For most of the last decade archaeologists have been explicitly engaged in a gradually intensifying dialogue with the marginalised and the dispossessed in society. It is fair to say that this dialogue has been difficult and stressful for all concerned, but then again it is also true to say that no one ever thought that it was going to be easy. There have been many consequences of the failures and successes which have happened along the way, some very positive, others much less so, but apart from observing that it is still far too early to write the history of archaeology in society. it seems self evident that the discipline has been changed forever, and that it is understood to have been so by many of its practitioners.