Book contents
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- New Departures in Anthropology
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- ONE Time Depth
- TWO Time Travelling Pits and Migrant Rocks
- THREE Excluding Water
- FOUR The Problem with Presentism
- FIVE Mapping Deep Time
- SIX Geology and Biography
- SEVEN Enter Catastrophe
- EIGHT Wasteland
- References
- Index
THREE - Excluding Water
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2020
Book contents
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- New Departures in Anthropology
- An Anthropology of Deep Time
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- ONE Time Depth
- TWO Time Travelling Pits and Migrant Rocks
- THREE Excluding Water
- FOUR The Problem with Presentism
- FIVE Mapping Deep Time
- SIX Geology and Biography
- SEVEN Enter Catastrophe
- EIGHT Wasteland
- References
- Index
Summary
Taking as its focus the drained peatlands of the East Anglian fens, this chapter examines the formation and wastage of peat as a particular case study of human geological agency; a particular instance of the global transformation of a net carbon sink into a net carbon source. Here we see lived encounters with time depth that bring us face-to-face with temporal disjuncture: in particular, we see how the fenlands today find themselves locked-in to a present from which variation becomes unthinkable.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Anthropology of Deep TimeGeological Temporality and Social Life, pp. 57 - 77Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020