Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (669 page)

A concept borrowed from sociology and which originated in the work of Max Weber and the four-fold categorization of social action: Wertrationalität, Zweckrationalität, Traditional, and Affektuell. Social action can be conceived in terms of an actor/person behaving in such a way that his/her action is intended to influence the actions or behaviour of one or more other people. Thus in archaeology the creation of monuments or material culture can be seen, in these terms, in pre-capitalist societies orientated to the ‘traditional’ rationale in Weber's analysis.

 
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An offshoot of the general discipline of anthropology which emphasized social and cultural factors in explaining human behaviour and material culture. The British equivalent of cultural anthropology.

 
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A subdiscipline of archaeology developed in the 1970s by Colin Renfrew and others which follows the contention, widely held in Anglo-American archaeology, that understanding the archaeological past must involve reconstructing past societies and social practices in their totality; that artefacts and other archaeological finds must be placed in a social context. Taking a lead from anthropological and sociological enquiries this means taking a ‘top-down’ view by focusing on the systems, institutions, and organization of society before attempting to look at the role of the individual and their actions.

 
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One of the most difficult but equally one of the most fascinating problems addressed by modern archaeology. For most of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century archaeologists followed an essentially evolutionary model which mapped human history in terms of progression from barbarism to civilization. From the 1960s, however, attention began to focus on tracking more localized trajectories of change using
SYSTEMS THEORY
and what have become characterized as
PROCESSUAL APPROACHES
. Since the later 1980s attention has tended to focus on still smaller-scale views of change, as represented within the use of individual structures, monuments, and landscapes, for example.

 
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The proposition that all knowledge, including so-called ‘scientific knowledge’ is not a neutral body of data independent of cultural norms and values, but is actually socially constructed in support of particular values and understandings.

 
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View of social evolution emphasizing the importance of struggle or warfare between groups or societies as the motor of development and social change.

 
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