One of the many examples of material culture where materiality and memory are deeply interwoven is a certain tram cemetery in Wrocław (Poland) (fig. 1). That is why I will shortly describe the history of the site, to focus later on interesting problems which confront us, such as heritage sites as tram and/or car cemeteries….
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The Futility of All Ambition: Humanity, Language, and the Affront of Ruined Archives
H.G. Wells has an entire ruined museum complex in his novel, The Time Machine (1895). The “Palace of Green Porcelain” contains glass cabinets and numerous specimens, all of which, including the machinery and animal skeletons on display, interest the narrator because he wants to learn about the development of the world in the future. However,…
Ruin Memories: A Portfolio
Modernity is rarely associated with ruins. In our everyday comprehension ruins rather bring to mind ancient and enchanted monumental structures; an archaeological dream world featuring celebrities such as Machu Picchu, Pompeii and Angkor Wat. Yet never have so many ruins been produced; so many things been victimized and made redundant, so many sites been…
Archaeology through the Lens of Sherlock Holmes
There is always something to learn from Sherlock Holmes. It is a good sign that an archaeologist has been often identified with the private detective: The Sherlock Holmes type detective has become a common association with archaeology. Although the detective has been associated with other disciplines too […], the link with archaeology is nevertheless extremely…
Archaeological Description and Doubt
I wrote this paper for a session at the 2011 Meeting of the American Association of Anthropology in Montreal called Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Anthropology: What is the status of our descriptions? It is about time I posted it here. (Note 1) Archaeological description is rather peculiar. As we work at describing old…
Double Vision: Imagines, Simulacra, Replicas
A session at the US TAG 2013, Chicago Co-organizers: Alicia Jiménez (alicia.jimenez(at)stanford.edu) and Alfredo González-Ruibal (alfredo.gonzalez-ruibal(at)incipit.csic.es) Archaeology leans heavily on typologies and similarities. Narratives about cultural change, the spreading of ideas and diasporas are often linked to things that look alike but belong to different chronological or geographical frames. Material connections between “centers” and “peripheries”…