Some approaches in the human sciences hold that people should be considered not as passive tabulae rasae, through whose behaviour society may be traced, but as active subjects. This is a feature of postprocessual archaeologies. The contrast is between an interest in behaviour and an interest in active social practice. To understand and explain practice account must be taken of faculties and capabilities of intending, choosing and ordering - people’s self-reflexive monitoring of their lifeworlds. Human agency is an important associated concept. The implications for social archaeology are profound - accounts of past societies and their material culture lifeworlds very different to those of traditional and processual archaeologies are hereby implied. This has been a major development of postprocessual social archaeology. There are also implications for understanding the practice of archaeology - the past is less ‘discovered’ (traces to be recorded by the observing archaeologist) than it is worked with and upon according to creative acts of intention and choice made under particular social interests.