An Emerging Archaeology of the Nazi Era

Abstract

The archaeology of the Nazi era is a relatively new field of research. This review addresses motivations and ethical circumstances of such research, as well as the complex relations between archaeological evidence and a variety of other sources, including documents, oral history, and photography. Archaeologists work with two fundamentally different conceptualizations: an objectivist one concerned with recording material remains, for which scale is a prominent issue, and interpretive approaches based on the evocative power of things, in which different degrees of victims’ anonymity play a core role. Other issues involve questions about the possibility of any coherent synthesis of this period. Investigations into the Nazi past also invariably include commemorative politics whose complex development is outlined. An engagement with this time of extremes has wider consequences, posing the question of the role of suffering and desolation in human history as a whole.