Manipulating Bodies, Constructing Social Memory: Ways of Negotiating, Re-inventing and Legitimizing the Past at the Petras Cemetery, Siteia, Crete (original) (raw)
Related papers
On memory and ritualisation - Memory in our time
As the average period of sustaining human Memory is 3 to 4 generations we cannot be sure how the memory of the Shoa will be maintained in later generations. If to judge from historical experience the ritualization of memory can help but at a high cost of blending facts, myths and beliefs. There are reasons to believe that religious rituals are more viable than secular ones. The task of the historian will be then to remove the filter of ritualization around historical events.
Papadatos, Y. 2012. Celebrating with the dead: strategies of memory in the communities of Prepalatial Crete, in C. Bourazelis, Ε. Karamanolakis and S. Κατάκης (eds.) Η μνήμη της κοινότητας και η διαχείρισή της. Μελέτες από μια ημερίδα αφιερωμένη στη μνήμη του Τ. Παπαμαστοράκη, Ιστορήματα 3, 69-89. Athens: Kardamitsa Editions. Aim of this paper is to discuss the rich funerary evidence from Prepalatial Crete (c. 3000-1900 BC) with reference to the way the societies of that period constructed and maintained ancestral memory. It is argued that a large part of the relevant archaeological evidence belongs to memory rituals referring to the collective corpus of the ancestors, rather than to funerary rituals of particular dead individuals. Several alternative suggestions are discused in order to explain the reasons why ancestors were particularly important for the life and well-being of the Prepalatial Cretan communities. Finally, it is argued that the Prepalatial cemeteries, consisting of monumental collective tombs, built above ground and used for several centuries by large groups of people were not simple depositories for the dead people of the contemporary communities. Instead, the constituted eternal landmarks, predestined to last for centuries as residences of the ancestors and as places in which the surrounding living communities constructed, maintained, controlled and transmitted one of the most important categories of collective social memory, that of the ancestors.
Ritualising memory: A view from 11th century Cyprus
E. Borgna, I. Caloi, F.M. Carinci & R. Laffineur (eds.), Μνήμη/ Mneme, Past and Memory in the Aegean Bronze Age, Annales d'archéologie égéenne de l'Université de Liège et UT-PASP 43, 2019
The paper explores the role of the so-called “Myceneanising” chamber tombs with long dromoi as means of organised promoting and/ or legitimising common memory implemented in Cypriot communities during the early phase of the Early Iron Age, i.e. after the arrival of several groups of peoples from the Aegean, during the 12th and 11th centuries BC. This subject has been so far discussed with reference to the geographic distribution and specified location of these monuments, as well as their topographical and chronological association with different types of tombs, especially those associated with local Bronze Age traditions. In contrast to these approaches, the present analysis focuses on ritual activity centred in and/ or around the tombs under examination, as ritual has been proven by both social anthropologists and archaeologists to constitute an ideal field for the development, consolidation and demonstration of identities, cultural and/ or other. Indeed, the last two decades have witnessed the development of various research projects associated with the identification and reconstruction of ceremonial actions (processions, libations, feasting etc.) within Late Bronze Age Aegean funerary contexts. Nevertheless, no analogous studies have appeared with regards to 11th century Cyprus, although the fact that its society is generally thought to have had included more than one distinctive cultural groups, renders plausibility to the hypothesis of increased ritual visibility as a result of social antagonising. Moreover, reconstructing the ritualistic activity that was taking place in burial grounds associated with the Aegean world, essentially the homeland, close or more distant, of some population groups in Cyprus is bound to cast some light on the character and extent of this homeland's role in the construction and maintenance of common memories and, consequently, cultural identities. As the effective reconstruction of ritual can be achieved only through the contextual analysis of the archaeological material, our discussion is based on the thorough reconsideration of the evidence from all published Cypriot burial sites containing chamber tombs with long dromoi, as no contextual analysis of this material has yet been undertaken. Special emphasis is placed on the dromoi, as, according to recent research focussing on Aegean examples, it was there that most of the ceremonial deeds were taking place. Moreover, the long dromoi constitute the principal structural difference between the traditional Late Bronze Age Cypriot tombs and the novel type, which is thought to have been brought to the island by the Aegean newcomers.
Memory, Performance and Pleasure in Greek Rituals (in Ritual Dynamics, Wiesbaden 2010)
Michaels, A. (ed.), "Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual", 2010
Studio - condotto attraverso l'analisi dei testi e delle forme innologiche presenti in tragedia - del rapporto tra partecipazione a un rituale e il piacere che deve essere generato a favore del dio celebrato, e sul ruolo della memoria per il corretto svolgimento delle pratiche rituali. Emerge una complessa rete di relazioni di reciprocità, e una serie di effetti sullo statuto dei rituali nella documentazione letteraria ed epigrafica. Esempi da: Aesch. Eum; Sept;Eur. Iph Aul; Eur. Ion. Una breve analisi di FD II, XI 192 chiude il lavoro. In Ancient Greece, ritual is associated with memory and pleasure through different and interesting connections, which deserve attention and further exploration. I shall be considering the threefold relationship between the role of memory (a particular kind of memory, as we shall see), the performance of a ritual, and the action of giving and sharing pleasure. More particularly, what we may call “ritual pleasure” seems to be a crucial element for the celebration itself, not only as an emotion shared among the participants in the ritual, but also as a feeling perceived by the god celebrated.
2017
How do societies remember their past? And how did they do so before the age of computers, printing, writing? This book takes stock of earlier work on memory in the fields of history and the social sciences. Our collection also takes a new look at how past and present social groups have memorialized events and rendered them durable through materializations: contributors ask how processes and incidents perceived as negative and disruptive are nonetheless constitutive of group identities. Papers also contrast the monumentalizing treatment given to singular events imbued with a hegemonic meaning to more localized, diverse memory places and networks. As case studies show, such memory scapes invite divergent, multivocal and subversive narratives. Various kinds of these imagined geographies lend themselves to practices of manipulation, preservation and control. The temporal scope of the volume reaches from the late Neolithic to the recent past, resulting in a long-term and multi-focal perspective that demonstrates how the perception of past events changes, acquires new layers and is molded by different groups at different points in time. As several contributions show, these manipulations of the past do not always produce the anticipated results, however. Attempts at “post-factual history” are countered by the socially distributed, but spatially and materially anchored nature of the very process of memorialization.