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In common parlance, continuity denotes “unbroken and consistent existence or operation…a connection or line of development with no sharp breaks” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2008, p. 309). For Saussure, continuity was the first condition for diachrony:

The sign is subject to change because it continues through time. But what predominates in any change is the survival of earlier material. Infidelity to the past is only relative. That is how it comes about that the principle of change is based upon the principle of continuity. (de Saussure 1995b, Part I, Chapter II, §2)

The survival of initial material means that the sign continues to exist over time, but permits alterations in meaning. Language exists because of the “speaking masses”. It is intimately linked to the social mass, which is “naturally inert”, and thus acts as a powerful conservatory factor (de Saussure 1995a, p. 112). The idea of permanence is thus linked to the notion of inertia, one of the fundamental principles of 19th-century mechanics, in which it was used to denote “a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line […]” (Concise OED, 2008, p. 727).

Using the notion of continuity, time is seen as duration – durée – that is, as something which runs between two defined limits. The French verb durer, to last, also implies continuation with the same qualities (Larousse 1922, p. 695). A form of analogy seems to have appeared between the terms dur, dureté (hard, hardness) and durée, duration, from an early date; after all, the words share the same Latin root¹³. The Latin verb durare, initially meaning “to harden, to fortify”, also took on a temporal sense in ancient times. Lucretius used the word to suggest that the body could not survive for longer than the soul after death. Tacitus used it to report facts that he had been unable to verify personally, but which had been established by authors who themselves were still alive at the time of the historian’s youth (Gaffiot 1981, pp. 565–566).

The idea that the permanence of forms is a result of resistance, primarily in the sense of material continuity, is an old one. In 1622, for example, N. Bergier ascribed the continued existence of Roman roads to their construction. Speaking of “Brunehaut” roads, wide Roman thoroughfares found across the former Belgian Gaul, he stated that one hypothesis for the use of the term via ferrata (lit. “iron road”) in this context is “the hardness and firmness of their construction, which has resisted wear from carts for fifteen or sixteen hundred years”¹⁴ (Bergier 1622, p. 93). In the 19th century, the historian Camille Jullian also emphasized the hard-wearing (résistant) nature of the materials used in ancient road construction, comparing their foundations to an “invisible wall” (Jullian 1964, pp. 108–109). The continued existence of ancient roads was thus considered to be intimately linked to the notion of physical resistance. The dureté, hardness, of their construction ensured their durée, perennity, long after Rome had fallen. Material hardness may also be linked to the durability of power. In a proverb quoted by the Venerable Bede in the 7th century, the persistence of Rome, and, by extension, of the whole world, is linked to the resistance of a monument (the Colosseum):

As long as the Colosseum stands / Rome will stand; But when the Colosseum falls / Rome, too, will fall. And when Rome has fallen / Then the whole world will fall with it.¹⁵ (Du Cange 1678, p. 407, translated)

According to this association of the notions of durée and dureté, the survival of a form over time results from the continued existence of the initial material object, if only in the form of ruins or traces. This assimilation of physical solidity with the capacity to last over time (durability), or even with the capacity to ensure the perennity of a societal choice, is at the heart of current debates on the subject of resilience; the approach is at odds with the notion of engineering resilience, where the response to natural disasters is found in the physical resistance of infrastructures (section 5.2.4).

In the early 20th century, certain authors observed that the survival of forms in a landscape also relies on adjustments, whereby the original material forms are adapted to new functions. For example, it was noted that the ground footprint of medieval ramparts, later demolished, could still be seen in the curvature of urban thoroughfares (Brunhes 1925; Lavedan 1926a; Unwin 1981; Rossi 2001). P. Lavedan, writing during the period of reconstruction which followed the First World War, noted that towns or cities destroyed by a violent event (fire, war, etc.) grew back “naturally” following their earlier layout. Lavedan considered this phenomenon to be the result of a “natural inclination”, whereby “an owner will spontaneously rebuild his dwelling where it was before”. Once again, continuity appears as the result of memory and of uninterrupted ownership. Furthermore, in cases where destruction and reconstruction are separated by a longer period, “experience shows that […] in many cases, if even traces of a house remained, it will be rebuilt in the same place”¹⁶ (Lavedan 1926a, pp. 92–93). Material continuity thus takes the place of memory. For Lavedan, permanence was the rule, while the creation of something new was the exception. The “natural inclination” of the owning masses, spontaneously rebuilding their homes in the same locations, thus corresponds to Saussure’s “speaking masses”.

The argument linking the permanence of ownership with a form of fixation of plot layouts through construction echoes the connection between durée and dureté described earlier. In the 1970s, the architect Pierre Pinon described the way in which certain Roman amphitheaters were progressively replaced by dwellings built on top of the ancient foundations (Pinon 1978). The parcel system constitutes a record of ways in which the land was used, even after it has ceased to accomplish a given function. Plots illustrate the contours of a monument, and these lines are “hardened” by buildings on these foundations. The footprint of extinct material structures thus “grows up” from the ground (Pinon 1994, p. 40)¹⁷. Describing the “mechanisms of memory in the parcel system”, the architect Bernard Gauthiez highlighted the links between legal and material criteria. He assigned a major role to the influence exerted by public power, guaranteeing the persistence of public land boundaries, while also noting that the persistence of boundaries is “strengthened by the tendency in urban settlements, at least from the late Middle Ages on, to construct dwellings along boundary lines”¹⁸ (Gauthiez 1999, p. 19).

The persistence of older forms is not, therefore, exclusively a result of the persistence of the constructions themselves (shapes). Nevertheless, up until the 1990s, researchers still struggled to explain this persistence without resorting to the notion of continuum. There is an uninterrupted link between past and present, the result of multi-generational memory or, in the longer term, of the persistence of material remains, functions and the cadastral plan (Robert 2003a). This approach excludes the possibility of temporal hiatuses or non-linear temporalities.