Year: 2022
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: One of the primary goals of archaeology is to construct narratives of past human societies through the material evidence of their activities. Such narratives address how people led their lives and how they viewed and interacted with their world at different times in the past. However, the way archaeologists look at time is becoming increasingly disparate, fragmented and sometimes contradictory. While we now have more exact ways of dating past remains and deposits, and more sophisticated ways of examining how past humans may have engaged with their physical and social environments, there is some internal confusion as to the relative merits of alternative interpretations and evidence. In the research drive to determine a greater precision of dating and chronology, the effect that increased dating effort has on the accuracy of archaeological narratives has rarely been discussed. This chapter discusses the problems and opportunities for archaeological narratives in approaches to time.
Author: Anne Teather
Language: English
Subfield: Paleontology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4296126293