1 Exploring the Contemporary in Old Places

Abstract

This chapter opens an analytic space to consider the resonance of “old places” in the contemporary moment through the lens of archaeology. Borrowing the term used by some of our interlocutors, old places are places that bear memory, that have accrued emotional attachment, and that intervene in the present as reminders of things that have happened before. Through these qualities, old places sustain life and relations. We adopt an expansive view of site formation processes that extends into the present and future and argue that studying contemporary site formation can unleash insights into the multi‐temporal constitution of the world we inhabit. We do not insist on a single approach to studying these processes, but rather suggest that the methodological and theoretical diversity that archaeologists and local communities bring together is key to studying and knowing old places in the present. We draw connections between a contemporary archaeology of old places and the emergent fields of contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies, but also argue for retaining and fully incorporating the political and activist orientations of historical, feminist, African Diaspora, and Indigenous archaeologies—fields that have long centered the knowledge and concerns of contemporary communities—into this work.

2 Materializing Memory and Building Community: Contemporary Landscape Archaeology of a Nineteenth‐Century Bahamian Plantation

“…In this chapter, I have approached the Millars Plantation instead as an “old place” (Taylor and Sesma [2022] this volume, Chapter 1) that continues to have profound meaning for many in the century after emancipation and in the contemporary moment. I have expanded upon the “afterlife” (Hicks 2007, 68) of the Millars Plantation, examining the co‐constitutive nature of the site's material existence as well as the descendant community's social interaction.…”

“…In doing so, this work is in conversation with the school of southwestern landscape archaeology that attends to historical and contemporary materiality and social relations of a place, and does so in ways that transcend the traditional boundaries of anthropological subdisciplines (Fowles 2010, 459; see also Two Bears [2022] this volume, Chapter 4). That blurring of the subdisciplines is not unlike the transdisciplinary approach to contemporary archaeology called for by Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos (2009; see also Taylor and Sesma [2022] this volume, Chapter 1). It is precisely that holistic anthropological perspective and the integration of additional complementary fields that makes possible the kind of contemporary landscape archaeology used in this case study.…”

9 Resisting and Remaking Heritage Work: An Archaeology of the Surface in Acre's Old City

“…This literature has documented the alienating features of standard conservation practices and explores the possibilities of valuing historically textured places in ways other than as markers of singular moments or periods in state‐authorized history. Here, I make a distinction between the pastness of the Old City—those qualities suggesting its being of the past that are so desirable to the state, developers, and tourists—and its oldness—its capacity to accompany, endure, and persist through time that is valued by residents (see Taylor and Sesma [2022] this volume, Chapter 1).…”

6 The Ecological Life of Industrial Waste

“…Post-industrial landscapes represent a quintessential "old place" (Taylor and Sesma [2022] this volume, Chapter 1) of the contemporary world. Abandoned industrial sites are landscapes defined by the lingering accretion of obsolete production and waste, materialized in both the monumental and the microscopic.…”

“…Far from being inert representations of the past—these materials are lively, political, and potent in the present. As the other wonderful contributors of this volume have noted (see Taylor and Sesma [2022] Chapter 1; Danis [2022] Chapter 7; Lorenc [2022] Chapter 8), this focus on the politics of material resonance shares compelling intersections with the archaeology of the contemporary; a project that wishes to mobilize archaeological methods and sensibilities to study the social processes of the recent past (Dawdy 2010; De León 2015; González‐Ruibal 2008). Here, I want to draw on the critical and reflexive insights from both projects to trace the toxic afterlives of industrial waste.…”