Includes bibliographical references and index.

Is there pre-history? / Stella Souvatzi, Adnan Baysal, Emma L. Baysal -- The Uexküll calibration: chronology and critical flicker fusion frequency / Douglass Bailey -- Scales and telescopes: optics in the study of prehistory / Cristian Simonetti -- Ontology unveiled, serpents remembered, time reconfigured / Peter R. Schmidt -- Periodization in archaeology: starting in the ground / Gavin Lucas -- Locked in the Neolithic between evolution and history / Trevor Watkins -- Illustrating waves of time in prehistory and the annales' solution / John Bintliff -- What kind of history in prehistory? / Alex Bayliss and Alasdair Whittle -- Concepts of time and history on Chalcolithic tell settlements and Trypillia mega-sites / John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska -- Prehistoric histories of Hohokam kin groups / Bradley E. Ensor -- Hyperobjects and prehistory / Graham Harman -- Time matters: faces, externalised knowledge and transcendence / Barbara Adam and Sandra Kemp -- "I make this standing stone to be a sign": material presence and the temporality of the trace in Highland Madagascar / Zoë Crossland -- Contested history-making as part of the building of social networks at Neolithic C̦atalhöyük, Turkey / Ian Hodder -- Primevalism: saluting a renamed prehistory / Penelope J. Corfield.

"Time and History in Prehistory explores the many processes through which time and history are conceptualised and constructed, challenging the perception of prehistoric societies as a-historical. Drawing equally on contemporary theory and illustrative case-studies and firmly rooted in material evidence, this book rearticulates concepts of time and history, questions the kind of narratives to be written about the past and underlines the fundamentally historical nature of prehistory. From a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives, the authors of this volume address the scales at which archaeological evidence and narrative are interwoven, from a single day to deep history and from a solitary pot to a complete city. In doing so, they argue the need for a multi-scalar approach to prehistoric data that allows for the interplay between short and long term, and for analytical units that encourage us to move continuously between scales. The growing interest in time and history in archaeology and across a wide range of disciplines concerned with human action and the human past highlights that these are exceptionally active fields. By juxtaposing varied viewpoints this volume bridges gaps in narrative, finds a place for inclusive histories and makes clear the benefit of integrative and inter-disciplinary approaches, including different disciplines and types of data"--