Islands of Time. Unsettling Linearity Across Deep History

ABSTRACT

Based on archaeological and anthropological data on the socio-political effects of two historically distant extreme occurrences in nature, we explore how certain types of events unsettle progressive chronology to the extent of establishing periodic intervals of circular and repetitive temporality; ‘islands of time’. The article is built around a comparison of the socio-temporal repercussions of two extreme natural events: the El Niño-related flooding that hit southern Mozambique early in 2000 CE and the Thera eruption on Crete around 1600 BCE. Using the former as a ‘trans-temporal hinge’ for connecting otherwise disparate temporal occurrences, we show how event episodes like the Mozambique floods and the Thera eruption twist free from the hold of linearity by continuously ‘looping’ time around themselves and thereby (re)actualising their own conditions of existence. In our analysis, the empirical point of contact between the two cases is architecture and how negotiations of the built environment reflect temporal looping.

KEYWORDS:

• Thera eruption
• El Niño
• Mozambique
• Crete
• Temporality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 As James Williams (2008: 1) argues, it is "a change in waves’ resonating through the environment that causes series of elements to interact in novel ways”.

2 In this regard, our analysis stands on the shoulders of those who have considered natural hazards as, at the same time, catalysts and revealers of social structures, tensions, and changes (Oliver-Smith 1996; García-Acosta 2002; Nielsen, 2010b).

3 At the end of 2000, a census made by the Maputo Municipality documented that 2,040 families from eight different urban neighbourhoods had been resettled in Mulwene.