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Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time Enchantment. Bog Bodies, Crannogs and 'Otherworldly' sites. The materializing powers of disjunctures in time Deep time The concept of 'deep time' is rooted in challenges to officially sanctioned biblical narratives. Bishop James Ussher's edict that the earth was created in 4004 BC was challenged by James Hutton's observations on the deep stratigraphy evident in the exposed strata of Scottish sea-cliffs (McPhee 1981, 20). These observations led him to propose that the planet was much older. In fact it is 4.5 billion years old, whereas the span of humanity within this long-term history of the earth is relatively short, making it hard to grasp our place within this geological 'deep time' (McPhee 1981, 20). Chakrabarty (2009, 213-20) thus argues that in order to better understand both our situated position and responsibilities within the contemporary world with its climate and environmental problems, there is a great need to question the barriers between histories of geological deep time, natural history and that of the human. This will have major implications for how history is studied and comprehended. Such a union has the capacity to query what a world without humanity might be like, and analysing the important boundary of the 'Anthropocene', where (following the Holocene) human beings are understood to have crossed the nature:culture boundary to become one of the main actors in global geological change (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). The present can then be understood as a key period, whereby the transformation of the earth is happening at such an accelerated rate (Steffen et al. 2015) that it could threaten the life conditions for many species on the planet.