The research for this paper was funded by the University of Sheffield 'Excellence Exchange Programme' for research that was carried out in the Department of Archaeology, Ghent University. Special thanks are reserved for Philippe Crombé and Joris Sergant for facilitating access to data collections and unpublished data. I am indebted to John Barrett, Philippe Crombé, Peter Jordan, Jeff Oliver, Joris Sergant and Marek Zvelebil for their helpful comments and inspiring discussions during the earlier stages of this research and on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also go to Machteld Bats and Aaron Hauck for assistance with the colour imaging. I thank the York conference organisers Rachel Parks and Naomi Belshaw, Internet Archaeology editor Judith Winters for her patience, and an anonymous reviewer for the insightful comments and suggestions. Any mistakes are entirely my own.