An Interview with Duncan Garrow: Talking about Practice Theory and Social Change

Abstract

Archaeologists describe changes in the distant past, basing their analyses on fragmentary remains of practices, people and material worlds. In this interview, Duncan Garrow talks about different methods of interpreting change in the archaeological record, beginning with questions of chronology, periodisation, and the tension between linear accounts of time and more complex understandings of the past. Duncan reflects on what radiocarbon dating and other scientific methods make visible, and on the uncertainties and absences which are integral to archaeological work. In discussing these issues, we range across questions of scale, regularity, innovation and the relation between objects and practices. We talk about how archaeological periods illuminate and artificially constrain interpretations of change, how material remains relate to practices at different temporal resolutions, and why change is more readily identified than explained.