Curry, Patricia

de Montmollin, Olivier

English

Apollo (Cambridge)

TIME AND ARCHAEOLOOY Patricia Curry and Olivier de Montmollin As archaeolo~ists continue to question the conceptual basis of their discipline, the need to examine concepts of Time looms large. The oaoers in this issue have been gathered to provide a small sample of the diversity of viewooints about time and archaeology. In scope, the paoers range from programmatic statements (Bailey, Shanks and Tilley, McG!ade) to relativel y more narrow case studies (Sinclair, Zimmerman, de '\fontmol l in) . In this introduction, each of the editors reviews a selected theme that runs through the issue: firstly, the locus of time concepts [O. de M.] and secondly, the focus of time frameworks [P. C.]. ~ Q_f. Time Conceots The paoers in this issue touch on the conceptualisation of time by several groups -- archaeologists, lay contemporaries affected by archaeological research ("native oeoples" , peasants), and people who lived in the periods under archaeological or historical study. Thus, different loci of time conceotual isat ion appear, with a broad contrast t>etween Archaeologists' Time (AT) and Others' Time (OT). Anthropo-loirists will recogni se this as yet another manifestation of etics and emics, the classical dichotomy between the Western observer and the tr11ditional "other". The reader can expect to find a useful variety of charac terisations of OT and AT in these papers as well as a variety of arguments about how OT and AT stand in complementary or opposed relation to the other. The roots of this diversity must sure ly lie in the extreme varietv of research interest s held by archaeologists. Bailey gives the most wide-ranging attention to AT, focusing on the issue of tempor11l scale and the advantages of the important concept of "time oersoectivism". He proposes that a multiplicity of time scales (i.e. durations) may be selected by archaeologists to make observations which match the needs of the questions asked. A simi lar intere st in archaeologists' selection of time scales appears in McGlade's paper. Here the focus shifts from scales of observation of the archaeologica l record to scales of "construction" in s imulation exercises. Shanks a nd Tilley have a negative view of AT. They characterise it as an "abst ract" capitalist variety of time, inappropriate for dealing with the "substan-tial" time (OT) of past and present person s dealt with in archaeological research. Sinclai r investigates the first appear ance of something like "abstract" time among certain social classes in 17th and 18th century England. While focusing on past OT, he i s in effect also tracin g the origins of a certain variety of AT. De Montmo llin attempts to show that certain kinds o f abstract "managerialist" AT are not suff icien t for understanding prehispanic 1\1esoamerican society and politics at various social scales. Given this oroblem, managerialist AT has t o be analyti-ca l! V suoplemented by more social scale-sens itive varieties of AT and by notions of OT s tudied ethno'1istorically. Zimmerman's discussion of AT concerns attitudes to the past. He highlights a North American ,,-. -3 archaeological view of the past -- the urge to "discover" and analyse a Native American past (viewed as extinct and separate from the present). With its focus on the reburial i ss ue, Zimmerman's paper brings AT and OT together in most concrete form, since the controversy pits two groups with contrasting attitudes to the past against each other. At the cutting edge of archaeological activity, aopreciation of these contrasts is an essential first steo in dealing with the oroblem. On political as well as intellectual ~rounds, Shanks and Tilley argue that (their version of) AT should be SUPPianted by OT, non-ca!)italist sub-stantial time -- traditional, circular, etc. Their view of substantial time is exemolified by Native American notions of time and the past described in Zimmerman's study, which stands as a good example of the clash between differing forms of AT and OT. Interest ingly, Zimmerman's conclusions do not suizgest that AT has necessarily to give way to OT. Sinclair's notion of OT is less monolithic, taking into account diffe-rent conceots of time held (and used oolitically) by different social classes in England and the tendency for such concepts to change rapidly. De Montmoll in also views OT as more divisible. In Mesoamerica, (emic) calendrical spans of ever-increasing length are associated with groups of increasingly large social span and with individuals of ever more important social standing. McGlade's discussion of OT focuses more narrowly on the individual scale of analysis and the need for archaeo-logists to build individual intentionality, perceptions and so forth into long term simulation modelling of social trajectories. What emerges is that both AT and OT are worthy of rigorous attention. ls AT limiting and monolithic (Shanks and Tilley, Zimmerman, Sinclair) or can it be a flexible tool for research (Bailey, McGlade, de M:>ntmollin)? Is OT monolithic (Shanks and Tilley, McGlade, Zimmerman) or does it h'ive interestin~ internal historical, social, or cultural diversity (Sinclair, de Montmollin)? The definition of anv oroblem in archaeology necessarily involves the definition of a time frame within which that oroblem is set. This framework has traditi onal lv served as an organising mechanism for relating objects and events. Howeve r , it mav also determine the way in which the oroblem i s aporoached. Bailey argues that the time span con s ider ed in interpretat i on brings d i ff e r ent variables and processes into focus. It follows that explanatory principles are not equally aPoroo riate when apolied to problems covering time spans of significantly varyi ng length. When pri nc iples derived from long-term obser vations, usually within the archaeological context but often borrowed from other disciplines such as biology and geology, are applied to problems of significantly shorter duration, the explanations are unsatisfactory to analysts with expe-rience in li ving cultures. Conversely, the extrapolation of principles of causalit y from ethnographic observation for interpretation of events that involve much longer time spans is equally unsatisfactory. 4 This effect has b ecome evident in the context of 'longitudinal' ethnograph ic studies, which invol ve observation of the subject society over a oeriod of severa l decades. It has been oossible t o isolat e orocesses ooera ting over the 'long term' that are not evident within the shorter oeriod s studied by traditional ethnology. Sinc e such distinc-t ions can be discriminated within pe rio ds of time that a:e relative.ly short in comoari son to those often i nvol ved in archaeological analysis, it is essential to consider the effect of time perspective. This should no t imoly a dichotomy of methods or issues relating to short- vs . long-term cat egori es but a continuous spectrum: explanatory principles must be emoloyed th~t can be expected to operate over the per~od that is under consideration . Hence, the oroblem for the archaeologist becomes one of identifying variables and models approp riat e to the time framewor k bei ng s t udied . The oaoers assembled here deal with a number of time f rameworks a nd show the variety of issues to be considered. Within the context of a spec ifi c society , the way in which time is oerce ive d is oroblematic: time may be measured according to social necessity rath1:ir than regulating and defining that neces sity. Shanks and Ti llev argue for t he imoortance of oerceived ti me interval s as oooosed t o the abstract chronology generally used in a rchaeology. They criticise the orojection of modern systems of time measure'llent onto other cultures as a te'llpor.111 imoeriali sm justifying the status~· Sinclair and de Montmollin also discuss th i s as pect , obser vi ng that different concepts of time can be held by different classes within the same socie ty. The argument i s illustrated in two quite distinct histo-rical ly known societ ies - - prehispanic Mesoame rica and 17th-18th century England. I n both, time r eckoni ng and scheduling of activities is_ seen to vary accordi ng to social c lass. De Montmoll in con_trasts the e:fect that these concept s may have on t he timing of events with that predicted wit hin abstract 'manage r iali st' models that have often been used in analysis of Mesoamerican and other complex societies. The problem of i dentifying processes appropriat e to the tim e frame in ques t ion is a ddr essed by McGl ade in the context of comouter modelling. Th i s seems to offer the possibility of 'conde nsing' ti me in order to exolore assumptions about the interva l s within which particu lar orocesses may be defined. As Bai l ey notes, behaviour at any point i n time r epresen t s t he intersection of orocesses that are both defined and ooerable over va r ying time spans. 1\'1cGlad e's method seems to offe r the ooss i b ilit v of incoroora ti ng the effects of in teracting orocesses. The oap e rs co llected here apo r o'l.ch the sub jec t of time f ro m many different oersoe ct ives . This is entirely aoprooriate, for many diffe r en t ti me frameworks have been considered. Acknowl edgements The edi t ors would like to thank Ian Ho dder for organising a se ri es of sem i nars at Cambri dge o n the subjec t of time and archaeology which provided much o f the impetus for t his issue of ARC. ,, BREAKING THE TIME BARRIER Geoff Bailey Temooral Awareness and Temooral Horizons Awareness of time is one of the fundamental characteristics of the human brain . According to Davis (1981), a caoacity for 'separated learning' -- the ability to relate events which are remote in time and space, and to draw consciously on past exoerience in order to make predictions about the future - - is uniquely human, more so than the capacity for symbolic thought, language or art, all of which can be found in at least rudimentary form in other species. Many animals anticipate the future to a small extent, and some have long memories, but none are capable of relating events separated by a time interval of more than about one minute. The temporal envelope, past and future, within which they live is extremely limited, even for our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees (Davis 1981, 131) . In contrast, our own tem!)oral horizon is capable of extending almost indefinitely into past and future . How far back in our evolution as a species such abilities were present is uncertain. A fullv modern capacity for temporal awareness can reasonably be associated with the appearance of anatomically modern humans, at least 100,000 years ago. Gowlett (1984) has argued for mental abilities associated with the earliest tool-making 2 million vears ago which imoly a temooral horizon -- limited perhaps by our standards but greater by some order of magnitude than that disolayed by anv other living soecies. It follows that time conceots should play an important role in archaeological Interpretation, in two ways: firstly because peoole have clearly had varying concepts of time in the past which have influenced their thoughts and activities and hence the nature of the material record left for archaeologi sts to explore and interpret; secondly because varying time concepts influence our own thinking as archaeolo<;ists, often unconsciously, and thus insidiously permeate di s -cussi ons of archaeological theory and methodology. It is this latt er issue which I wish to examine further here. Archaeologists have devoted little attention to the ways in wh ich time concepts affect their interpretations . Undoubtedl y one obstacle is the purely technical one of imperfect datin g me thod s, and the preoccupation with matters of chronology. A recent survey of central government funds in the UK devoted to archaeological research over the period 1979-1984 s hows a total expenditure of £7.7 million (excluding rescue archaeology), of which fully one third was devoted to improved dating techniques (Hart Report 1985). Much more work remains to be done, and even simple chronological relationships are often matters of controversy, so that conceptual i ssues are easily pushed into the (Archaeological Review from Cambridge 6:1 [1987]) 

Time and archaeology

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Time and archaeology

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