ABSTRACT
When two things happen at the same time, we might describe them as simultaneous. As discussed in earlier chapters of this book, simultaneity was the problem in constructing a universal co-ordinated time, so that ships, railways, telecommunications and other forms of long-distance exchange and travel could be conducted without mishap or confusion. It was also ironically, at the same time that simultaneity itself was found to be an impossibility – at least in any absolute sense. Einsteinian relativity ushered in the loss of simultaneity just as it was being established for clocks around the globe. For most practical purposes, assumptions of simultaneity and Newtonian time work; the absolute chronology of archaeology proceeds on this basis and it too, coordinates its various clocks in the same way: C14, tree rings, solar years and so on. But when we say two events in the archaeological record occur at the same time or belong to the same time, is this the same thing? In my discussion at the end of the last chapter on the synchronization of change or coherence of an era, simultaneity seems too accurate, too precise a term to employ for synchronicities and unities that might be very loosely or broadly aligned in time. Instead, the term contemporary seems more appropriate. But what then is the difference between simultaneity and contemporaneity? Is it just a matter of precision? In Chapter 1 we saw how Bergson made a distinction between the two, where contemporaneity referred to a primordial experience of things co-occurring while simultaneity was an abstraction based on an external measure. It is Bergson’s definitions that I will follow here, although with some modification.
