In this paper we analyze three places extensively used by the Soviets in Poland during the Cold War: Brzeźnica-Kolonia, Kłomino and Borne Sulinowo. We treat these places and artefacts found there as heritage.However, instead of calling for their urgent preservation, we try to argue that heritage does not need to be perceived as a dead past. Material culture and material transformations in landscapes of the recent past last and survive their own times. The goal of this paper is to pay archaeological attention to the duration of the things and landscapes from the recent past in the present.
This article revisits the object of archaeology in light of the New Materialisms. Orienting recent work around three propositions with respect to the reality and definition of things—that is, things are assemblages, things are participants, and things are things—it lays out the core features of the New Materialisms and goes on to address some compelling methodological issues. Ultimately, this article raises a challenge; that New Materialist perspectives reveal a self-definition for archaeology, not as the study of the human past through its material remains, but as the discipline of things, as an “ecology of practices” that approaches the world with care and in wonder.
This article responds to recent critiques of ‘symmetrical archaeology’. It addresses three common claims: (1) that symmetrical archaeology fails to see a difference between living and non-living entities, (2) that symmetrical archaeology makes no room for humans and other living things, (3) that symmetrical archaeology lacks any sincere ethical concern for things. This article demonstrates how these claims are based on common misunderstandings or misreadings, and offers further clarifications as to its perspective on ontology, ethics and things.
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