Social Being and Time

This work probes the way in which the rhythms of social life derive from human involvement in the world, particularly as those rhythms unfold over many thousands of years. The author argues that time is created through the social use of material things such as landscapes, settlements and monuments, and illustrates this with case studies drawn from Europe and the Pacific. The aim of the book is to provide a theory of social change and social being as the basis for understanding social formations over long periods of time. In developing this theory, the author surveys ideas on human action and time as these have evolved over the last two centuries. Although the theory is designed and presented here to be of practical use in interpreting archaeological data - exemplified here in case studies - the broad scope of the book should make it of interest to all of those concerned with the interactions between people and the material world.