Book contents
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- New Departures in Anthropology
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- ONE Time Depth
- TWO Time Travelling Pits and Migrant Rocks
- THREE Excluding Water
- FOUR The Problem with Presentism
- FIVE Mapping Deep Time
- SIX Geology and Biography
- SEVEN Enter Catastrophe
- EIGHT Wasteland
- References
- Index
ONE - Time Depth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2020
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- New Departures in Anthropology
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- ONE Time Depth
- TWO Time Travelling Pits and Migrant Rocks
- THREE Excluding Water
- FOUR The Problem with Presentism
- FIVE Mapping Deep Time
- SIX Geology and Biography
- SEVEN Enter Catastrophe
- EIGHT Wasteland
- References
- Index
Summary
In light of the recognition of the Anthropocene – a geological epoch of our own making – this chapter asks how well anthropology is equipped to deal with the challenge that the recognition of human geological agency presents to our time perspectives. It offers two theoretical starting points to initiate the conversation between anthropological theory and the history of the encounter with deep time within Britain: the anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard and the geologist James Hutton. This discussion introduces three key questions for an anthropology of deep time: what is the relationship between human rhythms and the rhythms of the more-than-human world within which humans live? What is the significance of our time horizons, their proximity or distance? And whose time is deep time?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Anthropology of Deep TimeGeological Temporality and Social Life, pp. 7 - 36Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020