2 - Braudel's temporal rhythms and chronology theory in archaeology

Summary

This chapter relates Fernand Braudel's model of hierarchical temporal rhythms to current theoretical work on time and chronology in archaeology. The debate between Lewis Binford and Michael Schiffer over the existence of a “Pompeii premise” in Americanist archaeology serves as a point of departure, and it is shown that Binford's distinction between “ethnographic time“ and “archaeological time” is encompassed by Braudel's model. The varying temporal rhythms associated with diverse socioeconomic processes are relevant to the methods of chronology-building, periodization, and cultural reconstruction. It is argued that these associations need to be considered not only at the level of interpretation, but also at the levels of research design and data recovery. Chronology-building is an integral part of the research process, and Braudel's formulation contributes to an understanding of the dialectical relationship between changing research questions and chronological refinement.

Introduction

Archaeology as a historical science

Since the early days of the “New Archaeology,” one of the primary goals of archaeology has been the explanation of past culture change. The long time span represented in the archaeological record is seen as one of the most important resources for archaeology, and the analysis of processes of change is often viewed as archaeology's major contribution to knowledge (e.g., Plog 1973). Because of long-standing disciplinary and intellectual ties between American archaeology and anthropology (see Willey and Sabloff 1980), Lewis Binford and the other new archaeologists took sociocultural anthropology as the model for their vision of archaeology's future.