The workshop on Poros which forms the basis of this collection of papers was entitled ‘Archaeological ethnographies: charting a fi eld, devising methodologies’. Both the workshop and the present volume that resulted from it constitute attempts to establish a new fi eld, with its own methodologies and its own contested practices, at the interface of several existing disciplines and fi elds of research. My comment takes the workshop on Poros and its results as a starting point but intends to raise some relevant wider issues concerning the dynamics of academic practice. / <p>The journal is available online at www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney</p>