Glossary

Habitus Concept originally introduced by Marcel Mauss but later to become closely associated with work of Pierre Bourdieu; can be understood as those aspects of culture that are anchored in the body or daily practices of individuals, groups, societies, and nations, including the totality of learned habits, bodily skills, styles, tastes, and other non-discursive knowledges. modernity Term used to describe the condition of being

‘modern’; typically viewed as the historic period beginning in the nineteenth century associated with the Enlightenment, notions of progress, and the quest to rationally understand, master, and live comfortably in the world that came to dominate western thought and action of this era.

New archaeology See ‘processual archaeology’. post-processual archaeology A movement within archaeology developed in the late twentieth century in reaction to perceived sterility of processual archaeology; label indicates both an engagement with postmodernism, its parent theory, as well as emergence from processual archaeology; rather than signifying any new orthodoxy, post-processualism encompasses a diversity of approaches, including structural-symbolic, contextual, feminist, phenomenological, and Marxist archaeologies; while differing in significant ways among themselves, what these different post-processual approaches share is a rejection of the idea of scientific objectivity, recognition of the indeterminacy of archaeological data, and the relevance of one’s standpoint or position with regard to the interpretation of the past. practice theory Seeks to explain the relationship between human action, on the one hand, and the extant system, or structure, on the other, by focusing on how the system shapes practice and how practice changes or reproduces the system. processual (new) archaeology Refers to both a phase and a theoretical orientation in American archaeology that dominated the field in the 1960s and 1970s; emphasized a systemic and adaptive view of culture, the search for general laws to explain human behavior and culture change, a positivist approach to science, and the rigorous use of the scientific method. praxis Understood as a theory of knowledge concerning people’s practical engagement with the world that has Marxist roots. structuration Concept and theory developed by Anthony Giddens in an attempt to reconcile fundamental dichotomies bedeviling the social sciences (e. g., agency vs. structure, subjective vs. objective, and micro vs. macro perspectives); approach focuses not on individual actors or the social totality but rather on social practices ordered across space and time that bridge these realms.

Structure Refers to a particular and complex organization of relations that both enable and constrain agency and social action. systems theory A trans-disciplinary meta-theory that gained currency in archaeology in the early 1960s; sought to discern rules governing the behavior of complex entities conceptualized holistically as configurations of interacting parts; provided a nomenclature for describing the organization and interdependence of any given configuration of parts connected and joined together by webs of relationships.