Whatever questions one asks about the human past, even if they are only about technology or economy, frameworks of meaning intervene. After all, one cannot say what the economy of a site was until one has made hypotheses or assumptions about the symbolic meaning of, for example, bone discard. This book has been a search for an adequate answer to the question of how we infer past cultural meanings. In chapter 1, we framed the question of meaning in terms that called attention to two other issues: agency and history. Subsequently, we explored various approaches to meaning, agency and history.

The original task of comparing and contrasting the different approaches in terms of their contributions to these three issues has now been achieved and much of what was sought has been found. Structuralist archaeology contributes to the notion that culture is meaningfully constituted, but only a theory of practice can explain how meanings impact people's lives. New developments in Marxist-influenced archaeology and social theory have led to a more complete discussion of the role of the agency in society, and a consideration of embodiment helps us understand how agents experience the world and how they are formed as subjects in the world. Finally, historical studies provide an understanding of how these meanings persist or change over time and how the actions of agents contribute to the transformation or maintenance of long-term structures of meaning.