PostScript: Doing Agency in Archaeology

Abstract

We argue that since agency and structure are indivisible parts of a single process through which society is continuously created over time, everything that persists or changes in archaeological sites is evidence of agency. The challenge is to adopt appropriate descriptive levels and language to avoid falsely dividing agency and structure. Successful archaeological studies use networks and chains as models or metaphors for connections in sequences of action over time. We argue that models must also link micro-scale actions to outcomes on the macroscale. Because theories of agency differ in the degree of freedom of action they assume, archaeologists must also clearly identify their own position with respect to constraints on action.We suggest that whenever archaeologists manage to do analyses of agency right, we are simultaneously talking about agency and structure, since these are not alternatives, but inseparable parts of a single process (Giddens, 1979, pp. 53, 69-70). Moore (2000) suggested that archaeologists think about structure and agency dialectically. While forcing us to keep agency and structure linked, in practice this still risks allowing us artificially to separate structure (interpreted as institutions) from agency (interpreted as action). It risks our envisioning the past as an alternation of moments of the exercise of agency in an otherwise continuous flow of structure.Our position is that structure and agency do not alternate. Structured agency is exercised in sequences of practices that recapitulate and transform prior actions, sequences that we can recognize as structures at scales from the individual technical practice to the collective coordinated experience of long-enduring landscapes. Structuration is simultaneously the exercise of agency and the constitution

Death and Community Identity in the Trincheras Cremation Cemetery, Sonora, Mexico

“…The singular 'individualisticʼ characteristic of the burial process within the cemetery appears to be the choice of the vessel (or even lack of vessel in a few instances) -although very few vessels were unrepeated forms. This type of homogeneous burial treatment and practice in the cemetery at the Cerro becomes imbued with symbolic value and reinforced by repetition of prescribed behaviours that create a sense of shared tradition and common identity (Gillespie, 2011;Jones, 2005;Joyce and Lopiparo, 2005). The construction of a concentrated urn-field cemetery created a sacred and commemorative space reiterated over time at the site.…”

Materialism, Mode of Production, and a Millennium of Change in Southern Mexico

“…This does not assume uniform behavior at any given time, as Pauketat (2001: 85) worries, but simply that the remains of many individuals from multiple generations in the aggregate provide average behavior. Instead of a theoretical limitation, the temporally aggregated behavior (at whatever the resolution of the chronological units employed to measure past occurrences) is a methodological 11 A proposal by Joyce and Lopiparo (2005;and see Patterson 2005: 373)-to take the balance between agency and structure as a changing relationship to be empirically documented-seems to be a productive approach. This is also more in keeping with the point of both habitus and structuration, that is, the agency is not to be reified but explained within the confines of custom and tradition.…”

Social Spaces of Daily Life: A Reflexive Approach to the Analysis of Chemical Residues by Multivariate Spatial Analysis

“…Structuration is visible to archaeologists because of our capability of examining temporal spans (Joyce and Lopiparo 2005). To investigate the basic assumption that empirically recoverable chemical data may provide evidence of the practice of everyday life, we have developed a suite of premises that are tested by means of rule-based approaches combined with map algebra.…”