Narrating the Past, Transforming the Present: Unraveling Collective Memory in the Ancient World (CA 2020) (original) (raw)

CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL IDENTITIES IN EARLY IRON AGE AND ARCHAIC GREECE

This volume focuses on collective practices, such as religious, feasting and burial rites, reconstructed from material evidence. The aim is to understand how collective practices were employed to articulate distinctive social identities in Early and Archaic Greece. Three sites located in important geographical areas are presented as study cases: the Late Helladic III-Early Iron Age Amyklaion in Laconia, the Late Geometric " Sacred Houses " in Attica, and a number of Archaic Necropoleis in Northern Greece. Taking into account new evidence, the three study-cases offer the opportunity to discuss important issues: the continuity of practices between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age at the Amyklaion; the formation of social identities in feasting activities at particular buildings such as the " Sacred Houses " in Attica; and finally the observed changes in the funerary rites at a number of culturally diverse contexts in Northern Greece.

Constructing social identities through story- telling: Tracing Greekness in Greek narratives

Pragmatics, 2009

The present paper is concerned with the narratives produced in the conversations of six young people in Greece. Drawing on the broader framework of Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics as well as on the Social Constructionist paradigm, our paper follows the line of research that focuses on situated analysis of identities. Initially, the paper sets out to examine the identity(ies) constructed through the stories these people tell in the specific encounters. The overall aim of the paper is to relate these locally constructed identities to the larger socio-cultural identity of the participants and to examine whether they can be seen as indices of Greekness. Our analysis shows that, in the course of their story-telling, the participants construct 'in-group' identities mainly by co-constructing their narratives and by performing successive narratives with a similar point. The interactants' foregrounding and cultivation of their in-group identity is probably an indication of their Greekness, namely of the attested tendency of Greek people to value and thus cultivate in-group relations of intimacy and solidarity in interaction.

Narrative Maps, Collective Memory, and Identities: Through an Ethnographic Example from the Southeast Aegean

Narrative Culture: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 4. , 2016

This paper attempts to link two distinct representational practices, maps and narratives, with reference to long fieldwork in an Aegean insular community; it investigates how the experience of space permeates collectivity through narratives and how it ultimately, and largely, mediates the community’s values in terms of a system. Here, the concept of “narrative maps” acquires both the meaning of collective representations and of a complex cognitive function for memorising and mapping space through bodily transfers and collective memory. To what extent is a community able to preserve collective memory with its maps spontaneously, without imposing “realms of memory”?

Local Identities in Athens: the Omnipresent Past and its Alternative Narratives (Philopappou Hill/ Λόφος Φιλοπάππου). University of Southampton Postgraduate Research Archaeology Symposium, 2013.

In Athens, remnants from a variety of pasts are vividly and persistently present. Many of these—namely sites and monuments—are of national and international significance, and have played a catalytic role in the construction of Greece's collective identity. However, other material remains that are considered of less prominence and have had a more indirect effect on the construction of a national identity, hold an equally significant role in the formation of local identities. My paper examines the interaction and relationship of the local communities that live around these living sites and monuments, thus experiencing them on a daily basis in different levels. It also explores the alternate views and multiple meanings given to these antiquities by the local communities and the varying perceptions held by the locals; these differ distinctly from the long established and State-coordinated official archaeological interpretations and heritage representations. These multifaceted and complex disputes primarily reflect the locals' perceptions and values of different monuments/sites, as well as the gap and miscommunication between local residents and the State due to the absence of an appropriate, engaging and holistic way of presenting the past to the general public. A distinctive example is that of Philopappou Hill, a living site in the center of Athens. Under the State-proposed program for the unification of archaeological sites in Athens, the hill was said to become an archaeological site including fence restrictions and the imposition of an entrance fee—an event that led to a series of clashes involving locals and State officials. Through my interviews with both locals and members of the Archaeological Service, I discovered that the former wish to be a part of the decision-making processes whereas the latter argue that the site must be restricted, and that those opposed to this idea do not understand the archaeological significance of the site. My paper will discuss and critically assess these interviews and their importance to the possible future representation, identity and management of this site. Some of the key themes explored include the politics of identity and of the past, heritage management, national identity saturating onto local identity, and the

Introduction: Collective memory in ancient Greek culture: Concepts, media, and sources

C. Constantakopoulou and M. Fragoulaki, edd., Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece: Poetry, Historiography, and Epigraphy, Histos Supplement 11 (2020), ix-xliv, 2020

Cultural or collective memory defies a stable definition. It can be viewed as an interdisciplinary space where different and at times overlapping terms, media, and methodologies speak to each other, casting new light on the multifaceted phenomenon of collective remembering. Τhe chapters of the present volume explore aspects of the shaping (and reshaping) of collective memory in ancient Greece, viewing it as a holistic cultural phenomenon, mobile, transformative and transformable.