An important collection of papers taken from a session of the 2005 EAA in Cork. The contributors ask how far the functions of hoard deposits, and the codification of the arrangement of objects can be compared from one period to another. Aspects such as the symbolic space of deposits and the state of the objects involved (were they intact or deliberately broken) are also discussed, all within the context of the more technical statistical and scientific modes of analysis which have emerged in recent years.