Archaeological Practice, Material Objects, and Social Memory

Summary

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. I consider two examples, one drawn from collaborative work with a Native American community in northeastern North America and one focused on the representations of colonialism in metropolitan France.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Remembrance and Oblivion - Perspectives on Material Memory   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 955