American Indians are continually surrounded by memory sites of colonization. These often take the form of monuments erected by descendants of colonizers who ‘remember’ their heroic events while forgetting the atrocities they performed in order to achieve their objectives (violent dispossession). Some archaeologists are now lending a critical eye towards such memory spaces or Imaginative Geographies, as Edward Said called them, as they have been manifest in Haudenosaunee (‘Iroquois’) territory. They hereby support American Indians to counter skewed projections of their colonization with their own memorials of space. Such agency reflects the power to prompt a remembrance of some silenced or otherwise ignored history and to reverse the gaze.

Migration and migration history have become major themes in the global museum landscape. In this article I argue that the establishment of museums of immigration can be seen as an answer to the crisis of collectively shared narratives and the heterogenization of cultural identities. By presenting immigration as the common experience shared by most members of society, museums construct a master narrative of migration and thus contribute to re-visions of a national imagined community. After pointing to a few instances where the construction of an overarching migration narrative causes problems and sketching the ways in which the museums deal with it, I conclude with advocating to overcome the ‘methodological nationalism’ in museum representations of migration history.

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.

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.

Public archaeology provides us with the means and opportunity to critique the socio-political and epistemic foundations of archaeology. This paper explores an interconnected set of issues in public archaeology, focusing in particular on the historical archaeology of conflict. It outlines some proposals for a practice of public archaeology that transcends the everyday commoditization of archaeology and the resulting transactional nature of the relationship between archaeologists and the public. To do so it draws on the works of, amongst others, Guy Debord and the Situationist International.

In their analysis of the Athenians’ shared image of their past as an essential element of Athenian collective identity, scholars have largely focused on polis-wide commemorative activities such as the Athenian public funeral oration for the war dead. Taking the inherent multipolarity of social memory into account, this paper examines the collective memories of two types of Athenian sub-groups, namely demes and tribes, and explores how their shared memories and the ‘official’ Athenian polis tradition mutually influenced and sustained each other in 5th- and 4th-century Athenian public discourse.

Archaeology plays a unique role in the rediscovery and restoration of lost moments of cultural memory. It also bears a responsibility beyond the narrow confines of academia, and can and should play a role in the public perception of the past. Understanding the material basis of a shared past is now more important than ever, as humankind is engaged in perhaps the most challenging endeavor in its history – learning how to manage the constant expan- sion, articulation, and integration of our global material culture. However, academic archaeology is an inherently self-referential field, and often fails to engage the public on these larger issues. This article examines an attempt to bridge that communication gap through the development of an innovative, radically cross-disciplinary curriculum

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.

In 9 CE, after almost 30 years of struggle in Germania, the Roman Empire suffered a tragic defeat. It resulted in the loss of the 17th, 18th and 19th legion and became known as clades variana, later as Varus Battle, Battle of the Teutoburg Forest or as Hermannsschlacht . Over the centuries the event acquired special significance due to its particular historical circumstances, the historical re-interpretations since the 16th century and the excavations at Kalkriese, which finally led to the erection of a museum on site. Thus the Varus Battle may fulfill many of the criteria for a lieu de mémoire, but a closer look reveals some constraints concerning the applicability and appropriateness of this theoretical concept for the event in question.

In Western and West-Central Europe, it is common to find sherds of Bell-Beakers in the uppermost layers of megalithic monuments, sometimes accompanied by bones of a corre- sponding age. This ‘re-use’ is not restricted to burial-context. Henges and stone circles can contain so-called ‘coves’ from the Bell Beaker period. This points to a changed use of the structure. The most famous example is Stonehenge. I interpret this as a deliberate attempt by a new elite to erase power-mechanisms of previous generations. The effort put into these acts shows that these structures were perceived as a real threat to the new order. This case study illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing between different ways of using the past, between the use and the intended destruction of memories

Our introduction to the volume sets the discussion about memory in archaeology into current contexts, establishes our reasons for producing this book and discusses a number of crucial aspects of memory, space, and identity. We provide a brief history of memory studies with a focus on contributions from archaeology and discuss a number of topics that play important roles in the papers. These include the relations between forgetting and remem- bering, and between space, place and memory. Along with our authors, we emphasize that memory is a matter of practices, not just of mindsets. A further element in our discussions is the interface between memory, duration, and history. All of these issues coalesce in an important background theme, the political nature of various modes of memory

This paper deals with the spatial parameters of two characteristic ritual practices of the Bronze Age in the Central Alps: the deposition of single bronze artifacts, and the activities at Brandopferplätze (sites for burnt offerings). I propose two (for some time coexistent) modes for the spatial dimension of cultural memory. While the first one relates to a geographically flexible ‘landscape’, essentially defined by the natural environment, the second one features locations of territorial significance. Considering the economic and social change in the Central Alpine region, I consequently postulate a trend towards a detachment of the cultural memory from the unaltered, natural terrain in favour of an increased collective use of ceremonial sites controlled by elites.

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