the paper and the biographical approach, which Vellinga takes as explaining the long-term transformation of the settlement patterns. I would not want to claim that the notion of a cultural biography in itself has enough explanatory force in this respect, and in the introduction I described it as a way of taking a first step along the road towards a more balanced understanding. The aims of the paper were precisely that, but Vellinga certainly makes a valid point in raising the issue of explaining long-term changes, and it deserves further consideration. Copyright © The Author(s) 1999 Archaeological Dialogues Cambridge University Press 6/2(1999-12), 107-114 1380-2038 6:2<107 1999 6 ARD https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203800001458 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203800001458 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Gerritsen Fokke NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Archaeological Dialogues Cambridge University Press 6/2(1999-12), 107-114 1380-2038 6:2<107 1999 6 ARD CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge