ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a particular design ethnography, which focuses on material culture as a way to inform the engineering of new products and services. It examines empirically ‘messy’ ethnographic examples, using material culture approaches to show how research into material things can help bring together the diverse emergent knowledge of temporality. Archaeological features are not self-evident, and it takes experience and perception to deal with them. Interpretive archaeologists have pointed out that many archaeological sites, perhaps most, contain an element of active communication about peoples' attitudes to history. By researching material culture, the design anthropologist is better able to frame people who benefit from design (so-called users) as cultural projects in themselves. The chapter discusses in a little more detail what is meant by heterochronicity, and approaches in heritage and archaeology about how we perceive and understand temporality through objects.
