ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a radical alternative to the representation of archaeological time. Using a non-narrative, visual method of (pre)historical juxtapositioning, the chapter argues that standard archaeological approaches to time, history, and prehistory remain restricted within the discipline’s traditional goals: to locate events, peoples and activities in a temporal sequence; to illustrate, through comparison, the difference and similarities between chronologically distinct periods, phases and ages; and to determine the causes of change or stasis between chronological events. The alternative presented here is to dispense with these foundations of archaeology. This chapter recommends that archaeologists embrace a non-chronological engagement with the past which seeks neither sequence nor explanation for diachronic differences (i.e. for change); the call is to dispense with rational chronological comparison. Though initially threatening to some, the resulting production of a full disarticulation from the past opens our senses of historical presence in new, rich and unexpected ways.
