The work of Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) should have revolutionized the way the field of archaeology thinks about the passage of time and constructs narratives throughout it. Braudel’s more general theories deeply affected archaeological theory, yet his three different timescales, as well as his insights into duration as the inner dialectic between different temporalities, remain largely unexplored by practicing archaeologists. Even today, ceramic chronology-building in archaeology still relies on two main variables: time-space and pottery styles. This book seeks to upset that paradigm,  proposing instead a radical new approach to creating chronology. This endeavor begins in the valley of Juigalpa, in central Nicaragua, using materials—especially ceramics—as complex palimpsests, through which a chronology that includes five different intervals based on ceramic technologies is presented, from the first traces of human practices in 300 CE through to the present.

 

Natalia Donner is a lecturer at Leiden University.