ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the tension at funerals as a microcosm of the structure/ agency dialectic. This dialectic is encompassed within a broader process of cultural constitution: the objectification of people through their externalization in things and places, and the subsequent sublation of the values and identities created through materialization. The representation of humans as cultural categories is the central material form of individual externalization, and its medium is a very political choice. The chapter discusses two theoretical accounts which seek such a stance, and work through their implications for gendered archaeological research with a mortuary data set from later Hungarian prehistory. The first account combines Danny Miller's presentation of a theory of culture with his earlier discussion of the categorization of artifacts. The second concerns Emma Blake's treatment of dynamic nominalism and its application to archaeological problems of structure, agency and self-categorization.
