Social Lives of Places and Things
Social Lives of Places and Things
28 February 2008
Anth 3520
Welcome back!
Ludlow photo
Plan for class
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Archaeology of the Contemporary Past
Arch of the Contemporary Past: C20 Battlefields
Industrial Heritage and the Abandoned
Reading for Today was
Feb 28: The Archaeology of the Contemporary Past: Digging into Ourselves
From Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas. 2001. Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London: Routledge
Ch 1: The absent present: Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. pp 1-18 (899 Kb)
Ch 7: Hart & Winter: The politics of remembrance in the new South Africa: pp 84-93 (725 Kb)
Ch 8: Ludlow Collective: Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913-1914: pp 94-107 (861 Kb)
Ch 14: Buchli and Lucas: The archaeology of alienation: a late twentieth-century British council house pp 158-168 (606 Kb)
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CONTEMPORARY PAST
Ch 1: The absent present:
- aspects of the engagement with the contemporary past - science and left-leaning politics combine.
This started for the scientific reason of testing archaeological methods on a 'known' population... to discover laws/develop models that could be applied to ancient people.... but then discovered that we were learning new things about ourselves.... and realizing that the dividing line between 'the past' and 'the present' is arbitrary... and that the way in which we relate to our material world is worth knowing about. The emphasis on relations between the social and material worlds comes partly out of a Marxist approach.
- but the process of 'archaeologizing ourselves' is uncomfortable - looking at familiar objects in this distancing way makes them alien, makes us detached from our own world... there's a sense of transgression... and, of course, the focus on the discarded objects from someone's life is distasteful to some... and, finally, it's uncomfortable because this kind of analysis can make things clear about our lives and relationships that we may not be used to seeing.
Ch 7: Hart & Winter: The politics of remembrance in the new South Africa:
- what we decide is worth remembrance reveals a lot about our politics and the national myths we ascribe to... who/what deserves a memorial?
Ch 8: Ludlow Collective: Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913-1914:
- http://www.du.edu/anthro/ludlow/cfarch.html
- archaeological investigation of a key moment in labour history in the USA
- archaeology as explicitly political, as a form of memorializing/remembrance, and being done in the interests of the working class
Ch 14: Buchli and Lucas: The archaeology of alienation: a late twentieth-century British council house
Discuss: What do you think about "archaeologizing" a modern abandoned home?
Archaeology of C20 Battlefields -- KD discusses her research with Dr. Andrew Tyrrell
And Industrial Heritage... another kind of 'archaeology of us'
- the trend in Urban Exploration.... (not 'professional'/academic archs... another way of relating to the past)
e.g. Infiltration magazine, history of Urban Exploration
(don't try this at home)
Clips from the film, Echoes of Forgotten Places... about 'industrial archaeology' and 'urban exploration'