Internet Archaeol. 16. Mlekuz. Time

3.2 Time

Sounds are transitory. As such, they enable us to experience time and create temporality. Time in the humanistic sense is lived time, an experiential narrative and a quality of human engagement with the world (Gosden 1994, 1-12). There is no universal, abstract time, external to our experience. Time arises from the flow of life; it is created through rhythms of bodily involvement with the world. In this perspective, space and time are not separate entities, but come together in each individual's life-story or life-path.

Like space, questions of time and temporality in GIS have been characterised by a Cartesian viewpoint (Gillings and Goodrick 1996, 12.1). Most GIS systems are inherently static; time can be represented as a series of discrete snapshot moments. Time, in this perspective is abstract, external to modelled change and detached from the representation of space.

I believe that the representation of a humanistic concept of time within archaeological GIS is still an open question. If we aim to model experiential, humanistic time we should first have a subject experiencing it.