Dark Abyss of Time
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The field of archaeology continues to face a major crisis of interpretation. The traditional view is that the basic business of archaeology is to reconstruct the history of cultures and civilizations through their material productions. Olivier challenges this view with a new approach to archaeological remains based on the works of French theorists such as Foucault, de Certeaux, and Derrida, with insight from Darwin and Freud. His thesis is that archaeology does not study the past itself but rather what materially remains of the past in our present. Olivier also develops an interpretation of material culture based on Aby Warburg’s and Walter Benjamin’s work in the anthropology of art. With wider implications for history and all social sciences, The Dark Abyss of Time is a major contribution to the theory of time, memory, heritage, and archaeology. This flawless translation makes Olivier’s elegantly written work available in English for the first time.
Laurent Olivier is curator of the Department of Celtic and Gaulish archaeology at the National Museum of Archaeology in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside Paris. He teaches at the École du Louvre and the École pratique des hautes études. He is working on a dig on the site of Iron Age salt marshes in Marsal (northeastern France).
Arthur Greenspan is a professor of French at Colby College.