ABSTRACT
The themes addressed in the first three chapters, and the case study in the last, are not necessarily exhaustive and are, moreover, inevitably partial. Nevertheless, I hope this book has given more than a flavour of the issues surrounding the concept of time in archaeology, and explored it in sufficient detail for the reader to have engaged with its significance. The topic of time in archaeology is both old and new – as reviewed in Chapter 1, it is clearly a central concept in archaeology, and in terms of dating and the development of chronology generally, it has been a key part of the discipline for over a century. But more reflexive and critical thinking of the concept and what it means is much more recent – indeed, Mark Leone’s paper was, perhaps, the first to break new ground, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a slow but sure momentum has built up with discussion developing from the abstract critique of Shanks and Tilley to the concrete studies of Bradley.
