Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks
https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/22293
2026-04-29T07:53:48ZChaco Canyon: A Contested Memory Anchor in the North American Southwest
https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/22367
Chaco Canyon: A Contested Memory Anchor in the North American Southwest
Dyke, Ruth M. Van
Natural and archaeological places are powerful loci for social memories and
continually negotiated meanings. As ‘memory anchors’ they are focal points for
the construction of memory and meaning, and can become flashpoints for
disputes over access, land-use, and knowledge claims among stakeholders with
contradictory interests. In the North American Southwest the competing claims
of Native American tribes, archaeologists, government bureaucrats, tourists,
and the mining industry come into sharp relief. In this paper, I explore how
the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Chaco Canyon figures prominently in the
origin stories and sacred geographies of contemporary Pueblo and Navajo
peoples – two indigenous groups with competing political stakes in the
present.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZExcavating Memory, Burying History. Lessons from the Spanish Civil War
https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/22336
Excavating Memory, Burying History. Lessons from the Spanish Civil War
González-Ruibal, Alfredo
This chapter deals with a case in which work that aimed at rekindling
a critical memory of a conflictual past ends up producing a certain form of
oblivion instead. The work in question is the archaeological research we
conducted at two battlefields of the Spanish Civil War. During our work, we
found the traumatic history of the war neutralized through memory practices
sponsored, in one case, by government institutions and in another by
grassroots associations. In both cases, the involuntary memories materialized
in things insisted in disrupting the comfortable narrative that people tried
to impose on them. I will argue that archaeologists should work to channel
this material memory so as to construct critical accounts of the past that
are helpful to foster a more reflexive citizenry.
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZGeese and Gauls – the Capitol in the Social Memory of the ‘Gallic Disaster’
https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/22299
Geese and Gauls – the Capitol in the Social Memory of the ‘Gallic Disaster’
Lentzsch, Simon
This paper examines some aspects of the ‘Gallic Disaster’ in Roman
memory culture, especially the role of the capitol. The capitol as a symbol
of Roman resistance against foreign enemies and her dominance over the
Mediterranean is the result of a longer development of cultural traditions and
included a stylization after Greek accounts of the Persian capture of Athens.
It can be shown that the sight of the Capitol stimulated the invention of
different versions of the course of events during the siege, the use of
historical exempla in speeches, and the development of ritual processions. As
a result, the capitol was integrated in the memorial landscape of the city,
and the ‘Gallic disaster’ was remembered as an important part of the history
of the religious and political center of Rome
2017-01-01T00:00:00ZLieux de Mémoire and Sites of De-Subjectivation
https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/22364
Lieux de Mémoire and Sites of De-Subjectivation
Bernbeck, Reinhard
This essay consists of four different elements that approach the nexus of
memory, place/space and subjectivity in different ways. I start out with a
description of the concept of lieux de mémoire as formulated by Pierre Nora,
its connections to Marc Augé’s “non-places” and a critique of these ideas. I
then discuss the postcolonial notion of Third Space as an alterna- tive
approach to the nexus of memory and space. Finally, an archaeological example
of a megalithic site in Jordan illustrates the advantages and difficulties of
mobilizing the idea of Third Spaces in archaeological contexts.
2017-01-01T00:00:00Z