A common task when trying to understand pieces of architecture inside a site is to spot, document and depict changes over time. Quite often successive states of an artefact are then represented using emergent, screen-based computer technologies (Virtual reality, Augmented reality, haptic interfaces, etc.). In this contribution we wish to investigate whether some tasks - both communication in workgroups or reasoning tasks - would not be better tackled once freed from the screen as unique interface. We introduce a proof-of-concept prototype, called "tangible chronology" developed in order to represent changes that occurred on Krakow's market square over a period of 750 years. The paper presents the development and its evaluation, before discussing in what tangible models could serve content holders or academics specifically in historic sciences, and in what their making there calls specific attention and methods.