Agency theory has been used in archaeology for over twenty years now. During that time what agency has meant and the problems it has been used to study have changed dramatically. In this article I explore the evolution of the concept through three distinct interpretations of the concept, and discuss what ‘agency’ means at present and where it is going. The concept of agency has been subsumed into a more flexible view of past societies as built around relationalities (of personhood, of materiality and of fields of action). One way to use such a concept is demonstrated through a brief case study of routine and habitus in Neolithic southern Italy. As this case study implies, ‘agency’ as a capacity for action has to be historicized in specific contexts rather than used generically.
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