An Anthropology of Deep Time

In the face of debates about the Anthropocene - a geological epoch of our own making - and contemporary concerns about ecological crisis and the Sixth Mass Extinction, it is more important than ever to locate the timeframe of human activity within the deep time of planetary history. This path-breaking book is a timely critical review of the anthropology of time, exploring our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation. Richard D. G. Irvine shows how the time-horizons of social life are a matter of crucial concern, and lays bare the ways in which human activity becomes severed from the long-term geological and ecological rhythms on which it depends.

• Shows how anthropology and the social sciences can contribute to the effort to avert the forthcoming environmental crisis
• Explains the importance of geology in understanding social life; it introduces non-specialist readers to key figures in the history of geology and their significance for a contemporary understanding of time
• A new and unique synthesis of the history of geological theory and anthropological theory, and an in-depth ethnographic perspective on the geology of the landscape