An Anthropology of Deep Time

Rethinking social theory through a rich engagement with landscape and the history of geology, this book explores our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation and shows how social life becomes disconnected from the ecological and geological rhythms on which it depends.

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In the face of debates about the Anthropocene - a geological epoch of our own making - and contemporary concerns about ecological crisis and the Sixth Mass Extinction, it is more important than ever to locate the timeframe of human activity within the deep time of planetary history. This path-breaking book is a timely critical review of the anthropology of time, exploring our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation. Richard D. G. Irvine shows how the time-horizons of social life are a matter of crucial concern, and lays bare the ways in which human activity becomes severed from the long-term geological and ecological rhythms on which it depends.