These nine papers, based on the 4th World Archaeological Congress held in South Africa in 1999, take a critical view of computer usage in archaeology and study its impact on the discipline and especially in terms of archaeological method and theory. Contents: Introduction (Gark Lock & Kayt Brown) ; Computers and archaeological cultural change (J Huggett) ; Archaeological computing and disciplinary theory (J Gidlow) ; Mathematics and computers (H Forsyth) ; Virtual reality (G Goodrick & M Gillings) ; Archaeological archives for the 21st century (F Grew) ; Intellectual excavation (A Beck) ; English sites and monuments records (B Robinson) ; Can computers help aerial survey?