Agency in Archaeology

by Dobres,Marcia-Anne

• ISBN13: 9780415207607
• ISBN10: 0415207606
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Agency in Archaeologyis the first critical volume to scrutinize the concept of agency and to examine in-depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past. Theories of agency recognize that human beings make choices, hold intentions and take action. This offers archaeologists scope to move beyond looking at the broad structural or environmental change and instead to consider the individual and the group. The book brings together nineteen internationally renowned scholars who have very different, and often conflicting, stances on the meaning and use of agency theory to archaeology.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vii
List of tables	ix
List of contributors	x
Preface	xiv
Acknowledgments	xv
PART 1 Editors' Introduction	1	(18)
Agency in archaeology: paradigm or platitude?	3	(16)
Marcia-Anne Dobres
John E. Robb
PART 2 Thinking agency	19	(50)
Agency and individuals in long-term processes	21	(13)
Ian Hodder
Troubled travels in agency and feminism	34	(6)
Joan M. Gero
Agency in (spite of) material culture	40	(11)
H. Martin Wobst
``Rationality'' and contexts in agency theory	51	(10)
George L. Cowgill
A thesis on agency	61	(8)
John C. Barrett
PART 3 Using agency	69	(178)
The founding of Monte Alban: sacred propositions and social practices	71	(21)
Arthur A. Joyce
Towards a better explanation of hereditary inequality: a critical assessment of natural and historic human agents	92	(21)
John E. Clark
The tragedy of the commoners	113	(17)
Timothy R. Pauketat
The depositional history of ritual and power	130	(18)
William H. Walker
Lisa J. Lucero
Agents of change in hunter-gatherer technology	148	(21)
Kenneth E. Sassaman
Tension at funerals: social practices and the subversion of community structure in later Hungarian prehistory	169	(27)
John Chapman
Constellations of knowledge: human agency and material affordance in lithic technology	196	(17)
Anthony Sinclair
Self-made men and the staging of agency	213	(19)
Matthew Johnson
Craft to wage labor: agency and resistance in American historical archaeology	232	(15)
Paul A. Shackel
PART 4 Commentary	247	(10)
On the archaeology of choice: agency studies as a research stratagem	249	(8)
Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
PART 5 Epilogue	257	(7)
Ethics and ontology: why agents and agency matter	259	(5)
Henrietta L. Moore
Index	264