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tempo

tempo provides a formal representation of intervals between two points in time (periods) and the potential logical relations between them in R.

Installation

You can install the development version of tempo from GitHub with the pak package:

pak::pak("joeroe/tempo")

Usage

Create intervals from numeric start and end dates:

library("tempo")
#> Loading required package: era
#> Loading required package: rlang
#> Loading required package: vctrs
#> Loading required package: zeallot

intv1 <- interval(1500, 1900)
intv2 <- interval(1800, 1950)

Or from numeric dates with an era label:

interval(1200, 800, "BCE")
#> <interval[1]>
#> [1] 1200–800 BCE

Test whether two intervals are contemporary with each other:

contemporary_with(intv1, intv2)
#> [1] TRUE

tempo supports fifteen types of temporal relations following Levy’s typology (Levy et al. 2021; Levy 2025). See ?relations for a list.

By default, comparison of start and end points is inclusive (i.e. using >= and <=). strict = TRUE enables the ‘strict’ variants of each relation (i.e. using > and <):

intv3 <- interval(1900, 1950)

contemporary_with(intv1, intv3)
#> [1] TRUE

contemporary_with(intv1, intv3, strict = TRUE)
#> [1] FALSE

References

Levy, E. 2025. “Temporal Relations in Archaeology: A Survey and a New Typology.” Archaeometry 67 (S1): 178–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.13080.
Levy, E., G. Geeraerts, F. Pluquet, E. Piasetzky, and A. Fantalkin. 2021. “Chronological Networks in Archaeology: A Formalised Scheme.” Journal of Archaeological Science 127: 105225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105225.