ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will extend the analysis of human temporality offered in Chapter Two to consider material things and the way in which they exist through time. I will suggest that in many ways the temporal structure of things bears a similarity to that of human beings, and that this is a consequence of their being encompassed by the structure of human care. However, it may be useful to introduce this discussion by relating these issues to a continuing debate regarding the way that archaeologists conceive of the material world. Where we look on material things as the consequence of human action in the past, it may be that society comes to be reified into a metaphysical entity divorced from materiality. By contrast, recent work which places the concept of ‘the archaeological record’ in question does much to remind us that social life is lived out through the material world. However, I wish to add to this perspective the suggestion that when we use material traces as evidence for past human activities, we are adopting a quite specific attunement toward material things. Although this way of dealing with materiality is characteristic of the discipline of archaeology, and I will refer to it as ‘the archaeological imagination’, it is not restricted to members of the archaeological profession, and it may represent one way amongst others in which people habitually cope with their world.
