Archaeology and Social Memory

This review provides a road map through current trends and issues in archaeological studies of memory. Many scholars continue to draw on Halbwachs for collective memory studies, emphasizing how the past can legitimate political authority. Others are inspired by Bergson, focusing on the persistent ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnnual review of anthropology Vol. 48; no. 1; pp. 207 - 225
Main Author Van Dyke, Ruth M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Palo Alto Annual Reviews 21.10.2019
Annual Reviews, Inc
Subjects
Aftermath
Archaeology
Collective memory
counter-memory
forgetting
Halbwachs, Maurice (1877-1945)
Intrusion
Memory
Monuments
Politics
ruins
Social memory
time
Trauma
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Summary:This review provides a road map through current trends and issues in archaeological studies of memory. Many scholars continue to draw on Halbwachs for collective memory studies, emphasizing how the past can legitimate political authority. Others are inspired by Bergson, focusing on the persistent material intrusion of the past into the present. "Past in the past" studies are particularly widespread in the Near East Classical world, Europe, the Maya region, and Native North America. Archaeologists have viewed materialized memory in various ways: as passively continuous, discursively referenced, intentionally invented, obliterated. Key domains of inquiry include monuments, places, and lieux de mémoire ; treatment and disposal of the dead; habitual practices and senses; the recent and contemporary past; and forgetting and erasure. Important contemporary work deploys archaeology as a tool of counter-memory in the aftermath of recent violence and trauma.
ISSN:0084-6570
1545-4290
DOI:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011051