Places of Memory: Spatialised Practices of Remembrance from Prehistory to Today

Places of Memory takes a new look at spatialised practices of remembrance and its role in reshaping societies from prehistory to today, gathering researchers representing diverse but complementary fields of expertise. This diachronic outlook provides important insights into the great variety of human and social reactions examining memory, encompassing aspects of remembering, the loss of memory, reclaiming memories, and remembering things that may not have happened. The contributions to this volume expand upon Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux des memoire (places of memory) and the notion that memory is not just stored in these places but activated through human engagement. The volume presents a reflection on the creation of memories through the organisation and use of landscapes and spaces that explicitly considers the multiplicity of meanings of the past. Thus, social identities were created, reaffirmed, strengthened, and transformed through the founding, change, and reorganization of places and spaces of memory in the cultural landscape.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction – Christian Horn, Gustav Wollentz, Gianpiero Di Maida and Annette Haug

1. Commemoration and Change: Remembering What May Not Have Happened – Richard Bradley

2. The Multiple Pasts of Archaic Greece: The Landscapes of Crete and the Argolid, 900-500 BCE – James Whitley

3. Aeneas, Romulus, and the Memory Site of the Forum Augustum in Rome – Matthias J. Bensch

4. The Spoils of Eternity: Spolia as Collective Memory in the Basilica of St. Peter during the 4th century AD – Christina Videbech

5. Were TRB Depositions Boundary Markers in the Neolithic Landscape? – Michael Müller

6. Memories Created, Memories Altered: The Case of Kakucs-Turján Household and Pottery – Robert Staniuk

7. ‘These Battered Hills’: Landscape and Memory at Verdun (France) – Paola Filippucci

8. Set in Stone? Transformation and Memory in Scandinavian Rock Art – Christian Horn and Rich Potter

9. Art and Practices of Memory, Space and Landscapes in the Roman World – Anne Gangloff

10. Restoring a Memory: The Case of Kowary Barrow (Lesser Poland, Poland) – Anna Gawlik and Marcin Czarnowicz

11. Art, Social Memory and Relational Ontology in the Kimberley, North West Australia – Martin Porr

12. Recursivity in Kimberley Rock Art Production, Western Australia – Ana Paula Motta, Martin Porr, and Peter Veth

13. An Archaeology of Reclaiming Memories – Possibilities and Pitfalls – Gustav Wollentz

Christian Horn is a researcher and lecturer at the Department for Historical Studies at the University of Gothenburg. His scholarship focuses on Scandinavian rock art and prehistoric conflict. He is the current research coordinator of the Swedish Rock Art Research Archives as well as an advisory board member.

Gustav Wollentz defended his PhD in the summer of 2018 at the Graduate School Human Development in Landscapes, Kiel University, Germany, focusing on the relationship between difficult heritage and temporalities. He is currently project leader/researcher at the Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity.

Gianpiero Di Maida completed his PhD at CAU Kiel in 2018, defending a thesis on the Lateglacial rock and mobile art record of Sicily, Italy. He is currently serving as the scientific manager of the DISAPALE project at the Neanderthal Museum.