When I joined our students for their training excavation in September 2021 on the Swedish Island of Öland, it occurred to me that by focusing on the act of recovering objects and information, archaeology may be missing the most central aspect of the site. For the site was surrounded by lush vegetation and in the middle of an intense process of regeneration, involving everything from small creatures in the soil to huge trees reaching into the sky.

In this talk, I will trace the emergence of this insight and its implications for rethinking archaeology´s temporality and, in particular, the 1964 Venice Charter on Conservation and Restoration which has been the most influential 20th century document on policy guiding heritage conservation and restoration. I will also discuss implications for the response of archaeology to climate change, going beyond understanding long-term environmental change and safeguarding threatened sites toward developing strategies for increasing cultural resilience and sustainability. Archaeologists have long claimed to be working on the past for the benefit of future generations—now it is time to explicitly address the future and draw on the full potential of archaeology to make human societies more sustainable (while perhaps improving the life of non-human lifeforms too).