Located at the interface between contemporary archaeology, cultural and historical geography, this essay explores the 'more-than-representational' nature of memory as embodied and haunted by the spectral. Focusing on the post-industrial landscape of the Royal Forest of Dean, I narrate a walk undertaken in November 2008 with local resident, Ron Beard, as we sought to re-trace an old miners' path. Histories of the landscape unfolded as we walked. Yet they also revealed a haunting sense of loss, a fragmented remembering and forgetting that was unsettled by ghosts from the past. For memory is born of strange and uncanny associations, inexplicable connections between times and places that erupt into the present without warning. As such, memory demands new ways of writing; narratives that better cope with our fragile and contingent recollections, disclosing the haunting presence-absence of the spectral in all its shapes, apparitions and phantasms. I begin by pursuing the idea that memory is more-than-representational. I go on to explore the recurrent manifestation of the spectral, which disturbs, displaces and conditions our understanding of space and time, absence and presence. Developing the argument that alternative styles of writing are needed to reveal the true nature of memory and our haunting engagements with the past − while at the same time accepting Wylie's assertion that spectral geographies should themselves be spectral − I consider the work of Walter Benjamin and W.G. Sebald, which, through devices such as literary montage, biography and phantasmagoria, successfully unsettles, disrupts and enlivens. Taking stylistic inspiration from these great writers, the 'Long Path' is narrated in a non-conventional academic style that seeks itself to displace settled orders of space and time, to reveal the revenant trace of the spectre.

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This essay explores the scope for greater engagement between human geographers and archaeologists, by taking a first step towards identifying convergences in theoretical development and possible topics for dialogue. Focusing on cultural geography and contemporary archaeology, I examine the changing role of matter and time within the field of archaeology. In doing so, I reflect on the opportunities for dialogue that are opened up as archaeologists rethink a series of ideas that have for many years remained fundamental to archaeological endeavour.

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This essay explores the temporality of Deleuzian ontology by recounting a day spent engaged in the practice of charcoal burning. Charcoal was an essential component of the iron industry, and by the late 16th century it was being consumed in vast quantities in the blast furnaces of large ironworks. The production of charcoal involves burning wood under controlled conditions to drive off water vapour and volatiles, creating a fuel that can reach the temperatures necessary to separate iron from its ore. Deleuze's three syntheses of time offer a means of transformation of events and their relations. Taking his ideas on process, repetition for itself, and difference in itself, I seek to demonstrate that the temporality of the present exceeds the here and now. In doing so, I also seek to reveal the role of the past in the present, or the always already present nature of the past.