Some implications of ‘compound temporality’ for archaeological narratives
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-05-10

Full title: Time and Social Transformation: Some implications of ‘compound temporality’ for archaeological narratives 

Time, as a human condition and construct, is complex: both as lived and as reflected upon in the construction of history. The implications of this for the way we think through and write archaeological narratives was a preoccupation of Thomas’ Time, Culture and Identity (1996) and he identified the project of attempting to resolve (some of) the paradoxes concerned as central to an integrated interpretive archaeology. An example of such paradox is how residues and artefacts are at one and the same time static and dynamic. And one way to attempt to resolve this paradox concerns our recognition of the phenomenon of implication: how the presence of an object, or the conduct of an activity in one place, implicates networks of practices and places in different times and locations. This presentation will reflect both upon how we identify the temporalities implicit or evoked materially and upon the construction of (contemporary and future) archaeological narratives that focus on social transformation as multi-facetted and continually unfolding rather than linear or stadial. Along the way it will consider also our capacity to understand ‘The Times of Their Lives’ as having involved also, the active and conscious construction of the past in the past. 

Keith Ray