[Th]
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.
