Against Instance: Proposing a radical epistemology of times
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-03-23

To deploy a materiality of time, the empirical together with the phenomenological should be reassessed. 1. To reconcile the concept of time in archaeology with its continental philosophical roots Classically, however many variants of time there may be, they are located within time; for example, Ricoeur’s phenomenological time and cosmological time. This proposal states time may also define a world, and different sorts of time define different worlds. Each may not be known to us. If they are unknown, they are lost to us. Archaeology is an evidential means to discover this loss. 2. To re-evaluate and renew dated arguments surrounding phenomenology in archaeology How? In archaeology, empiricism and phenomenology need not oppose one another. However, each must complete the other for archaeologists to discover a loss of time. At least as much as any phenomenology, this requires a radical empirical epistemology of time – hence reference to Feyerabend’s ‘Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge’ (1975).  

David Fine