Time and change in archaeological interpretation

The authors explore various concepts and dimensions of `the individual', both ethnographic and archaeological. It is demonstrated that many protagonists in the debate over the existence of `individuals' in prehistory use the same ethnographic examples to argue their positions. These positions range from the claim that any suggestion of individuals prior to 500 years ago simply projects a construct of western modernity onto the past, to the view that individual identities are culturally specific social constructs, both past and present. The authors argue that, like most contributors to the debate, they are sceptical of an unchanging humanity in the past, but feel that thinking on the topic has become inflexible. As a counterpoint to this debate, they discuss Bourdieu's concept of habitus in association with Foucault's notion of power. They conclude that experiencing oneself as a living individual is part of human nature, and that archaeologists should reconsider the individual's social, spatial and ideological importance, as well as the existence of individual, embodied lives in prehistoric as well as historical contexts. Includes

the paper re-examines the concept of the archaeological event as a means to avoid dual or multiple levels for historical phenomena, which a scalar view of time creates. Central to this procedure is an examination of the nature of residuality in relation to the archaeological record; it is argued that our concept of residuality needs to be broadened to encompass a more general view of material organization where the property of reversibility is foregrounded. In doing so, a different conception of the event is generated which defines itself not in terms of particularity but reversibility