Technology and Social Agency Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology

The book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective. The author is explicitly concerned with studying ancient technological practices but the general concept of technology forms the centrepiece of discussion and is defined as an explicitly social, symbolic, and embodied endeavour that simultaneously brings into being both human agents and their material world. Dobres argues that, for ancient technologies and products to be fully understood, we need to appreciate the historically constituted ways in which social agency, technical knowledge and the gestural acts of artefact production and use were socially meaningful and, thus, politically charged.Dobres, Marcia-Anne is the author of 'Technology and Social Agency Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology', published 2000 under ISBN 9781577181231 and ISBN 1577181239.