ABSTRACT
The history of social theory embodies in and of itself notions of recursive practice. Functionalism, structuralism, post-structuralism were each acted on by people whose thought was largely shaped by the very position they were critiquing, giving rise, bit by bit, to the new theory. Archaeology is that space where, to adapt Anthony Giddens, history, sociology, and anthropology should be 'methodologically indistinguishable'. The relationship between Near Eastern history and Near Eastern archaeology remains that very opposition of the individual versus society, action versus structure, that both Giddens's structuration theory and Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory are designed to transcend, and one of the core elements, agency, is the vehicle through which both reconciliation and rupture may be accomplished. The differences between Bourdieu and Giddens therefore have major implications for archaeo-logical understandings of change. Giddens's idea of change is born of the fluid relationship between individual and structure, which at any point in time is at least potentially different than at any other.
