Much Anglo-American archaeological thought of the last thirty years has focused on epistemology and methodology. Recently some archaeologists (postprocessual) have come to consider what may be termed archaeological or social ontology - asking questions of the character of the object of archaeological inquiry (ontology is the branch of philosophy concerned with what exists). Such archaeological ontology asks what is the character of material culture, what is social practice, just what is it that archaeologists are attempting to interpret or explain, and more generally what is the character of materiality as it is experienced archaeologically?