dark heritage (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret A Comer.

This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Recent Past" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A key point of conflict and contest at sites related to Soviet repression is the matter of victimhood and perpetration. At each site, who is identified as a victim, perpetrator, or bystander, and why? Who decides on these classifications, and, within each site’s interpretation, is there any reflection of the very real contestation and ambivalence that attend...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia Brenan.

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Hazardous contamination from human activity in the last century has burdened, and continues to recklessly burden Canada’s North and its inhabitants, particularly Indigenous peoples. The Federal Government of Canada recognizes approximately 22,000 contaminated or suspected-to-be contaminated sites within Canada; 1,600 of them are in Labrador. This project addresses the legacy of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret A Comer.

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Moscow’s former ‘Lubyanka’ prison building is now controlled by the FSB, the contemporary Russian successor to the Soviet KGB and NKVD. Yet this does not mean that this past is erased; on the contrary, the surrounding landscape has become a meaningful space for memorializing the victims of Soviet and contemporary repression. A boulder from the USSR’s first gulag camp is now a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret A Comer.

Moscow was heavily affected by Stalinist terror, since many targeted groups were concentrated there. It was also, however, a concentrated center of perpetration, since the designers of the purges and multi-faceted ‘apparatus of terror’ were based there. Today, the buildings formerly occupied by the NKVD still stand in central Moscow. Within a five-minute walk in any direction, one can find, among other sites, a garage where thousands of Muscovites were shot, the FSB’s current headquarters, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eleanor Casella.

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, by December 2009 approximately 7.25 million American adults were under some form of correctional supervision – a category that includes probation, parole, jail and prison. This population represented 724 people per 100,000 – or 3.1% of adult US residents. The evolution of our carceral society was neither inevitable nor accidental. This paper explores archaeological perspectives on institutional confinement to question why a leading modern state...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret A Comer.

This paper will compare and contrast tangible and intangible forms of memorialization and commemoration at two ‘dark heritage’ sites from the period of the Soviet Union’s Great Terror in the late 1930s. Both the Butovo firing range, near Moscow, and the 12th Kilometer, near Yekaterinburg, are mass graves of Soviet citizens shot during Stalinist repression. Both are now sites of individual and public remembrance, with mass ceremonies occurring several times each year. However, the narratives of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret A Comer.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Pandemic Fieldwork: Doing Fieldwork During a Pandemic" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Many heritage sites in contemporary Russia that are connected to Soviet mass repression lack large permanent memorials, if there is tangible memorialization on-site at all. Instead, many such places become sites meaningful ephemeral encounters, encompassing annual and semi-annual mass gatherings as well as individual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth A. Comer.

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The village of Catoctin Furnace lacks a collective memory that includes the African American workers (both enslaved and freed) who lived and worked at the village’s iron furnace from the time of the Revolution until the mid 19th century. Now, the village historical society and partners are attempting to provide an avenue of reparative heritage to social justice and vindication...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret A Comer.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Adding to the vibrant conversation around memorial museums, memorials, and dark heritage sites, this paper will examine and scrutinize the portrayals of aspects of violence (including portrayals of perpetrators and victims) at a selection of mass graves in Ukraine and Russia that witnessed either Nazi or Soviet mass killings...