ABSTRACT
Agency in Archaeology is the first critical volume to scrutinise the concept of agency and to examine in-depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past. Theories of agency recognise that human beings make choices, hold intentions and take action. This offers archaeologists scope to move beyond looking at broad structural or environmental change and instead to consider the individual and the group
Agency in Archaeology brings together nineteen internationally renowned scholars who have very different, and often conflicting, stances on the meaning and use of agency theory to archaeology. The volume is composed of five theoretically-based discussions and nine case studies, drawing on regions from North America and Mesoamerica to Western and central Europe, and ranging in subject from the late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers to the restructuring of gender relations in the north-eastern US.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|17 pages
Editors' introduction
part 2|50 pages
Thinking agency
part 3|178 pages
Using agency
chapter 8|21 pages
Towards a better explanation of hereditary inequality
chapter 12|27 pages
Tension at funerals
chapter 13|17 pages
Constellations of knowledge
part 4|9 pages
Commentary
part 5|7 pages
Epilogue