Archaeological Explorations of Duration in the Contemporary City.

Archaeology is, or course, explicitly concerned with time. The result of almost all archaeological interventions is a chronology, that is to say a list of things that have happened in a particular order. But although time here changes, its constituent episodes are static. With archaeologists increasingly looking to more recent past events, and even the present moment and the future, can we develop ways in which we replace this ordering of past episodes with a more fluid understanding of time-as-lived, of duration. With reference to research in public art, politics and archaeology in Bristol between 2006 and the 2011, this paper will discuss the potential for archaeological engagement with duration in the contemporary city. In particular, I aim here to bring together artistic and archaeological working practices to develop a new understanding of daily urban life with changing experiences of time at its heart. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]