ABSTRACT
How time is understood or experienced depends upon the context in which a person is aware of its passing. This is different from how those of us in this present view the past and attempt to describe the pieces of the past that form a narrative. The linear narrative obscures the multiple temporalities that exist simultaneously. These have been described by scholars as the social, political, professional, and religious aspects of daily life entangled in the material world (Hodder 2012: 98-100). These temporalities overlap and operate at differing scales and paces, with larger events impacting small-scale enactments, melding together, at times creating a messy record of the past. Untangling these can be a daunting task, requiring classifi cation alongside more nuanced interpretations. Endeavoring to uncover experience does not necessitate casting aside the classifi catory, chronological approach to time. It is adopted here to set the stage for examining time as an experienced and not strictly a structural entity in order to access the multiple ways in which it can manifest in the archaeological record. Time as structure and experience are the unifying themes of this examination of the Atlantic world on the Gambia River (cf. Gardner 2012: 145).
