Remembrance and Oblivion - Perspectives on Material Memory

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Silliman.

This paper attempts to circumvent the dichotomy of remembering/forgetting and instead focuses on the process of slimming down or building up social memory. Such an emphasis attends to the question of not whether something is remembered or forgotten, but the push-and-pull of how it is remembered: the details, valences, politics, pulses, and potency. It also considers archaeology – in its practices and in its objects – firmly within that collective and often national process, not separate from it....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Craig N. Cipolla.

Over the last 20 years archaeologists have come to pay close attention to the complexities of indigenous agency, cultural continuity and change, and survivance in colonial contexts. In their focus on materiality and everyday life, in their use of multiple lines of evidence, and in their connections to contemporary indigenous communities, archaeologists have the ability to challenge colonial narratives. In contrast, the ways in which these narratives (e.g., notions of savagery, authenticity, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda M. Ziegenbein.

     People engage with place and space in profound and commonplace ways, deriving and creating meaning from the environment around them.  People and spaces are co-created: while people imbue the landscape with meaning, those same meanings come to shape the people themselves.  Basso (1996) refers this process as a sensing of place.         Archaeologists and other anthropologists have long recognized the central role the landscape plays in the processes of memory creation and retention as well...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Quentin P Lewis.

This paper focuses on the role of materiality and spatiality in the making of rural New England--a "historic place" with powerful resonances to the cultural identity of the United States. Rural New England was the site of 19th century historic preservation movements that sought to reclaim important objects and landscapes from material and social disintegration. Farming was integral to this construction, and the figure of the Yeoman was a frequently deployed categorical subjectivity, whose...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Timo Ylimaunu. Titta Kallio-Seppä. Paul R. Mullins.

Pictures are one resource illuminating memory and forgetting of Finnish World War Two heritage. Pictures taken by Finnish Army photographers document wartime rituals, landscapes, and methods of warfare of German, Finnish and Soviet armies. In our paper we will examine how these wartime material practices and rituals were used to create, maintain and destroy identities and memory. Our discussion will focus on how the Finnish pictures were used to shape memory during and after the war.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul R. Mullins. Timo Ylimaunu.

Cutting across the Arctic Circle in the heart of Finnish Lapland, Santa Claus Village celebrates familiar holiday legends while offering visits with Santa and the opportunity to purchase a host of consumer goods.  The Yuletide tourist attraction north of Rovaniemi sits on a landscape that was a Luftwaffe airbase during World War II, and many of the foundations of the massive base’s support structures visibly dot the forests around Santa Claus land.  The history of Finland’s status as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Titta Kallio-Seppä. Terhi T. Tanska.

In this paper we discuss how sacred places in Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland lost their sacred meanings. Churches and graveyards in the early 17th century town of Oulu and 14th to early 17th century rural Ii were destroyed, forgotten and eventually turned into part of secular residential areas. Consequently the social memory of these places changes over time, becoming forgotten, then erroneously remembered, and finally rediscovered and brought to public attention by archaeologists....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alasdair Brooks.

The National Memorial Arboretum is the United Kingdom's 'national centre of remembrance', which 'commemorates and celebrates those who have given their lives in the service of their country, all who have served and suffered as a result of conflict, and others who, for specific or appropriate reasons, are commemorated here'.  One of the memorials remembers the 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were executed for cowardice and desertion during the First World War, but subsequently...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Hayes.

For Dakota people, there is no more painful and conflicted a site of memory in Minnesota than Historic Fort Snelling (HFS).  Built on sacred grounds and used as a prison camp following the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War, this historic property has until recently been represented in a highly selective fashion, suppressing Dakota and others' memory.  In this paper I trace some of the specific processes of forgetting at HFS, and why those processes are now failing through rising historical pluralism.  Yet...