Temporalities of the Anthropocene

Abstract

One of the concerns of scientists studyng the new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene is time or, more precisely, chronological boundaries. In fact, establishing Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points (GSSP) is one of the main tasks of geologists strivig to define the Geologic Time Scale. In the case of the Anthropocene, proposals for dating the stratigraphic boundary go from as far back as the Middle Pleistocene to the 1960s, although most researchers agree in some point during the last two hundred or so years. Although the relevance of GSSP is unquestionable, it is underpinned by a concept of time that, seen from the point of view of the social sciences, seems somewhat limited. In this paper, instead of proposing yet another >golden spike> from the point of view of archaeology, I would like to explore briefly the multiple temporalities of the Anthropocene as they are materialized in the archaeological record. Things and landscapes cannot be reduced to specific moment, but rather blend a variety of times, each of them revealing something of the nature of the Anthropocene. I will illustrate the heterochrony of our geological epoch through a variety of examples, from the battlefields of the First World War to the dumps of rural Spain in the late twentieth century.