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Chapter 1: The problem

In some way the book seems to a reaction to the New archaeology (1960's and 70's). And it looks that one red tape in the book/chapter is that Archaeology is archaeology is archaeology (page 1), meaning that archaeology is not just applying existing sciences (like statistics, history, anthropology, etc.). And the interpretation of the past needs to incorporate cultural meanings, intentions and purposes (page 10).
The three main items for the proposed archaeology are (page 1-2):

Material culture is meaningfully constituted.
Furthermore material culture is an indirect reflection of human society (page 3) like a transformation of that the human behavior (page 2). Context is essential and makes the cultural object less mute (page 5). Questions that are important a) How does one decide on the boundary which defines the context? (page 5); b) how are we able to show that indeed this meaning was in the individual persons mind (page 5) and/or c) as the generalization (page 6).

any

that agency that intentionally made the object
The aim of this is to integrate both meaning and agency into the archaeology theory (page 10). Important here that an agency is by definition not only an individual (page 7).
An object is produced by an agency (individual or group of individuals), not by a social system (page 7).
So this leaves an important question: What is the relationship between the individual object and the society as a whole (page 8)? How the material culture acts on people is socially defined in the social framework of beliefs, concepts and dispositions (page 9).
closest ties with history
Interesting to read that in Europe this was most of the time the case (page 11) but not in USA, where it was more related to anthropology. Because Hodder is an American, one has to keep this viewpoint in mind. It is important to examine where things come from (page 12), while diffusion of traits are explanatory and NOT descriptive, as so often claimed (page 12).
This section I liked (page 13):
"The writing of ink on paper is itself one type of material culture, and the inference of meaning from such evidence is equivalent to that for material object in general. in this sense, history is part of archaeology. Even though historical documents contain considerable more contextual information when we recognize the language are written in, the process of inference is still one of giving meaning to the past material world."

A general statement: The meaning of normative in this book is not descriptive culture history, but more the shared ideas or the what should be done (norms refer to behavior) (page 9)

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Major content related changes: Feb. 23, 2005