Time Perspectivism - An Annotated Bibliography

Created: 10 Jul 2013

Modified: 23 Jul 2020

BibTeX Entry

RIS Citation

Print

What is Time Perspectivism?

(definition, Bailey, with some Binford etc)

Time perspectivism (TP) treats the archaeological record as a series of time averaged samples of artifacts, which do not necessarily share the same depositional and post-depositional histories (Stern 2008; Stein 1987). The consequences of this kind of view are significant for the kind of synchronic, functionalist product characteristic of most archaeological research today (especially since the New Archaeology) (Paynter 2002). DeBoer uses the parallel between taphonomic studies in paleontology and formation processes in archaeology to argue that there simply cannot be an isomorphism between the archaeological and systemic contexts (Schiffer 1972; DeBoer 1983). Quite simply, even without the serious epistemological issues which plague behavioral or “lifeways” reconstruction in archaeology, the combination of TP, geoarchaeology, and formation process studies tell us that synchronic reconstructionism is doomed to failure as a testable scientific endeavor (and hence it involved speculative interpretivism, no different than any other interpretive theory or stance in the social sciences).

Given Dunnell’s materialist, historical metaphysic for archaeology, TP is almost the default position we should take when we consider the temporality of the archaeological record (although RCD never used the term) (Dunnell 1980, 1982, 1992).

Theory and Research Questions

• Isaac
• Bailey
• Foley
• Binford

Effects of Time Averaging

Most of the ways we deal with coarse-graining a time series in statistics involve taking averages over blocks of values: hence the idea of a “time average.” (De Lange 2008; Stern 2008) both point out that time averaged archaeological deposits are not “averages in time” of artifact deposition. Earlier, (Grayson and Delpech 1998; Lyman 2003) made similar observations, that time averaged deposits are actually summations of materials potentially derived from a variety of different behavioral episodes and even groups of people.

My own work suggests that formally, time averaged samples (of artifact class abundances or frequencies) are actually the cumulative sum of depositional events, and thus represent a kind of “extreme value” process coarse-graining the detailed process of artifact creation, use, and deposition (Madsen 2012). But more work needs to be done to understand the different statistical effects that time averaging can have on different measures of artifact class abundance and diversity.

(discuss the paleobiological literature here)

References Cited Above