Table of Contents

List of contributors; Preface; Part I. The Development of Theory: 1. Theoretical archaeology: a reactionary view Ian Hodder; 2. Artefacts as products of human categorisation processes D. Miller; 3. Social formation, social structures and social change Christopher Tilley; 4. Epistemological issues raised by a structuralist archaeology M. Alison Wylie; Part II. The Search for Models: 5. Matters material and ideal Susan Kus; 6. House power: Swahili space and symbolic markers Linda Wiley Donley; 7. The interpretation of spatial patterning in settlement residues H. L. Moore; 8. Decoration as ritual symbol: a theoretical proposal and an ethnographic study in southern Sudan Mary Braithwaite; 9. Structures and strategies: an aspect of the relationship between social hierarchy and cultural change D. Miller; 10. Mortuary practices, society and ideology: an ethnoarchaeological study Michael Parker Pearson; Part III. Application: The Analysis of Archaeological Materials: 11. Boundedness in art and society Margaret W. Conkey; 12. Ideology, symbolic power and ritual communication: a reinterpretation of Neolithic mortuary practices Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley; 13. Ideology, change and the European Early Bronze Age Stephen Shennan; 14. Sequences of structural change in the Dutch Neolithic Ian Hodder; Part IV. Commentary: Childe's offspring Mark Leone; Index.

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This volume presents a searching critique of the more traditional archaeological methodologies and interpretation strategies.