The Untimely Object: Rethinking Time through Object-Oriented Ontology

Abstract

In Objects Untimely: Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology, Graham Harman and Christopher Witmore argue that objects actively generate time rather than merely existing within it. Drawing on Harman’s object-oriented ontology, the authors challenge both New Materialist celebrations of perpetual flux and archaeology’s linear chronologies. Through close readings of Mediterranean sites such as Corinth, Mycenae, and Troy, they show how objects exert persistent “surface tension,” producing retroactive, topological, cyclical, and generational temporalities that resist conventional historicism. The book offers a metaphysical re-foundation for archaeological theory while extending the ontological turn in anthropology. Objects Untimely is a field-advancing work that will reshape how scholars conceptualize materiality, temporality, and the discipline’s own foundations. It is essential reading for theoretically oriented archaeologists, anthropologists, and philosophers of material culture.