Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017

Abstract

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.

Content

9–32 Ulrike Sommer, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Reinhard Bernbeck, "Mapping Memory, Space and Conflict", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 9–32
33–70 Ulrike Sommer, "The Appropriation or the Destruction of Memory? Bell Beaker ‘Re-Use’ of Older Sites", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 33–70
71–96 Ariane Ballmer, "Ritual Practice and Topographic Context. Considerations on the Spatial Forms of Memory in the Central Alps during the Late Bronze Age", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 71–96
97–125 Bernd Steinbock , "The Multipolarity of Athenian Social Memory: Polis, Tribes and Demes as Interdependent Memory Communities", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 97–125
127–150 Simon Lentzsch, "Geese and Gauls – the Capitol in the Social Memory of the ‘Gallic Disaster’", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 127–150
151–197 Heidrun Derks, "The Varus Battle in the Year 9 CE – or How to Escape the ‘Memory’ Trap", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 151–197
199–226 Ruth M. Van Dyke, "Chaco Canyon: A Contested Memory Anchor in the North American Southwest", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 199–226
227–252 Brian Broadrose, "Memory Spaces and Contested Pasts in the Haudenosaunee Homeland", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 227–252
253–278 Reinhard Bernbeck, "Lieux de Mémoire and Sites of De-Subjectivation", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 253–278
279–302 Alfredo González-Ruibal, "Excavating Memory, Burying History. Lessons from the Spanish Civil War", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 279–302
303–313 Gabriel Moshenska, "Public Archaeology beyond Commodities, Alienation and the Fourth Wall", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 303–313
315–339 Christopher TenWolde, "Making Memory – Culturescapes and the Communication of Archaeological Meaning", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 315–339
341–357 Joachim Baur, "Staging Migration – Staging the Nation. Imagining Community at Immigration Museums", in: Reinhard Bernbeck, Kerstin P. Hofmann and Ulrike Sommer (Eds.), Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks. New Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 341–357