Jack Handscombe

It could be said that the process of civilisation is analogous to that of sedimentation: the increased entanglement and deposition of ‘things’, be they simply the silt of the Tiber, the knotted paths of trade and travel, an aeroplane or a fridge magnet. This process of binding these aggregate parts forms the foundations for the process to continue. By scrabbling through the tangled midden of the present, we sift and collect all these things, digging up the old and knocking pieces together to create anew. It could also be said that the discipline of history is the attempt to step back from this process and slice through these deposited layers of sediment. By reading between the lines of the strata, history parts the layers and sews a thread to bind them into the leaves of a book, a manageable account of this ceaseless action.

Jack Handscombe

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