The physical context of archaeological finds has long been recognised as essential to archaeological explanation and interpretation. However, processual social archaeology has emphasised the systemic context of behaviour - the necessity of locating behaviour within functioning social wholes. More recently postprocessual material culture theory has considered it vital to refer the production, style, exchange and consumption of artifacts to wider contexts of social practice, social structures, symbolic codes and formal organising grammars. Such a position has taken influence from structuralism and poststructuralism. Hodder’s contextual archaeology is to be mentioned here. The concept of context can profitably be connected with an interest in agency such as that found in structuration theory: the temporal and spatial settings of human practice are considered essential to its constitution, with place and temporality actively constructed through practice. Human agency is always and unavoidably situated. More generally, in the work of Shanks, Tilley and McGuire, the concept has been widened with a philosophy of relationality which examines the forms of connectedness found in human lifeworlds. The background to such philosophy is varied - from Hegelian Marxism and critical theory through to poststructuralism.