[Th]
A term first used by Ian Hodder in 1985 to refer to a series of theoretical approaches deployed in archaeological thinking that share little except being critical of processual archaeology while emphasizing social factors in the way human societies operate. Post-processual archaeology is not so much a coherent body of thought as a reaction against positivist approaches and their explicit use of models taken from the natural sciences. Post-processual archaeology incorporates many different approaches derived from Marxism, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, and constructivism, but is perhaps united in an interest in social ontology—the character of social reality. Here attempts have been made to provide archaeology with more sophisticated conceptions of past society and the tools to explore ancient societies through archaeological materials. Understandings of human behaviour must be sought in the societies themselves in order to identify specific and often rather idiosyncratic responses to particular conditions. Appropriate lines of enquiry thus include the investigation of social power, structure, contradiction, social change, and gender. A key concept here is that of agency—people are knowledgeable agents and thus attention should be paid to questions of intention, meaning, and the signification of action in order to understand past social phenomena. Also known as interpretive archaeology.
