Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (564 page)

Small Roman town on a main road where travelling officials could find an inn (
MANSIO
).

 
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Term describing the period after the medieval. In the British Isles this is often taken to be the period after the dissolution of the monasteries around ad 1540. Some take the post-medieval period down to the end of the 20th century
ad
, but others prefer to interpose a ‘modern’ period between about ad 1750 and the present day.

 
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The earliest type of windmill, consisting of a timber body containing the machinery and carrying sails which was mounted on a single timber post around which the body of the mill could be turned into the wind. Many postmills were set upon specially constructed artificial mounds or made use of existing round barrows.

 
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See
POSTHOLE
.

 
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See
POSTHOLE
.

 
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A term first used by Ian Hodder in 1985 to refer to a series of theoretical approaches deployed in archaeological thinking that share little except being critical of
PROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY
while emphasizing social factors in the way human societies operate. Post-processual archaeology is not so much a coherent body of thought as a reaction against positivist approaches and their explicit use of models taken from the natural sciences. Post-processual archaeology incorporates many different approaches derived from
MARXISM
,
HERMENEUTICS
,
POST-STRUCTURALISM
, and constructivism, but is perhaps united in an interest in social ontology—the character of social reality. Here attempts have been made to provide archaeology with more sophisticated conceptions of past society and the tools to explore ancient societies through archaeological materials. Understandings of human behaviour must be sought in the societies themselves in order to identify specific and often rather idiosyncratic responses to particular conditions. Appropriate lines of enquiry thus include the investigation of social power, structure, contradiction, social change, and gender. A key concept here is that of agency—people are knowledgeable agents and thus attention should be paid to questions of intention, meaning, and the signification of action in order to understand past social phenomena. Also known as interpretive archaeology.

 
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