Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (697 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Structuration theory was developed by Anthony Giddens in the 1970s and has since had a significant influence on post-processual social archaeology. It is concerned to overcome the dualism of individual agency, meaning, and understanding, as against social structure. Its major thesis is the replacement of the dualism with a duality wherein social structure is both the medium and the outcome of the social practice by knowledgeable social agents. In his later work, Giddens emphasized how time and space are basic constituents embedded within social life: the limitations of individual presence are transcended by the stretching of social relations across time and space.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

At its most general this refers to the basic framework or form of society. Elements of a physical structure such as an artefact are often associated with function, hence functionalist and structural-functionalist theory treats society as analogous to an organism with each institutional part (religion, economy, etc.) functioning to maintain the whole. Such an approach is related to
SYSTEMS THEORY
, and both have generally received much application in processual archaeology. More particularly, structure refers to the
longue durée
in Braudel's temporal scheme, the fundamental baseline of a historical period, seen by the earlier
Annales
historians as essentially geographical or environmental in character. In spite of such refinement of the concept, it is perhaps overworked in the social sciences, ‘structured’ now being used to mean little more than organized, patterned, or non-random.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Patterning in the way that artefacts are found when uncovered through excavation which allows the suggestion that behavioural regularities underlie the way in which they were put into the ground in the first place. Examples include the placement of a joint of meat as the final act before sealing a pit containing rubbish or the placing of ceramic vessels in the terminal of boundary ditches adjacent to entrances.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Decorative plasterwork, especially used to create interior architectural elements.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

The common post or upright within a timber-framed wall.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search