In adding an explicitly temporal dimension to the material practices considered so far, it is vital to stress that the separation of subject matter between these two chapters is entirely artificial; all practices are necessarily temporal as much as material-and indeed social. However, establishing the idea of material practices, and the kinds of things it involves in the context of 4th century Britain, constitutes a logical starting point to break into this overlapping complex of ideas for an archaeological study. Time is no less a central concern in archaeology, although it has attracted curiously limited theoretical attention when compared with material culture. This is surprising, as time is of course fundamental to archaeology in more ways than one. As well as constituting one of the basic parameters of archaeological data, in the form of chronology, it defines archaeology in relation to other disciplines: others may study people, but it is only archaeologists who study the material culture of those people in the past without the limits of documentation experienced by historians. This time depth is regarded as a major asset in contributing something to debates in other disciplines (e.g., Binford 1962: 219; Hodder 1991b: 191-2), as it encompasses the greatest possible spectrum of human diversity. In the popular imagination, it is time that adds mystery to archaeologists’ work, allowing them to be characterised as ‘time detectives’ or ‘time travellers’ (e.g., Fagan 1995). Perhaps because of this central role, however, time is rather taken for granted in both the professional and popular sphere. From a theoretical point of view, it is usually simply treated as almost a dimension of space-a landscape of chronological points within which data must be situated, or a misty chasm that must be crossed in order to engage with the past. Only relatively recently have

archaeologists begun to realise that, like other areas of the discipline that have been scrutinised in the last 40 years, temporality requires a bit more critical thought if we are to deal with its complexities.