What role will archaeology play in the Anthropocene – the proposed new geological epoch marked by human impact on Earth systems? That is the question discussed by thirteen archaeologists and other scholars from five continents in this thought-provoking forum. Their responses are diverse and wide-ranging. While Edward Harris looks to archaeological stratigraphy for a material paradigm of the Anthropocene, Alice Gorman explores the extent of human impact on orbital space and lunar surfaces – challenging the assumption that the Anthropocene is confined to Earth. Jeff Benjamin investigates the sounds of the Anthropocene. Paul Graves-Brown questions the idea that the epoch had its onset with the invention of the steam engine, while Mark Hudson uses Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects to imagine the dark artefacts of the future. Victor Paz doubts the practical relevance of the concept to archaeological chronologies, and Bruce Clarke warns archaeologists to steer clear of the Anthropocene altogether, on the grounds of the overbearing hubris of the very idea of the Age of Humans. Others like Jason Kelly and Ewa Domanska regard the Anthropocene debate as an opportunity to reach new forms of understanding of Earth systems. André Zarankin and Melisa Salerno ground significant issues in the archaeology of Antarctica. And Zoe Crossland explores the vital links between the known past and the imagined future. As a discipline orientated to the future and contemporary world as well as the past, Chris Witmore concludes, archaeology in the Anthropocene will have more work than it can handle.

Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered in the early nineteenth century. In order to become acquainted with the process of incorporation of Antarctica to the scope of the capitalist system we have focused on particularity: i.e., specific economic and technological and ideological aspects of everyday life in sealer camps spread along the coastline of the South Shetland Islands. Archaeological research in Byers Peninsula-Livingston Island provides an approach to the mechanisms implemented to organize the first resource exploitation in these lands.

This article discusses the structuring of domination in everyday life, studied through private housing material culture, over a period of several centuries. Our case study deals with the processes of use of space and the changes in middle-class households in Buenos Aires since the late eighteenth century, highlighting both world and Latin American contexts. We show how morphological and spatial changes in households are related both to the wider world capitalist context and to local conditions, shaping people’s lives. We focus on the controlling features of housing, affecting not only the middle classes, but potentially the whole spectrum of social classes. Capitalism tends to individualize space, create private environments, restrict movement and control movement in general, and houses as material artifacts reflect these tendencies. We conclude that the study of Buenos Aires housing enables us to note that there has been a growing tendency to restrict circulation within the house, enforcing a controlling, bourgeois way of life.