What Is Time For Us?

Archaeologist Andrew Gardner asks how we engage with time, both at an ordinary level and when dealing with the long periods on historic, prehistoric, geological and cosmological scales.

The relationship between the human experience and time is a recurring theme in Western thought, perhaps coming to a head in the Existentialisms of the early twentieth century. Yet we now conceive time on many different scales besides those we can easily grasp, including the ever-longer periods associated with history, prehistory, geology and cosmology. Do people of different cultures have different experiences of time? Is our relationship to the temporal very different from that of, say, the ancient Romans? Or are our experiences of space and time, as Kant thought, intuitive ideas necessary for human experience to exist at all? Is it possible to find evidence either way? Do these questions even make rigorous sense? The discussion will be introduced by Dr Andrew Gardner, Lecturer in the Archaeology of the Roman Empire at UCL. Andrew has a special interest in theoretical issues raised by archaeology including questions of temporality. It should offer not only an opportunity to broach a deep philosophical question but also interesting insights into how contemporary archaeologists think about their discipline.

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