Introduction
From my point of view, discussions of the content of the concept of time are always welcome in archaeology since the archaeological discourse on this topic has for many years been anchored in a quite simplified and axiomatic chronological approach. Discussions of other aspects of, and approaches towards, the concept of time have – with few exceptions – been neglected. It is therefore with pleasure that I have been presented with the opportunity to comment briefly on Gavin Lucas's article ‘Archaeology and contemporaneity’, which approaches the concept of contemporaneity in and of the archaeological record. I would like to start this comment in a rather unorthodox way with a brief quotation from the movie A Fish Called Wanda Footnote 1 since I think this quotation encapsulates both my agreement with, and my critique of, the reasonings presented by Lucas:
Archie: Wanda, do you have any idea what it's like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing, of saying to someone, ‘Are you married?’ and hearing, ‘My wife left me this morning,’ or saying, uh, ‘Do you have children?’ and being told they all burned to death on Wednesday. You see, Wanda, we’re all terrified of embarrassment. That's why we’re so – dead. Most of my friends are dead, you know; we’ve these piles of corpses to dinner. But you’re alive, God bless you, and I want to be, I’m so fed up with all this (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988)
It may be concluded from the quotation above that the time horizons of past, present and future are interconnected and intertwined in Archie's and Wanda's contemporaneity. At least Archie is heavily influenced by the past and its traditions, and his contemporary situation is grounded in the past as well as in the future, when he is trying to break free and direct himself towards a new future. Thus Archie's fictional life is a blueprint of the conditions of our own existences where past, present and future are inseparable and interconnected in a manner where they cannot be divided into separate chronological time horizons. I will return to this observation and to Archie and Wanda further on, but I believe that Lucas agrees with my initial observation concerning the relationship between past, present and future as inseparable and blended entities – this, since his article approaches the concept of time and contemporaneity in and of the archaeological record in a thought-provoking and inspiring manner.
Lucas and contemporaneity
In his article, Lucas focuses on a discussion of the concept of contemporaneity as used in archaeology today, in relation to dating and chronology (synchron-ism), and he is straightforward in his disclosure of the shortcomings of our present use of the concept. Lucas's critique of the traditional archaeological manner of using a linear model of time is convincing as it focuses on chronology and the definition of contemporaneity as the relation between the archaeological record and a unit of time, and I agree in total with the presented critique. This circumstance is also valid for the critique of the common use of subjectivity and analogy as elements in the interpretation of the archaeological record, and the understanding of the archaeological record solely as a contemporary phenomenon (anachronism). This is so since subjectivity and analogy also fulfil a function when making contemporaneity a question of belonging to a certain unit or stretch of time. According to Lucas, both these conventional archaeological usages of the concept of contemporaneity lead to a situation where we adopt a simplified view of the concept and its content, either as synchronism or as anachronism, since contemporaneity is defined as a relation either to a unit of time or to a stretch of time.
Lucas proposes that we rethink the concept of contemporaneity in such a manner that the concept and its definition are principally about the temporal relations between things, rather than between things and an abstract measure of time. For Lucas, this does not imply an abandonment of the use of dating and chronology as tools, but rather that we shift our focus in a manner where chronology is relative to the temporality of, and the relationship between, the objects investigated. In his presented approach, which he anchors partly in the reasonings concerning persistence in Henri Bergson (Reference Bergson1991) and Edmund Husserl (Reference Husserl1966), this implies that we need to abandon synchronism and anachronism and the traditional linear and successional view of time. This means, for instance, not that the contemporaneity of the archaeological record is about its existence in our present, but that its contemporaneity instead consists of its interconnection and intertwining of past, present and future. When trying to develop a more complex concept of contemporaneity of the archaeological record, Lucas approaches the writings of Alfred Schutz (Reference Schutz1967) and his concept of consociality. Lucas redefines this concept to fit the reasonings concerning the relationship between things and their persistence and he does so in a convincing way. Lucas clearly shows that the archaeological record cannot be isolated into time horizons of past, present and future, but that it instead interconnects and intertwines these horizons in both interesting and thought-provoking ways. Thus the concept of consociation is offered as a fruitful way to think of our articulation of the idea of contemporaneity. Lucas stresses that we may use this concept to think about how we articulate the idea of contemporaneity both in our narratives of the past and in our comprehension of the relation between ourselves and what remains of the past. According to Lucas this is important
because of the consequences it has for how we represent the past and its relation to the present. One of the most important of these consequences, I would suggest, is related to the temporal voice we use in archaeological narratives. We need to write in archaeology in the mode of the contemporary
… [A] narrative written in the contemporary mode is one which is attendant to the changing interplay between present, past and future tense (p. 14).
On a general level, I agree with the arguments presented by Lucas. This is also the case when it comes to the multi-subject and multi-temporal archaeology he proposes as a possible outcome of the reasonings and arguments presented in the article. However, I would also like to add a point of critique that perhaps may develop and/or radicalize the arguments presented even further. I would argue that there are other, more profound, consequences to be found in the arguments and conclusions presented by Lucas. If we as archaeologists try to abandon synchronism and anachronism as well as the traditional linear and successional view of time, the outcome cannot solely be a situation where we ‘need to write about archaeology in the mode of the contemporary’ (p. 14), as proposed by Lucas. Of course, we need to stress the changing interconnection between past, present and future in our writings, as much as we need to reflect on the relation between ourselves and what remains of the past. However – and this is perhaps even more important – I believe that we also need to reflect on our own existential temporality in the same way as Archie Leach is doing. In short, why just write about contemporaneity? Why not live it?
An existential twist
At this point, it is time to return briefly to the quotation presented in the introduction of my comment and to the contemporaneity of Archie Leach and Wanda Gershwitz. As already stressed, their lives are past, present and future simultaneously since these horizons are interconnected and intertwined in their existential temporality, as well as in Archie's wish to break with the past and create a new future. With Archie and Wanda in mind it may be fruitful to add some existential arguments from Martin Heidegger to the discussion. According to Heidegger, the division of time into constructed isolated horizons, such as past, present and future, and the view of time as objective, linear, endless and independent, is extremely simplified. Instead, he stresses that these horizons ought to be characterized as ‘the character of having been’, ‘the present’ and ‘the future as approaching’, since they are interwoven – and affect each other – in our temporal existence in a manner where they cannot be separated or isolated from each other (Heidegger Reference Heidegger1927, 350; Karlsson Reference Karlsson1998). Heidegger apprehended temporality as a horizon of our understanding of ourselves, as well as the horizon of our understanding of all other human beings and of the things that surround us. In short, if it were not for our temporality we would not be able to orientate ourselves in the world. Thus Heidegger stresses that existential temporality precedes all forms of reckoning and division of time in any clear-cut horizons, whether those are minutes or decades, past, present or future. These horizons are just reflections of our existential temporality that conceals the existential nature of time and its dependency upon our existential temporality. In accordance with Heidegger, Western thought has been dominated by an understanding of time as measurable ‘datability’ that conceals our existential temporality (ibid.).
Furthermore, Heidegger stresses that in our existence we are always ahead of ourselves, since our projects are directed towards ‘the future as approaching’, or more precisely towards ourselves and our possibilities since we are always incomplete (Heidegger Reference Heidegger1927, 325 ff.; Karlsson Reference Karlsson1998). This is exactly what Archie is up to. With his existential anchorage in the traditions deriving from the past as ‘the character of having been’, his contemporaneity as ‘the present’ is already directed towards the future as ‘the future as approaching’. He is trying to break free from the traditions he has been born into but this is not so easily done: he is terrified of embarrassment but at the same time he is fed up. According to Heidegger, the sociocultural and historical tradition that we are thrown into has both positive and negative dimensions. The tradition may act negatively in a situation where it keeps us from our future possibilities in the form of das Man.Footnote 2 According to Heidegger, das Man prescribes our state of mind and determines what and how we see, think and interpret the world (Heidegger Reference Heidegger1927, 126 ff., 146 ff.). Thus tradition through das Man creates a restricted world that excludes the possibility of being challenged by the unfamiliar and the alien. However, tradition can also act positively and let us open up to our (future) possibilities, as reflections upon the alternate modes of understanding derived from historical existence provide us with the possibility of counteracting the closure of das Man and viewing the world in a new light (ibid., 328 ff.). Here, Heidegger is undoubtedly inspired by Søren Kierkegaard, especially when he stresses anxiety as an important element in our state of mind. In a state of anxiety, the world and ourselves, according to Heidegger, lose their meaning and, as a consequence, it becomes clear that the interpretation of the world in which we exist is just one interpretation among other possible interpretations. This implies that in anxiety we can project ourselves towards new possibilities and towards a new understanding of the world (ibid., 184–92). I do not know whether or not Archie derives the inspiration for his future possibilities in das Man, in his historically directed reflection or in a state of anxiety. The main point to be made here is that his projection towards (a possible) new future is a consequence of his existential temporality.
Existential contemporaneity
In my opinion the arguments and conclusions presented by Lucas in his article can be developed further and more radically if we also take into account the existential dimensions of temporality as presented by Heidegger and as I have discussed briefly above. If not prevented by das Man in our archaeological traditions, a move towards an acceptance of our existential temporality can produce a situation that leads to more radical consequences than solely to the writing of texts, which present the insights of contemporaneity and temporality. Rather, they could lead to existential changes due to the realization of the conditions for our own contemporary existence, and for the discipline of archaeology. But what does it mean to live one's contemporaneity? In such a state, it is obvious that archaeological existence and archaeology become something more than solely a search for a more or less fictional objective understanding of prehistory, or a presentation of sociopolitically anchored subjective interpretations of the past. Rather, archaeology, with such an approach, would become an individual as well as a collective existential project containing philosophical as well as critical dimensions that approach, for instance, what it means to be human, or more precisely what it means to be human in a socially unequal and unfair world. In this respect I argue that we, as individual archaeologists, as well as the archaeological discipline, could learn something from Archie Leach and his existential contemporaneity and the conditions it presents for his attempt to achieve a changed existence in ‘the future as approaching’.
