Abstract
Anthropology has drawn heavily on the Marxist theoretical tradition for help in understanding agency and conflict in human societies. This paper considers agency theories in contemporary archaeology. It argues that current theories marginalize a key aspect of human social life of importance to Marx: the process of extracting and distributing surplus labor. The interpretive consequences of this situation are explored, and an alternative class-analytical framework is outlined. The implications of this class-analytical approach for archaeological interpretation are discussed, and the approach is illustrated using case material from the Mississippian archaeological record of the midcontinental United States.
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