World War II in Western Massachusetts: Contemporary Archaeology of a Plane Crash

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology of Conflict (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Mount Holyoke, a mountain in Western Massachusetts, is the site of ten World War II casualties. Without excavating, I interrogate how the physical remains of a 1944 plane crash exist in the present and actively shape the lived experiences of residents and visitors. The mountain is a mnemotopos, a place of memory and materialization of the past which still exists in the present. I sketch recollections and understanding of the plane crash, weaving together strands of evidence from ethnography and material remains. These alternative and tangled stories reveal how people in the present relate to a non-absent past and a landscape of war on the mountain. I also discuss ways in which a memorial to the disaster threatens to become a lieux de mémoire with an institutionalized, collective memory, and how individuals and families resist this process through their engagement with the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology of Conflict (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology