Archaeologists who seek to examine people ' and 'postprocessual' (e.g. Shanks & Tilley 1987, 61-78; Meskell 1999, 8-36;Hodder 2000; Tarlow 2002, 26-7; Gosden 2004, 33-9; Kristiansen 2004, 83-5), archaeologists who want to open up windows onto the roles people played in past societies typically assume, consciously or unconsciously, the existence of individuals. Thomas (2004a, 147-8), however, challenges unqualified assumptions about the existence of individuals, at least in Europe prior to about 500 years ago:
Past Practices: Rethinking Individuals and Agents in Archaeology
A. Bernard Knapp & Peter van DommelenThe result [of recent work on agency] … has been to conflate agency with the actor … and thus to assume that evidence of agency is the same thing as evidence for individuals or subjects or selves. This confusion is an understandable one, and in archaeology its origins would seem to lie in the wholly necessary and laudable attempt to think about the concrete attributes of individuals in the past and their role in social and cultural change. (Moore 2000, 260)