Anthropocene: Shrug, engage, or do new sorts of work?

Abstract

In this article, I make some comparisons between approaches to the Anthropocene in archaeology and geography and use them to consider where to go from here. The Anthropocene has lacked purchase in archaeology due to three main disciplinary trends; the importance of process and contingency, the increasing importance of de-periodisation and the increasing critique of the universal human in human origins discussions. Each of these trends has an expression in geography but geographers have tended to critically engage while archaeologists have shrugged. The sense that we have all moved beyond the Anthropocene is a luxury challenged by three important convergences between recent scientific and social scientific thought: a much enhanced set of data about the variable specifics of human–environment relations, particularly across time; increasing recognition of the role of colonialism and capitalism in constituting not only the earth system changes but also the subjectivities and conceptualisation of the Anthropocene; the profound challenges of a transforming and transformable Earth. These convergences demand new and different sorts of work.