Anthropocene in the Solar System

In 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed the demise of the American frontier (Faragher 1994).Hakim Bey (1991), contemplating the "closure of the map" in 1899, declared the twentieth century "the first...without terra incognita, without a frontier."Crutzen and Stoermer's (2000) anthropocene represents a new (but related) temporal frontier in "the latter part of the eighteenth century" but there is a danger in treating this as a fixed boundary, as opposed to something that is part of a dynamic process.Thus far this human-generated geological epoch has been conceptualized in terms of stratigraphic boundaries, but the principal role for archaeology in debating the anthropocene is, I suggest, to deconstruct frontiers, both temporal and spatial.As Edward Harris points out (this forum), archaeologists are much more interested in surfaces than they are in layers.Surfaces are where the action is.Unlike geology, where the principal concern is with processes of accumulation and erosion, an archaeological surface constitutes an assemblage of artifacts with spatial and temporal depth that transcends stratigraphy and is thus only bounded by châines operatoire.Frontiers and boundaries are often conflated with specific events.Crutzen, Stoermer and their collaborators have identified the beginning of the anthropocene with "James Watt's invention of the steam engine."Ruddiman (2003) sees human impact on CO2 emissions as spanning the last 8000 years due to deforestation.Smith and Zeder (2013) equate the anthropocene with the Holocene due to human "niche construction" (domestication of plants and animals).Experience has taught archaeologists and historians that such attempts at periodization, which Crutzen and Stoermer themselves admit