What will have been…

The future at issue in archaeology becomes intertwined with a past; it is a future anterior. It is the past that will have been when the archaeologist’s gesture (or the power of the imaginary) has cleared away the ghosts of the unconcious and the tight-knit fabric of tradition which block access to history. Only in the form of this “will have been” can historical consciousness become possible.

Louis Henderson. Untitled. British Museum, 2011

Archaeology moves backward through the course of history, just as the imagination moves back through individual biography. Both represent a regressive force that, unlike traumatic neurosis, does not retreat toward an indestructible origin but rather toward the point where history (whether individual or collective) becomes accessible for the first time, in accordance with the temporality of the future anterior.

Giorgio Agamben. Philosophical Archaeology.