Richard D. G. Irvine is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

'If much of the current sense of ecological crisis turns on how resources are abstracted from the conditions of their renewal, suppose that very evocation of the future were itself an abstraction we cannot afford. Told with verve and wit, this foray into encounters with deep time asks us to see the time that we are hiding from ourselves. Irvine's clarity of argument opens out the 'anthropology of time' onto a new horizon of global significance.' Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

• Introduction; 1. Time depth; 2. Time travelling pits and migrant rocks; 3. Excluding water; 4. The problem with presentism; 5. Mapping deep time; 6. Geology and biography; 7. Enter catastrophe; 8. Wasteland.

Richard D. G. Irvine is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

'If much of the current sense of ecological crisis turns on how resources are abstracted from the conditions of their renewal, suppose that very evocation of the future were itself an abstraction we cannot afford. Told with verve and wit, this foray into encounters with deep time asks us to see the time that we are hiding from ourselves. Irvine's clarity of argument opens out the 'anthropology of time' onto a new horizon of global significance.' Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

• Introduction; 1. Time depth; 2. Time travelling pits and migrant rocks; 3. Excluding water; 4. The problem with presentism; 5. Mapping deep time; 6. Geology and biography; 7. Enter catastrophe; 8. Wasteland.

Richard D. G. Irvine is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

'If much of the current sense of ecological crisis turns on how resources are abstracted from the conditions of their renewal, suppose that very evocation of the future were itself an abstraction we cannot afford. Told with verve and wit, this foray into encounters with deep time asks us to see the time that we are hiding from ourselves. Irvine's clarity of argument opens out the 'anthropology of time' onto a new horizon of global significance.' Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

• Introduction; 1. Time depth; 2. Time travelling pits and migrant rocks; 3. Excluding water; 4. The problem with presentism; 5. Mapping deep time; 6. Geology and biography; 7. Enter catastrophe; 8. Wasteland.