Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time

A History of Archaeological Thought.

This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven best-documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and adjacent peoples in the Valley of Mexico, the Classic Maya, the Inka, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, economic systems, religion, and culture. Many of this study's findings are surprising and provocative. Agricultural systems, technologies, and economic behaviour turn out to have been far more diverse than was expected. These findings and many others challenge not only current understandings of early civilizations but also the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology and anthropology. The key to understanding early civilizations lies not in their historical connections but in what they can tell us about similarities and differences in human behaviour.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/2002074052.pdf

Understanding early civilizations : a comparative study

The archaeology of the contemporary past is becoming an important subfield within the discipline and one attractive not only to archaeologists but to social scientists and artists. The period that started with World War I, here identified as “supermodernity,” has been characterized by increasing devastation of both humans and things and the proliferation of archaeological sites, such as battlefields, industrial ruins, mass graves, and concentration camps. The mission of a critical archaeology of this period is not only telling alternative stories but also unveiling what the supermodern power machine does not want to be shown. For this we need to develop a new kind of archaeological rhetoric, pay closer attention to the materiality of the world in which we live, and embrace political commitment without sacrificing objectivity.

/pdf/time-to-destroy-an-archaeology-of-supermodernity-5br0amv5nl.pdf

Time to destroy. An archaeology of supermodernity

This essay identifies the potential of an emerging archaeological turn for anthropology—and for archaeology itself. I argue that despite the critiques of the past two decades, the temporality of modernity and a belief in its exceptionalism still structure much of anthropological thought, as exemplified in the division of archaeology and ethnography and in the subfield of historical archaeology and its dystopic treatment of modern urban ruins. But alternative temporalities and analytical possibilities are also emerging, ones attentive to the folding and recycling of cultural elements that Walter Benjamin described with such philosophical depth. On the ground, Benjamin’s insights can be put to use by paying greater attention to the spatiotemporal dynamics of capitalism’s creative destruction, to the social life of ruins, and to projects that challenge the linear divide between modernity and antiquity. Releasing anthropology from progressive time necessarily entails a reintegration of the subfields and a dir...

http://www.osea-cite.org/class/quetzil/Quetzil2010_Current-Anthropology_Comment_on_Shannon_Dawdy_Clockpunk-Anthropology.pdf

Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: In the Beginning Chapter 2: When Once There Was a Once Upon a Time Chapter 3: Pages Written in Earth Chapter 4: An Archaeology of the Present Chapter 5: A Field of Ruins Chapter 6: Ragmen of the Past Chapter 7: Palimpsests and Memory-Objects Chapter 8: A Biology of Forms Conclusion Bibliography Index

The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and Memory

Several recent publications on ‘the past in the past’ raise the issue that remains from older pasts existed in younger pasts, just like the fabric of our present-day world is made up of materials from the past. Archaeology in fact studies material culture that exists in the present; it deals with memory recorded in matter and not with events or moments from the past. This essay explores the consequences of this for archaeology's understanding of time. It argues that historic time should not be viewed as the ‘empty and homogeneous’ time of historicism – the time of dates, chronologies and periods – but on the contrary as the full and heterogeneous time of the fusion between the present and the past.

The past of the present. Archaeological memory and time

The Hochdorf ‘princely’ grave and the question of the nature of archaeological funerary assemblages

l'A etudie les origines de l'archeologie francaise et tente de les expliquer notamment dans le siecle des lumieres et la revolution francaise, comme prolongement d'un mouvement ne un siecle auparavant en Angleterre, demontrant ainsi des racines communes aux deux archeologies (francaise et britannique). L'A etablit une relation entre les civilisations americaine et europeenne, puis du changement qui s'est produit au XVIIIe siecle en Angleterre et en France avec le concept de nation et ses implications archeologique et anthropologique.

Laurent Olivier

Papers

The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and Memory

The past of the present. Archaeological memory and time

The Hochdorf ‘princely’ grave and the question of the nature of archaeological funerary assemblages

The origins of French archaeology

Le sombre abîme du temps : mémoire et archéologie