The Personal-Histories Project (original) (raw)
Related papers
Gabe Moshenska, Key Concepts in Public Archaeology, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-911576-44-0 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-911576-43-3 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-911576-41-9 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-911576-40-2 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-911576-42-6 (mobi) ISBN: 978-1-787350-78-6 (html) ISBN: 978-1-911307-71-6 (Apple app) ISBN: 978-1-911307-72-3 (Android app) This publication was made possible by funding from Jisc as part of the 'Institution as e-textbook publisher' project: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/institution-as-e-textbook-publisher.
Heritage and the New Immigrant Minorities: A Catalyst of Relevance for Contemporary Archaeology?
Biehl & Prescott: Heritage in the context of globalization, 2013
In Europe, the development of archaeology and cultural heritage is often bound up with projects associated with the consolidation of nation states, and national and regional identities. This symbiotic relationship has a 150-year-long success rate. From the 1960s to 1970s the use of this recipe has been expanded to political projects related to indigenous groups. The concept of identity is still used to ground legislation and award financial support. Ironically, simplistic ascription of contemporary ethnic or national identities to the prehistoric record is widely regarded as theoretically dubious within the professional archaeological community. Furthermore, the identity narrative is conceivably rendered increasingly irrelevant in western and northern Europe due to the large immigrant groups from outside the continent—immigration that is also changing perceptions of relevance among younger members of the European population. Questions concerning archaeology and identity, and the narratives we tell the public, are thus becoming more acute. Based on the case study of contemporary Norway, the article sketches the conceptual basis for heritage work and the resulting archaeological narratives in a dramatically changed, globalized Europe and discusses implications for academic, public outreach, political and ethical practices.
ABSTRACT: In this introductory article an evaluation of the emergence and transformations of parallel discourses regarding the past in relation to the political nationalist context in which they were articulated will be offered. A chronological framework will be adopted, thereby acknowledging the importance of the changes nationalism underwent for understanding shifts in discourses on the past. - The study of the past in the pre-nationalist era - Civic nationalism and the institutionalisation of archaeology - Ethnic nationalism and culture-historical archaeology - In this volume The articles in this volume aim to explore the interaction between nationalism and archaeology as seen by archaeologists, historians and social scientists. The use of different pasts will be a central issue of debate. The role of archaeology as a provider of raw material to explain the historical character of the nation has been a two-sided coin. On the one hand, the primeval periods had an obvious role to play in the quest for unique Golden Ages that formed a glorious national past for a nation. On the other hand, in Europe and in America archaeology also offered the remains of the lost ‘Great Civilisations’ encountered in the colonial venture, a past which was also appropriated. This appropriation also influenced the study of the material remains from the Great Civilisations found in the metropolis, such as the pre-Columbian past in Mexico and the supposed Phoenician remains in England. The importance conferred on the great civilisations – and especially on the Roman period, but also on others such as the Greek and Egyptian periods – contrasted and colluded with the uniqueness of the past supplied by a local prehistoric and medieval archaeology. The result of these parallel pasts was nationalism's simultaneous use of several discourses regarding archaeology. Although tensions were particularly acute during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the by-products of these debates still exert a considerable influence. This is one of the key themes that these articles discuss.
Whose history? Why Archaeology Matters
In this article we discuss the project”Who´s history?” which was conducted 2013 in a small rural municipality on the west coast of Sweden. The aim of the project was to introduce immigrant youths that recently arrived to Sweden to a local heritage. Immigrants in general and immigrant youths in specific are underrepresented among participants of local heritage work. The underlying reason for this lack of representation is probably an implicit belief that heritage represented by pre-historic and historic monuments, places and stories are the heritage of the “swedes”. A large group of immigrants are thereby excluded taking part in the local heritage work. Questions raised in the project were: who has the right to participate and who has the right to claim the local history as theirs? By letting a group of immigrant youths carry out an archaeological survey of a local historical location and through a public exhibition present new knowledge about the history of the location these questions could be discussed. In a time where heritage is used as a tool to exclude different groups in society it is crucial that means are taken to defend the democratic right of all groups of society to a common heritage. If a group or several groups in society are excluded taking part creating new knowledge about the local heritage they are probably less inclined to feel connected towards the society they live in. Instead they will probably form their own communities separate from the existing local communities. The discussions in the article focus on cultural heritage, nationalism, democracy and questions of identity.
Ethnicity, archaeology and nationalism: remarks on the current state of research
Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica, 2021
While in the modern world, ethnicity has become the politicization of culture, the old controversy over the relation between ethnicity and archaeology refuses to die. The first studies of that relation dealt primarily with what made the historical interpretation of the archaeological material dependent upon the political situation. Soon, the emphasis shifted to the link between archaeology and the beginnings of nationalism, especially the influence of Romanticism, the rise of the culture-history paradigm, and of the historical interest in ethnogenesis. Now, the emphasis is more on the role of archaeology in the shaping of social memory as past that may be used politically. This study focuses on the new trends in this research field, particularly those concerned with the social mobilization by means of the ancestors’ myths, with pseudo-archaeology, and the staging of historical authenticity through heritage tourism. The second part of the article highlights differences between approaches to ethnogenesis in the European and American archaeology and illustrates the latter by means of three key studies by Christopher Stojanowski, Scott Ortman, and Laurie Wilkie. To judge from the titles of the publications that came out in Eastern Europe and the United States over the last year, several common trends are apparent, along with significant divergences. Archaeology is increasingly perceived as the most important, if not the only way to understand the ethnicity of immigrants in the (medieval) past. Archaeologists have taken a front seat in all debates about ethnic identities. Instead of state authorities or the ideological pressure of various political regimes, the emphasis in Eastern Europe is now on individual archaeologists, the role of their life experience and of their education in the ethnic interpretation of the archaeological record. Meanwhile, in the Unites States, it is the ethnic identity of the archaeologists themselves that has now come under lens. In other words, agency is restored to archaeologists, who are now regarded as much more capable of original work and decision making than before. Finally, gender perspectives are now applied to the study of the relations between ethnicity, archaeology, and nationalism. In both Eastern Europe and the United States, there is a conspicuous interest in women archaeologists.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 2010
professional divide. It was the keen amateur archaeologists who were the source of inspiration for many who became involved in the discipline in the 1920s and 1930s, as a number of Smith's interviewees confirm. Warwick Bray argues that it took until the early 1960s before the demand for paid employment in archaeology started to disappear along with the need for a private income (Smith 2009: 114). Perhaps that is when the professionalisation process became really entrenched, which fits in nicely with the date of Piggott's 1963 address. Whilst the importance of Cambridge in the interwar years may be exaggerated in Smith's account, her work is undoubtedly groundbreaking. As a result of some determined sleuthing she has uncovered a goldmine of new material-not only from her innovative oral interviews, which are an extraordinarily valuable primary source for historians of archaeology, but also in respect of many of the documentary sources she has uncovered. Particular mention should be made of the tracking down of the Garrod papers in France, plus the Tom Lethbridge material, and what would appear to be important unpublished memoirs and papers in relation to Thurstan Shaw, C. W. Phillips and Miles Burkitt. One of the great strengths of the study is its ability to switch focus from the 'big beasts' like Grahame Clark and Dorothy Garrod, and to examine some of the supporting players. It would have been good to hear even more about the previously unsung Palestinian excavator Yusra (Smith 2009: 85), which addresses both sexual and racial biases in much archaeological writing. Similarly, the biographical portraits of Maureen O'Reilly and Charles Denston make a refreshing change in their insistence on the importance of two individuals who were significant in the development of archaeology at Cambridge, but who would both normally have been written out of the script due to their less elevated roles (Smith 2009: 65-68).