ABSTRACT
Time is the big one for archaeologists. Or at least, you would think it should be. But until recently time as a concept, rather than a technique of dating, hasn’t been at the top of our list of things to sort out. Indeed, our other dimension, space, has received far more attention both conceptually and as a framework for measuring and comparing archaeological data. In this chapter I will examine these two basic dimensions. We shall see how different concepts of time are every bit as important, if not more so, for understanding the past as getting the age of the Pyramids right by developing a new sciencebased technique to measure accurately how old things are (see Chapter 3).
