Etched in stone? Exploring temporality through the itineraries of ten stone inscriptions from a Roman frontier fort in Wales

Time is a fundamental but underexplored concept in archaeology. The materiality of stone in particular warrants attention in exploring the ways people respond to things as they conceptualize the past, present and future. Describing something as etched in stone implies a fixed and unalterable meaning; it is stone’s longevity, its inhuman timescale, which makes it particularly suitable for perpetuating ideas into the future. Yet it is also this very longevity that imbues stone objects with new meanings as they are used, abandoned, ‘discovered’ and repurposed. In tracing the itineraries of ten inscriptions from a Roman frontier fort in Wales, and the envisaged pasts and futures invested in them by those who created and encountered them, this paper explores the unique role of inscribed stone in shaping and reflecting human conceptualizations of time and emphasizes the centrality of temporality to archaeological theory and practice.