Some Comments on the Potential and Challenges of Multiple Characteristic Timescales in Archaeology

Although archaeology has traditionally dealt with phenomena at different scales of time and space as manifested in survey and excavation, we argue that there is still much work to be done in applying multi-scalar time to archaeological modeling and explanation. One of the areas of work is in matching the characteristic scale of past human phenomena with the resolution of archaeological proxies. We review several areas in which a multi-scalar temporal analysis is especially desirable in archaeology including the development of socio-political complexity, social violence and inequality, paleoenvironmental change, and the concept of the “event.”