Projects of coastal reclamation have allowed humanity to expand its terrestrial foothold, often quite dramatically, although the act of extension may be forgotten as we come to naturalize these new lands as timeless terra firma. Against this possibility, my investigation of the 1880s reclamation of the Elizabeth Bay foreshore on Sydney Harbour, Australia, is a work of recall or recovery. The introduction by British colonists in the late 1700s of the notion of “capital in land” both underwrote the dispossession of the bay’s indigenous inhabitants and stimulated a thirst for land that led colonists and their descendants to want to push the shoreline out into the sea. As my inquiry deepens, other temporalities come into view alongside this colonial narrative. Formed around 300 million years ago in the Sydney area, the sandstone that was used to construct the seawall is found to be eroding in a manner that allows the sea to advance inland a millimeter at a time, back toward where it was prior to the reclamation. In doing so, the sandstone appears to be at least as amenable to the sea’s impetus as it is to the human intention for it to defend the reclamation against the sea. Meanwhile, earthworms active in the “artificial earth” of the reclamation undermine and bury objects such as lost coins and cigarette butts, causing them to subside into the earth at a rate of a few millimeters a year. Haunting the essay are the specters of rising and falling sea levels and my personal history with this reclamation in the year 1980. On bringing together these diverse temporal threads and processes, this article argues that archaeology has a particular role to play in bringing reclamations and other things of the Anthropocene into view.

中文翻译：

---

怀念悉尼港的伊丽莎白湾填海和全新世日落

沿海填海工程使人类扩大了其陆地立足点，这通常是相当大的，尽管随着我们逐渐将这些新土地归为永恒的地表而忘记了扩张的举动。在这种可能性下，我对1880年代在澳大利亚悉尼港的伊丽莎白湾前滩开垦的调查是一项召回或恢复工作。1700年代后期，英国殖民者对“内陆资本”的概念的引入，加剧了对该海湾土著居民的剥夺，并刺激了人们对土地的渴望，这导致殖民者及其后代想将海岸线推入海中。随着我的探究加深，与此殖民叙事一起出现了其他时空性。它成立于3亿年前的悉尼地区，人们发现，用来建造海堤的砂岩正在以一种使海洋向内陆前进一毫米的速度侵蚀，并向着填海之前的位置逐渐侵蚀。这样一来，砂岩似乎至少可以顺应海底的动力，也可以顺应人类保护海面围垦的意图。同时，活跃在填海的“人造地球”中的under破坏并掩埋了丢失的硬币和烟头等物体，使它们以每年几毫米的速度沉入地下。困扰着这篇论文的是海平面上升和下降的幽灵，以及我在1980年开垦时的个人历史。将这些不同的时间线索和过程综合在一起，