In this chapter it will be argued that archaeology should recapture its traditional links with history (Deetz 1988; Young 1988; Bintliff 1991; Hodder 1987; 1990a; Knapp 1992; Morris 1999). Unfortunately the term ‘history’ is used with a variety of different meanings by different people, and it is first necessary to establish what we do and do not mean by the word here. We do not mean the explanation of change by reference to antecedent events; simply to describe a series of events leading up to a particular moment in time is a travesty of the historical method. Neither do we mean that phase n is dependent on phase n-1. Many types of archaeology involve such a dimension. Thus many social evolutionary theories expect some dependence in the moves between bands, tribes, chiefdoms or states, or in the adoption of agriculture (Woodburn 1980). In the application of Darwinian-type arguments, the selection of a new social form is constrained by the existing ‘gene-pool’. In systems theory the ‘trajectory’ of a system is dependent on prior conditions and system states. Each trajectory may be historically unique and specific in content, but general laws of system functioning can be applied. Within Marxism the resolution of conflict and contradiction is emergent in the pre-existing system, as part of the dialectical process of history.

Whatever questions one asks about the human past, even if they are only about technology or economy, frameworks of meaning intervene. After all, one cannot say what the economy of a site was until one has made hypotheses or assumptions about the symbolic meaning of, for example, bone discard. This book has been a search for an adequate answer to the question of how we infer past cultural meanings. In chapter 1, we framed the question of meaning in terms that called attention to two other issues: agency and history. Subsequently, we explored various approaches to meaning, agency and history.

The original task of comparing and contrasting the different approaches in terms of their contributions to these three issues has now been achieved and much of what was sought has been found. Structuralist archaeology contributes to the notion that culture is meaningfully constituted, but only a theory of practice can explain how meanings impact people's lives. New developments in Marxist-influenced archaeology and social theory have led to a more complete discussion of the role of the agency in society, and a consideration of embodiment helps us understand how agents experience the world and how they are formed as subjects in the world. Finally, historical studies provide an understanding of how these meanings persist or change over time and how the actions of agents contribute to the transformation or maintenance of long-term structures of meaning.

In some ways I am surprised that a book of this nature, discussing widely varying theoretical approaches to the past, can be written. In an important article, David Clarke (1973) suggested that archaeology was losing its innocence because it was embracing, in the 1960s and 1970s, a rigorous scientific approach, with agreed sets of procedures, models and theories. The age of unreflecting speculation was over.

However, archaeologists have always claimed to be rigorously scientific. Indeed, I argued (Hodder 1981) that archaeology would remain immature as long as it refused to debate and experiment with a wide range of approaches to the past. In grasping positivism, functionalism, systems theory and so on, and setting itself against alternative perspectives, archaeology remained narrow and out-of-date in comparison with related disciplines.

But over recent years, alternatives have emerged, largely from the European scene (Renfrew 1982), and one can now talk of Marxist and structuralist archaeology, as well as of processual, positivist approaches. Certainly such alternatives existed before, on the fringe, but they did not constitute a distinctive approach with a body of practitioners. The older normative and culture-historical schools also continue to thrive today. While many of these developments, and the erosion of the old ‘New Archaeology’ debates, have far to go, archaeology is now beginning to lose its innocence and is gaining maturity by being fully integrated into wider contemporary debates. This book seeks to capture this new spirit of debate and to contribute to it from a particular point of view.

Many of the approaches considered thus far – processualism, structuralism, Marxism – lack adequate consideration of the agent. This lacuna was filled in part by the discussion of agency in the concluding section of the previous chapter. Nevertheless, a close reading of that section shows that in our presentation of different forms of agency, we never paid close attention to the nature of the agent that exercises (or is exercised by) agency. We were careful not to presume that the agent is always an individual in a Western sense and we argued for the cultural and historical malleability of ‘the person’, but we have yet to consider what might be dangerous about the term ‘individual’ or what justification we might have in claiming that the ‘person’ and its close relatives the ‘self’ and the ‘subject’ are so malleable.

To explore the nature of the agent, however, is not simply to add the finishing touches to an account of agency or structuration. In archaeology, theories of practice contain flaws that no amount of tinkering or refinement will eliminate. In other words, practice does not make perfect. Both Giddens and Bourdieu have increasingly come under attack in the social sciences (e.g. Turner 1994), the main criticism being that they do not in the end provide an adequate theory of the subject and of agency.

In this second revision we have decided to make major changes, removing some chapters, adding new ones, and completely revising others. In reading through the text published in 1986 and revised with minor changes for the 1991 edition, it was clear that the book no longer adequately discussed the contemporary theoretical field in archaeology. There have been so many changes that we felt that substantial revisions were needed in a book which attempts to comment on theory in archaeology from a particular point of view. There has been a burgeoning in the discipline of discussions of post-structuralism, agency theory and neo-evolutionary theory, and whole new branches of theory such as phenomenology have emerged. It seemed necessary to cover and comment on these areas of debate, as well as to respond to the many changes and developments in debate within feminist archaeology (third-wave feminism), historical approaches (such as cultural history), theories of discourse and signs (semiotics, dialogical models) and so on. The book is now longer and covers more ground. It thus can still be used as an introduction to archaeological theory in general terms. But it retains a distinctive position, based on a commitment to meaning, agency and history, and it reviews the theoretical debates from that position.

The book has always catered to a rather hybrid audience and we have sought to rewrite so as to respond to a number of different interest groups.