Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T08:38:01.900Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Archaeology and contemporaneity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2015

Gavin Lucas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of contemporaneity as it is used in archaeology. In particular, two general usages are examined. The first concerns the idea of contemporaneity in the context of archaeological dating and chronology, the second relates to the characterization of the archaeological record as a contemporary phenomenon. In both cases, related concepts are explored, namely synchronism and anachronism respectively. The paper offers a critique of these conventional usages of the idea of contemporaneity and argues for an alternative, linking this with the concept of consociation, a term coined by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz in the early 20th century.

Keywords

contemporaneitytimesynchronismanachronismconsociality
Type
Discussion Article
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , June 2015 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aitken, M.J., 1990: Science-based dating in archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Allen, J.F., 1983: Maintaining knowledge about temporal intervals, Communications of the ACM 26 (11), 832–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashplant, T., and Wilson, A., 1988a: Present-centred history and the problem of historical knowledge, Historical journal 31, 253–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashplant, T., and Wilson, A., 1988b: Whig history and present-centred history, Historical journal 31, 1–16.Google Scholar
Baillie, M., 1997: A slice through time. Dendrochronology and precision dating, London.Google Scholar
Bergson, H., 1991: Matter and memory, New York.Google Scholar
Binding, C., 2010: Implementing archaeological time periods using CIDOC CRM and SKOS, in Aroyo, L., Antoniou, G., Hyvönen, E., Ten Teije, A., Stuckenschmidt, H., Cabral, L. and Tudorache, T. (eds), Proceedings of the 7th Extended Semantic Web Conference, Heraklion (ESWC 2010), Part I, Berlin and Heidelberg, 273–87.Google Scholar
Binford, L., 1983: In pursuit of the past. Decoding the archaeological record, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Buck, C.E., and Millard, A.R. (eds), 2004: Tools for constructing chronologies. Tools for crossing disciplinary boundaries, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carver, M., 2009: Archaeological investigation, London.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G., 1956: Piecing together the past, London.Google Scholar
Fowler, C. 2004: The archaeology of personhood, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, A., 1998: Art and agency, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gräslund, B., 1987: The birth of prehistoric chronology. Dating methods and dating systems in nineteenth-century Scandinavian archaeology, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Harrison, R., 2011: Surface assemblages. Towards an archaeology in and of the present, Archaeological dialogues 18 (2), 141–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holdaway, S., and Wandsnider, L., 2008: Time in archaeology. Time perspectivism revisited, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Holtorf, C., 2002: Excavations at Monte da Igreja near Évora (Portugal). From the life-history of a monument to re-uses of ancient objects, Journal of Iberian archaeology 4, 177–201.Google Scholar
Husserl, E., 1966: The phenomenology of internal time-consciousness, Bloomington, IN.Google Scholar
Karlsson, H. (ed.), 2001: It's about time. The concept of time in archaeology, Göteborg.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G.E.R., 2010: History and human nature. Cross-cultural universals and cultural relativities, Interdisciplinary science reviews 35 (3–4), 201–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, G., 2005: The archaeology of time, London.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2012: Understanding the archaeological record, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McTaggart, J.E., 1908: The unreality of time, Mind 17, 457–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, T. (ed.), 1999: Time and archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Nash, S.E. (ed.), 2000: It's about time. A history of archaeological dating in North America, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Olivier, L., 2011: The dark abyss of time. Archaeology and memory, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C., 1978: Before civilization, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Rowe, J.H., 1962: Worsaae's law and the use of grave lots for archaeological dating, American antiquity 28 (2), 129–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schutz, A., 1967: The phenomenology of the social world, Evanston, IL.Google Scholar
Serres, M., and Latour, B., 1995: Conversations on science, culture, and time, Ann Arbor, MI.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanks, M., 2012: The archaeological imagination, Walnut Creek, CA.Google Scholar
Shyrock, A., and Smail, D.L., 2011: Deep history. The architecture of past and present, Berkeley, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, M., 1988: The gender of the gift, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Tylor, E., 1865: Researches into the early history of mankind and the development of civilization, London.Google Scholar
Witmore, C., 2006: Vision, media, noise and the percolation of time. Symmetrical approaches to the mediation of the material world, Journal of material culture 11 (3), 267–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2009: Prolegomena to open pasts. On archaeological memory practices. Archaeologies 5 (3), 511–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witmore, C., 2013: Which archaeology? A question of chronopolitics, in González-Ruibal, A. (ed.), Reclaiming archaeology. Beyond the tropes of modernity, London, 130–44.Google Scholar
Wylie, A., 1985: The reaction against analogy, Advances in archaeological method and theory 8, 63–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar