Readers will know that Antiquity, a long term supporter of TAG, now gives this most spontaneous and peripatetic of conferences a memory by hosting the ‘TAG Archive’ on its website. In this article Bisserka Gaydarska offers a preliminary analysis of TAG trends – how the subjects of talks and the speakers who gave them have changed over the past few decades. Readers are invited to comment on her findings and share their views with us by emailing us at editor@antiquity.ac.uk.

After 10 years of pursuing sexy handaxes it is probably time to put these coquettish creatures to bed. Readers wishing to continue the debate are courteously directed to our Project Gallery.

In his contribution to the Antiquity debate over the viability of Kohn and Mithen's 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' (1999),Hodgson (2009: 195-8) asserts that 'symmetry is not connected with health and thus cannot have served as a sign of genetic worth'. Because I find his interpretation of the current literature on symmetry and its relationship to health and attractiveness to be flawed, I cannot accept Hodgson's argument. I address each of my concerns below in the first part of this response. I also remain unconvinced that, even if Hodgson's assertion were supported by the literature, it would necessarily follow that symmetry in manufactured objects, including Acheulean handaxes, cannot signal 'sexiness'. In the second part of my response I explain why I consider this to be so.