Student Number: 1053755

Define and explore the concept of agency and its

significance in archaeological interpretation

Deformity in nature is accidental, Man chiefly contributes toward

producing it in landscape. If the earth was not infinitely too vast for his

conceits the form of it would be spoiled ages ago by his tastelessness and

foolish operations. It is as well that all he can possibly do amounts to no

more than scratching the mighty globe with a pin. (Malchair 1791)

Theorists of both sides of the processual:postprocessual divide have each

hailed agency theory as the saving grace for their theoretical framework.

This caused Dobres and Robb (2000) to question the nature of the

understanding of the meaning of agency in archaeological terms, as

represented by the differing claims upon it.

Before embarking on an exploration of what agency might mean for, and

within, archaeological contexts, it is necessary, for context, to give brief

consideration to the history of the use of the concept of agency within

archaeology, and understand the meaning through usage. Hodder (2000)

notes that early uses of the concept of agency were, as is so often the

case in the history of archaeological theory, reactionary: behaviourism

and determinism gave the human no volition in their own action. There

was no choice but to act out their part on the grand process, without

power to make their mark, as Malchair suggested in the opening quote.

Agency, however, was the means by which an individual could feed back

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into the process and change the structures they lived within by their

actions. Agency became conflated with action and with the idea of the

actor itself (Moore 2000) and as the concept was adopted became a

general panacea for the ills of archaeological theory (Dobres & Robb

2000). Although individuals were now considered within theory, they were

still either ahistorical constructs, assuming the characteristics of the

authors whose service they were at (Harris 2006:27; Brck 2001), or

specifically situated subjects that are subject to problems in the

understanding of that subjectivity (Joyce 2008).

This question of subjectivity and the nature of the individual itself became

bound up in the question of agency and of personhood (Patterson 2005).

Ascribing to an individual the property of boundedness and the autonomy

required to make choices and exercise agency may not be correct for all

places and times, as shown by Strathern (1988) and the dividual sense

of personhood observed in Melanesia. It became no longer tenable to

theorize individuality as a given and thus ideas of what it is to be a person

are historically contingent. There needs to be a consideration of

personhood as contributing to agency, but a recognition that it is

situationally specific: a category to consider but not the category content

itself.

Agency in the modern world: the view from project management

Before considering the meaning of agency in archaeology, a contemporary

example will be explored and analysed. From this historically situated

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example, it can be seen that the concept of agency can provide a

framework for generating knowledge about the past.

Agency is a familiar concept in the world of managing projects, albeit

working with a definition of agency that does not consider directly the

causative factors of that agency. This concept of causational factors is an

idea that is returned to later when considering the archaeological uses of

the concept of agency. For the moment, the experientially-understood

definition of agency as the ability to influence an outcome is used.

One of the first steps to understanding the nature of a given project is to

identify the stakeholders who have an interest in the work of the project

and, more importantly, those who have the ability to influence the

outcome of any tasks (Cadle 2008). Here, the agency of the stakeholder

is being considered (a stakeholder being one with an interest in what is

being done). A common technique is to plot each stakeholder on a pair of

axes to demonstrate their relative influence (agency), or interest, the idea

being to identify those with the greatest likelihood of interfering with

proceedings (Figure 1).

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Figure 1: A stakeholder matrix, showing agency:interest intersection

From Figure 1, it is possible to see that Sam is both the most interested

party and the person with the greatest ability to influence the outcome of

a given task and therefore that this is the person with greatest agency

and the probability that it will be exercised. This model does not show

how the person feels about the situation that is being modelled, and

therefore is missing one of the key determining factors as to which way

the influence will be used: the longer-term strategic motivational factors.

This modelling technique also gives rise to the question of which particular

task out of many it is that Sam can influence, and therefore one of the

important considerations of agency in this context: the ability to influence

an outcome can be very narrow or very wide in scope, and is not always

entirely voluntary or within the control of the individual. For example: a

passer-by in the street may have the ability to perform CPR and save the

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life of a heart attack victim they discover, but they are powerless to stop

the small child being hit by a car while they perform this action. Agency,

therefore, is shown to be situational and context-specific. Also in-the-

moment, is the motivation of the individual to exercise their agency: the

passer-by chose to stop and assist.

Figure 2 demonstrates the bringing together of these ideas of interest,

motivation and agency. The choices that can be made within this

framework are limited by the agency of the person making the choice: it

is not possible to act to bring about an outcome where there is no ability

to influence the outcome.

Figure 2: Agency, coupled with the motivational inputs, leads to the

choice whether to act or to refrain from action. Both of these choices
influence the outcome and have intended and unintended consequences.

This is only a partial description of an event, however. The element that is

missing is the context for action. What is it that gives this person in this

particular time and place the ability to influence an outcome, the scope to

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perform an action? This is surely one of the questions of interest to

archaeology, as it is here that the person and the event become meshed

in time, space, and meaning. Contained within the archaeological record

are the fragmentary and mute remains of a moment or series of moments

in time. To understand what these remains are representative of requires

an exploration of the factors that lie behind the agency of that person.

From the present to the past: lost in translation?

In common with other aspects of archaeological theory adapted from

other social science, the idea of agency is grounded in similarly modern

ideas of what it is to be a human. The authors credited with the

introduction of ideas that are now known as agency (Dornan 2002),

Giddens and Bourdieu, did so on the basis of their own historically-

situated understanding of what it is to be human. Combining the ideas

from Bourdieus practice theory, knowledge theory, business analysis and

Barretts understanding of agency, the enabling and constraining factors

that determine agency in a given situation can be drawn as in Figure 3

Figure 3: Enabling/constraining factors of agency, based loosely on

Barrett 2006:6

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A question of scale? Process and the individual

The idea of the individual within the system was an enticing one, but

processual archaeology was making bold claims to discover the system

behind that individual (Johnson 2009: 25). With a need to find

determining rules, what place was there for a person to act? At a high

level, the idea that an increase in population leads to a need to increase

food production and housing, which in turn might attract newcomers to

the area which leads to increased need for housing can be modelled as a

high-level process (Figure 4)

Figure 4: A simplified high-level process modelling a potential system

At the scale of this process, no individual action is visible or possible. The

links between the steps are not taken by an individual person, so no

influence or change is possible at that scale. To zoom in further and

consider just the process of Build Houses, this gives a clearer idea of a

series of steps that may be performed (Figure 5).

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Figure 5: A simplied process for expanding out the high-level 'Build

Houses' process

This gives more scope for the process to be performed by a person, but is

still not specific enough to understand what that person might do and how

they might. Expanding out Obtain Materials to the level of chopping down

a tree and sawing logs, however, is where the ability of the process

operator to influence the process becomes apparent. This is the level

where choice is exercised and the person can alter the execution of the

process and cause it to change either temporarily or permanently. At the

higher levels of process, there cannot be change without altering the

output of the process e.g. miss any steps in Figure 5 and the process

objective is lost.

It is at this experiential level of process execution that the knowledge and

learning capabilities of the person will influence the outcome of the

endeavour. Ingold (2011: 53) described how one might engage with the

physical task of sawing logs and how the steps in the sequence are not

discrete but flow from one to another, each shaping and subtly altering

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the next as the learning body completes the sequence of actions. This fits

neatly with the definition of agency as outlined in Figure 3.

Archaeology deals with the remains of the acts of individuals (Hodder &

Hutson 2003: 7), it is at this scale that the material upon which the

theory must operate is found. The bigger questions and the desire to

understand the social environment around that individual, lead to the

need to zoom out and view the evidence from a higher vantage point,

although at this scale the tendency can be to look for patterning rather

than understanding (Bourdieu 1977:2). Strathern (2013) pointed out that

in switching scale like this, there is always a loss of information, always a

sacrifice to be made. If too wide a view is taken, the detail is lost; if too

narrow a view, the larger patterns cannot be seen. Clearly, the analytical

approach taken will determine the nature of the knowledge that can be

derived from the material. This will be considered again later when the

agency of the archaeologist is examined.

Agency in Practice? What knowledge is sought?

Whilst the concept of agency allows for actors to be humanised in

theoretical constructs, there is a very real difficulty in applying such

theoretical frameworks to the everyday realities of archaeological practice

(Johnson 1999). As Barrett (2000) noted, the evidence in the

archaeological record is of an action, not of agency. Within the framework

shown in Figure 3, what can be seen archaeologically is the remains of the

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consequence of the action, intended or unintended, the rest of the

framework is only available by induction (Wylie 2002:21).

Neither the consequence nor the motivation to act are preserved,

effectively denying the view of the actual person performing the act. Even

when literal evidence of a person is seen e.g. fingerprints on a pot or

preserved footprints, this does not increase the knowledge gained from

studying that pot beyond the general idea that fingerprints were

acceptable on a pot (although this is an assumption on the basis that the

pot was not smashed in deliberate rejection and assumes that smashing

would be how it would be known to be unacceptable). This reveals nothing

about the actual individual other than that they had fingers. It cannot

even be discerned whether the prints were a desirable or merely tolerated

attribute of the finished pot. Barratt (2000 :64) argued that by giving

such primacy to the outcome (as this is all there is typically evidence for),

the important questions of intentionality are ignored. It is debatable

however, whether reading intentionality into archaeological remains is

creating authentic knowledge, or merely projecting some ideas backwards

in time.

There is a valid point made though, as regards assumptions of

intentionality, as Hodder (2000) pointed out that the person may not

always be aware of the longer-term patterns that their smaller patterns

are caught up in. What might seem intentional to the performer may be

ultimately predictable by taking that larger view. There is also the

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argument that at the small-scale this doesnt allow for these longer-term

patterns to be observed and a view of society to be constructed.

Non-human agency: unthinking participation?

Material culture studies demonstrate that artefacts like the fingerprinted

pot are not passive bystanders in human lives: objects have meaning and

a life path of their own, entangled with the humans who make and use

them and creating the human as much as the object itself is created

(Hodder 2012). By the definition of agency explored above, these objects

have agency as they influence outcomes even in such humble ways as

causing a human to unthinkingly trip.

The materiality of materials themselves, their woodenness or stoniness

influences human behaviours and thoughts. As Ingold (2011) argued, it

can be as if materials only start to matter once a human has shaped them

or otherwise brought them within their sphere of influence, has given

them agency, as if it were something that could be added at will. Instead,

he insisted, materials have agency because they have influence. Objects

have agency because they have influence.

This idea of influence extends to the natural world (although arguably a

great deal of what looks natural has been changed by the hand of man):

marshy places, mountains, river confluences, have been shown to

influence human behaviour (e.g. Bradley 2000).

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The Agency of the Archaeologist

Having considered so far the importance of ideas of human and non-

human agency for interpretation, the logical extension of this is to

consider the agency of the archaeologist: as excavator, as interpreter, as

excavation director et cetera. Decisions to follow the cut (Edgeworth

2012) are as a result of the exercise of human agency. The archaeologist

is performing a role in a process, whatever that process might be, and is

subject to the same framework of enabling and constraining factors.

It is this agency though that determines the knowledge generated by the

archaeological activity. If it is assumed that the purpose of archaeological

thought is to turn data from the past into knowledge about the past then,

as Hodder (2003) has pointed out, the consideration of the theorising of

archaeology must also consider the archaeologist as part of the process of

knowledge creation. The archaeologist selects the method of analysis and

methodology, collects data deemed important to answer what is

considered important lines of enquiry. All of these actions influence the

knowledge generated, and therefore the outcome.

Conclusion

The concept of agency has an important part to play in allowing people in

the past to be knowing, thinking, active people with personalities, needs,

desires and wants. The idea that a human can act within, but also against,

the constraints around them, to knowingly transgress any determining

rules the archaeologist might wish to place them within, and to act on a

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whim or a fancy as the mood strikes is a valuable one if archaeology

wishes to create a past filled with living people with personalities.

This essay has attempted to deconstruct ideas of agency and personhood

and place them within a framework to give a structure for using agency to

understand the past. Many of the ideas are based in the historical present

but at that is the episteme (Foucault 1994) that the analysis is situated

within and must therefore hold true as much for the present as the past.

After all, to be applicable at all pre-current times it must be specific to

none.

The categories of the enabling and constraining factors that support that

agency will grow and change as social theorists, anthropologists, and

philosophers in the present discover more about what it is to be human

and the factors that can affect our decisions and ability to act. It can

never be truly verified that these factors are ahistorical in themselves; for

the framework to be truly successful the enabling and constraining factors

must be categories that apply throughout time, but the content within the

categories be historically situated and able to be situated.

Far less still can the idea of motivation and individual strategy be

addressed archaeologically, but this does not need to hinder a quest for

the understanding of what it was to be a human being at a given point in

time as an understanding of the factors that influence that being can be

considered. Looking back at the types of knowledge that archaeology

strives to create, the distance between the evidence and these factors

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seems great, and therefore whilst the framework can support and

structure enquiries into the past, it cannot give the scientific certainty that

the New Archaeologists sought.

Humans rarely think of themselves as performing repeatable processes

except in the specialised form of society that is the business environment.

Here, it is understood that an idealised model of the desired path will be

set out, but that usage, innovation, and laziness will lead to the process-

as-executed drifting from the process-as-engineered. This is an example

of agency within the business environment: the business analyst

constructs a process within the requirements and constraints, but when

people start to use it, they find ways around it, improvements and

redundancies; so the process changes little by little over time without

anyone having re-engineered it intentionally.

It is not to be suggested that the maker of a pot in the Neolithic is at all

aware of the necessary steps being part of a process but that when one

understands what all the parts of a process are intended to achieve, one

can focus on the goal not the process. So the pot-maker, understanding

the required outcome, is free to find ways to that outcome without

conforming to an idealised path. The requirements of the outcome may

change: decoration may be required and therefore the process execution

diverts to consider the new requirement. This low-level detailed

consideration of the path of making is of use for a particular type of

knowledge: the everyday, the ordinary. It does not seek to address the

big questions such as how metalworking began, or the advent of

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agriculture. It doesnt need to, because the big questions are made of the

details but while looking at the view from a great height, this cannot be

seen. (3177 words)

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