Archaeology of the Contemporary Past

An archaeologically grounded history of six legendary places in Detroit.

The city of Detroit has endured periods of unprecedented industrial growth,
decline, and revitalization between the late nineteenth century and the present.

In Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary
Places, Krysta Ryzewski presents six archaeological case studies of
legendary Detroit institutions—Little Harry speakeasy, the Ransom Gillis
house, the Blue Bird Inn, Gordon Park, the Grande Ballroom, and the Halleck
Street log cabin—that trace the contours of the city’s underrepresented
communities and their relationship to local currents of capitalism and
social justice. Through a combination of rigorous historical archaeological
research and narrative storytelling, Ryzewski deftly contextualizes the cases within the city’s current struggles, including recovery from bankruptcy, and future-oriented recovery efforts.

Detroit Remains is is the first historical archaeology book focused on Detroit and one of the few to foreground the archaeology of the Great Migration era (ca. 1915–1970). The archaeological scholarship is rooted in collaborative, community-involved, and public-facing initiatives. The case studies examine how power is and has been exercised in Detroit’s communities over the past century: how it was stripped from the city’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century residents, but also how they acquired alternative sources of agency by establishing creative and illicit economies, most of which still operated within the city’s capitalist framework.

Throughout this book, connections run deep between archaeology, heritage, politics, historic preservation, and storytelling. Detroit Remains
demonstrates how the city’s past, present, and future lie not in ruins but
in the tangible archaeological traces of the everyday lives of Detroiters and
their legacies.

Published by University of Alabama Press

This paper explores a central paradox in the aims of the archaeology of the contemporary past as they have been articulated by its practitioners. On the one hand, its aim has been expressed as one of making the familiar ‘unfamiliar’, of distancing the observer from their own material world; a work of alienation. On the other hand, it has also aimed to make the past more accessible and egalitarian; to recover lost, subaltern voices and in this way to close the distance between past and present. I suggest that this paradox has stymied its development and promoted a culture of self-justification for a subfield which has already become well established within archaeology over the course of three decades. I argue that this paradox arises from archaeology’s relationship with modernity and the past itself, as a result of its investment in the modernist trope of archaeology-as-excavation and the idea of a past which is buried and hidden. One way of overcoming this paradox would be to emphasize an alternative trope of archaeology-as-surface-survey and a process of assembling/reassembling, and indeed to shift away from the idea of an ‘archaeology of the contemporary past’ to speak instead of an archaeology ‘in and of the present’. This would reorient archaeology so that it is seen primarily as a creative engagement with the present and only subsequently as a consideration of the intervention of traces of the past within it. It is only by doing this that archaeology will develop into a discipline which can successfully address itself to the present and future concerns of contemporary societies. Such a move not only has implications for archaeologies of the present and recent past, but concerns the very nature and practice of archaeology
as a discipline in its broadest sense in the 21st century.

Based on long term archaeological ethnography on the border island of Lesvos situated on Europe's margins, this article explores the regimes of eating and the role of food practices in the refugee camp/processing centre of Moria. Starting from the double liminality of eating and border-crossing, it outlines and juxtaposes two regimes of corporeal life. The first is the biopolitical arena of official food provision as produced by the border apparatus and the logic of humanitarian governmentality. This regulates border-crosser's time and daily routines and renders them 'people of concern', tress-passers or victimized individuals with no agency. The second is the affective, trans-corporeal, multisensorial field of cooking, eating, making kin, making community. It is produced through the agency of border-crossers themselves, when they take charge of their own eating. In doing so, they constitute eating in these liminal conditions as affirmative biopolitics, as the affirmative politics of life and hope.

Dit artikel beschrijft de eerste stappen in het project Moluks Erfgoed, een archeologisch onderzoek naar de sporen van het conflict tussen de Molukse Nederlanders en de Nederlandse Staat (zie ook Wijnen, verwacht 2020).  Het project werd snel na aanvang geconfronteerd met ethische dilemma’s die in de discussie worden toegelicht.

The 'Past Sense' Project (PSP) brings together contemporary and historical archaeology, and psychotherapy, to consider the significance of material culture within contexts of domestic and sexual abuse, past and present. PSP will pilot a range of approaches to explore how collaborative community encounters with historic landscapes and buildings, artefacts, and other historical sources might enhance the process of identity (re-)construction and trauma management, for survivors of childhood and adulthood violence and abuse.
Methods include experimental auto- and co-archaeologies that integrate personal narratives and reflections within analyses of data obtained from archaeological surface- and building surveys, and auto-archive material. This will involve considering the (re)construction of meanings for material culture in relation to memory and identity, through studies of artefact biographies, and attending to the production and appropriation of transitional objects, through autobiographical studies.
We will also test the incorporation of recording, analysis, and interpretation of archaeological and other historical material (including written evidence, oral histories, photography, and artistic images) from earlier periods (particularly the 19th - mid 20th centuries) within community work – potentially involving creative elements (such as storytelling and artwork). In doing so, we will explore how engagement with material relating to domestic life in the more distant past (where appropriate, integrating historical material relating to domestic and sexual violence) might enable traumatised individuals and groups to confront experiences of violence in the more recent past. By examining diachronically continuous and changing abusive practices, and socio-political responses to abuse, we aim to foster recognition of dominant ideologies, and the practical, detrimental, effects of structural gender inequality. Emphasising acts of resistance to violence in and around the home, we endeavour to highlight personal and collective achievements that might reinforce and augment both a sense of self, and of community, for survivors of abuse.

Recognizing that archaeologies of the contemporary past are inherently political, this paper examines the ways in which site classification plays into archaeological praxis in the US-Mexico borderlands of southern Arizona. Fundamentally, our definition and description of contemporary archaeological sites seeks to organize spatial and material data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) as a methodological step in creating knowledge about processes and experiences of undocumented migration across the Sonoran Desert. At the same time, we acknowledge that our classifications exist within a highly contentious field of public discourse surrounding migration from Latin America into the United States. Insofar as naming and describing diverse types of sites helps to shape the objects of this discourse, we suggest that classification may further aid critique and political action.

Cremation is a complex and variable fiery technology. Across the human past and present, fire has been variously deployed to transform the dead in a range of spatial and social contexts. Often operating together with other disposal methods, cremation has risen and fallen in popularity in association with many shifts in mortuary practice since the Stone Age (Cerezo-Román & Williams 2014;Williams et al. 2017).Yet ‘cre- mation’ is far more than just the fiery dissolution of the human cadaver: in the human past and present it is often part of a multi-staged mortuary process that can afford a range of distinctive spatial and material possibilities for the translation and curation of the ‘cremains’ or ‘ashes’ together with a range of other mate- rial cultures and substances. By rendering cadavers fragmented, shrunken, and distorted, burning bodies not only denies decomposition and speeds corpse transformation, it renders the dead portable and partible. In a range of subsequent post-cremation practices and beliefs, ‘ashes’ from pyres can be considered a versatile mnemonic and numinous substance which might be consigned to graves and tombs, but also readily strewn over land and water or integrated into above-ground architectures and portable material cultures. Hence, not only does cremation involve fiery transformation, it facilitates the creation of varied and distinctive landscapes of death and memory through the deposition and commemoration of the dead in which ashes facilitate remembering and forgetting through their presence and their staged absence.

The Homeless Heritage project took place across two English cities (Bristol and York) between 2010 and 2014. The project sought to use a range of participatory heritage practices to engage contemporary homeless people in documenting their perspectives on each city. Drawing on data gathered over three and a half years this paper reflects on how collaborative cultural heritage practices can be useful in recording diverse stakeholder perspectives which can become catalysts for social change. It is further argued that two interactive exhibitions that resulted from the Homeless Heritage project contributed to the democratisation of knowledge, aiding negotiation of the complicated politics of contemporary homelessness in valuable ways.

It's a ruined lost city, isn't it"? She replied sourly…. "With a God-damned lost treasure in it somewhere. All that's lacking are pygmy natives with blowguns. Classic archaeological stuff, like those movies back in the seventies with the temples, and the big rolling stone balls and giant snakes and the idols, with emeralds in their eyes……". (In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling 2008:137).

Water rights is a social issue of growing importance. Recently, the United Nations declared access to clean drinking water to be a basic human right. Yet financial groups are predicting that water is the next major commodity, to be bought and sold like oil. What few are talking about is the long history of water flowing towards political and social centers, and away from rural populations. As Leith Mullings stated in her presidential address, anthropology pays attention to not only that which is manifest, but also to that which is concealed. A social archaeology of New York City's water system reminds us all of the long-standing nature of urban water crises and provides a way of critiquing past decisions to inform future ones. For approximately 200 years, the city's growth necessitated the acquisition of water from more and more distant sources. But places rich in water are inhabited places. Taking water from rural communities reshaped them and continues to restrict their development. Documenting the materiality of water struggles over time and space provides opportunities to ask what (and who) we are willing to sacrifice to ensure the future of our cities.

Este estudio analiza procesos contemporáneos de cambio cultural en dos áreas rurales del Noroeste de España. Ambas estuvieron habitadas por grupos sociales con una marcada identidad cultural que ha dejado su impronta en la cultura material: los vaqueiros d’alzada y los maragatos. Mediante una metodología arqueológica se analizan las casas de tres pueblos en cada caso de estudio, desvelando cómo la materialidad juega un papel fundamental en los procesos de cambio cultural. En líneas generales, se produce un tránsito entre las lógicas preindustriales de la domesticidad campesina y la concepción de la casa como un instrumento representacional que sirve para exhibir capital simbólico y social a personas de ámbitos urbanos con mentalidades individualizadas. El estudio muestra cómo la combinación de metodologías arqueológicas y etnográficas puede politizar contextos de cambio cultural contemporáneos aparentemente neutros.

Palabras claves: cambio cultural, cultura material, arqueología de los espacios domésticos, gestión del patrimonio.
This paper explores contemporary processes of cultural change in two rural areas of northwest Spain. These areas were inhabited by social groups with strong cultural identities that have made its mark in the material culture: the Vaqueiros d’Alzada and the Maragatos. The houses of three villages in each case study are analyzed through an archaeological methodology, revealing the key role materiality plays in processes of cultural change. Overall, there is a transition between preindustrial forms of peasant domesticity towards a conception of the house as a representational device used to display social and symbolic capital by highly individualized people from urban areas. The study shows how a combination of archaeological and ethnographic methodologies can politicize contemporary contexts of cultural change that are apparently neutral. Key words: Cultural change, material culture, household archaeology, cultural heritage management.

In this paper the author examines the public sanitation policies of the town of Wrocław at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the twentieth century, with special focus on the trash dump located in today’s Las Rakowiecki (Rakowiecki Forest). The first part of the paper presents the evolution of waste removal and management based upon contemporary sources and articles. The details of its sanitation policy made Wrocław differ from other German cities of that era. The city centre was surrounded by trash dumps, each taking in waste from specific areas. In 1905 Wrocław was divided into about 110 “trash collection” areas. Annual production of waste was about 0,45 m3 per capita. In the 2nd part of the paper the author focuses on the best preserved trash dump, the one covering the area of today’s Las Rakowiecki. That site contains thousands of artefacts illustrating the material culture of Wrocław’s inhabitants from the end of the 19th century up to the middle of the twentieth century. The author ponders the possibility of using methods of archaeological analysis for such a large number of portable artefacts. He also notes that to date this issue has not been addressed by Polish archaeology. The document includes descriptions of some findings selected to illustrate civilisation changes concerning fashions, design, consumer products as well as the appearance of previously unknown materials – such as plastics.

All countries that manage nuclear waste will need to store it for a long time. When all the reactors in Sweden have been taken out of use there will be around 12,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste. For the future safety of humans and nature, the plan is to store the waste for 100,000 years in tunnels drilled 500 metres under ground. Once the waste is in place and the  nal repositories are closed, society will be faced with the task of  nding ways to keep knowledge of these places alive for a very long time to come. The task is unique. Never before has anyone created information and knowledge intended for someone thousands of years into the future. Between 2012 and 2015 we have worked with the project “One hundred thousand years back and forth – archaeology meets radioactive waste”. We have studied how one can think about past, present and future and about the resources that are needed if we are to be able to envisage a future extending over thousands of years. From a theoretical discussion on the concept of future consciousness, we argue that  nal repositories for nuclear waste must be built in a  exible manner to be able to work in different ways in relation to many different futures. Storage of radioactive waste embraces noticeable aspects of materiality, and relevant planning and decision-making processes can bene t from archaeological expertise. Long-time  nal repositories of nuclear waste also pose challenges to contemporary archaeology. Various ways to conceptualize futures are part of our contemporary society. This has not been studied to any great extent within the  eld archaeology of the contemporary world. It is likely that we will hear more in time to come about future consciousness in contemporary archaeology, then in the form of future archaeology.

Durante la última dictadura militar en Argentina (1976-1983), los detenidosdesaparecidos fueron luego de secuestrados, desplazados a lo largo y ancho del país. La
junta militar organizó en todo el territorio nacional una red de circuitos de Centros
Clandestinos de Detención por donde circulaban los detenidos-desaparecidos. Esta red de
centros, organizado desde el estado y llevado a cabo por los grupos de tareas, tenía el fin de
eliminar físicamente a los opositores políticos. Los Centros Clandestinos de Detención como
parte de plan sistemático de exterminio constituyeron una herramienta indispensable para
cumplir tal fin.
El objetivo general de este artículo consiste en reconstruir la historia de la ex Alcaidía de
Roque Sáenz Peña y avanzar en indagar el rol que cumplió durante la década de 1970 como
dispositivo represivo clandestino a la vez que parte del circuito represivo de la provincia de
Chaco y del Noreste Argentino. Esto se logrará a través del análisis de diferentes fuentes de
información primarias -entrevistas a vecinos y sobrevivientes- y secundarias, y la
integración de estas con el análisis de la espacialidad del sitio. El estudio de la espacialidad y
materialidad de los Centros Clandestinos de Detención Tortura y Exterminio (CCDTyE)
constituyen un aporte importante a la hora de reconstruir este período histórico marcando
por la clandestinidad y las practicas de ocultamiento posteriores.

Das Cookie Monster und sein iPhone -Bemerkungen zum Beitrag von Gabriel Moshenska über reverse engineering and the archaeology of the modern world Ulrich Müller For the english version of the text please skip to page 41 in the current issue: Ulrich Müller. 2016. The Cookie Monster and his iPhone -a comment on Gabriel Moshenska's contribution "Reverse engineering and the archaeology of the modern world". Forum Kritische Archäologie 5:41-44. Ulrich Müller. 2016. Das Cookie Monster und sein iPhone -Bemerkungen zum Beitrag von Gabriel Moshenska über reverse engineering and the archaeology of the modern world. Forum Kritische Archäologie 5:36-44.

Spread across North America are more than 1000 nuclear ballistic missile sites. Constructed mainly during the 1960s, these sites range from simple concrete surface launch pads to large underground complexes built to shelter Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). While roughly half of these launch sites continue to be used for United States national defense purposes, others lie in various states of rust and ruin on private and public lands. In this paper, I use the 12 former Atlas missile launch sites that once comprised the 579th Strategic Missile Squadron of the former Walker Air Force Base near Roswell, New Mexico as a starting point for exploring the archaeological and material culture aspects of Cold War nuclear missile launch sites. The goal of the paper is to increase our understanding of those sites as both potent artefacts of violence and conflict in modern times and as specific examples of the materiality of paranoia in the North American cultural landscape.

A relatively little discussed element of archaeological practice is the experience of working on so-called contaminated sites. I include in this definition sites that are suffused with heavy metals, hazardous substances such as asbestos, radioactive materials, and biohazards such as hypodermic needles and corpses. In this paper I seek to unearth the archaeological experience of contaminants and consider contaminants as artifacts in their own right, both in the ground and (potentially) within the bodies of archaeologists. I also will consider the strategic deployment of material to counter contamination, including specialised personal protective equipment, improvised counter-contamination solutions and reflect upon my own and other’s experience of using such objects and their influence upon us and our practice. Lastly I will discuss the parallels with the idea of all archaeological material as a contaminant in the eyes of developers, requiring specialised contractors to remove, as well as the contamination of ‘real’ archaeology by ‘overburden’ or ‘plus’ features, such as concrete piling.
Ultimately this discussion will seek critical insights into the area of being an archaeologist in a milieu of non-human actants and in particular those which are potentially lethal to us, and therefore, the  implications of such material being considered artifactual.

Originally situated in a suburb, today the 1856 Gray House is a private residence and part of Chicago's Old Irving Park neighbourhood. Known for his vocal stand against slavery, John Gray was the first Republican Sheriff of Cook County (1858–1860). In the years after his death, popular narratives arose designating his home a station on the Underground Railroad. By interrogating the documentary record, results from archaeological survey and excavation, and reports from known Underground Railroad sites, this paper focuses on the way that stories of the Underground Railroad are a preferred narrative of uplift and resistance even with absent site-specific evidence for these antislavery activities.

Resumen: El inmueble de Santa Teresa #37, ubicado en el paradero #20 de la Gran Avenida, fue diseñado y construido para un uso residencial, en un proceso originalmente asociado a una Palavras-chave: arqueologia da ditadura; ditaduras; centros de detenção; memória; pesquisa transdisciplinar.

Attila Dézsi: Rezension zu: Bernbeck, Reinhard: Materielle Spuren des nationalsozialistischen Terrors. Zu einer Archäologie der Zeitgeschichte. Bielefeld  2017 , in: H-Soz-Kult, 23.03.2018.

<www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-27888>

For centuries ships were ballasted with sand, gravel, stone, or rubble to give them stability, and when they no longer needed the extra weight, it was dumped. The result was that huge quantities of ballast were shipped to new places and new continents.

In Ballast the archaeologist Mats Burström charts how ship ballast helped to shape the world we live in. Ballast was often reused, sometimes in surprising ways. With the ballast went animal and plant life of all sorts, inadvertently spread to places where they are now so well established that they are thought of as native species. And it was not unknown for ancient artefacts to be found in the ballast too, turning up in the most unexpected places.

This is the first comprehensive account of ship ballast, so long overlooked, and now finally recognized for its diverse and exciting history.

Toisen maailmansodan kulttuuriperintöön liittyvä tutkimushankkeeni tarkastelee monitieteisesti Lapin sota-aikaisiin kohteisiin liittyviä yliluonnollisia ilmiöitä ja maagisia löytöjä. Sotakohteisiin liittyy usein tarinoita erilaisia paranormaaleista ilmiöistä, ja monet näistä hylätyistä paikoista ovat myös ilmapiiriltään hyvin vaikuttavia. Varsinkin vankileirit ja sotasairaalat korostuvat näissä tarinoissa ja kokemuksissa erityisinä kuoleman ja kärsimyksen paikkoina. Kenttätutkimuksissani olen tehnyt monilta kohteilta esinelöytöjä, jotka vaikuttavat liittyvän magiaan ja kansanuskoon. Tällaisia ovat esimerkiksi rakennusten perustuksiin haudatut kengät, puihin tehdyt kaiverrukset sekä poikkeavat luulöydöt. Todennäköisesti nämä esineet liittyvät pahaksi ja traagiseksi koettujen paikkojen rauhoitteluun sodanjälkeisinä vuosina. Vastaavia löytöjä on tehty viime aikoina muiltakin arkeologisilta kohteilta, esimerkiksi Taavetti Lukkarisen hirttopuun juurelta Oulussa. Taavetti Lukkarinen oli viimeinen maassamme hirttämällä kuolemaantuomittu mies. Hän oli auttanut Muurmannin ratatyömaalta ensimmäisen maailmansodan aikana paenneita saksalaisia sotavankeja Suomen Lapin kautta Ruotsiin, ja hänen hirttämisensä vuonna 1916 koettiin paikallisesti epäoikeudenmukaiseksi. Hirttopaikkaan liittyykin vahva kummitteluperinne. Kaivauksissa paikalta paljastui kiinnostavia kansantaikuudesta kertovia löytöjä, kuten luun sisään suljettuja esineitä sekä puuhun kaiverrettuja ristejä. Yliluonnollisiin ilmiöihin liittyen pystytimme syksyllä 2016 Inariin Kankiniemen sota-aikaiselle vankileirille ortodoksiristin sekä järjestimme paikalla siunaus- ja muistotilaisuuden kolttasaamelaisten ortodoksipapin kanssa. Tämä tapahtui arkeologisille kaivauksillemme osallistuneiden vapaaehtoisten aloitteesta. Vapaaehtoiset kaivajamme kokivat kesällä 2016 kohteella käydessään ja sen jälkeen selittämättömiä ilmiöitä, jotka saivat heidät ottamaan yhteyttä paikalliseen pappiin. Erityisesti tämä tapaus herätti minut tarkastelemaan sotakohteita uusista näkökulmista.

In the morning of April 5 2009 my father died; he was almost 86 years old. He lived alone, was in good health, and died suddenly. The confrontation with his silenced house was perhaps the worst moment of all. It was here, amidst his material realm, that I could see for myself that he was gone. At the same time, I realized that I had lost more than my father. My father’s home was changed into a material construction. The human component – my dad – was the coherent force that had kept this complex integration of human-thing-relations in place as a functional whole – a “home”. In a single day the home had transformed into a ruin in the making, an initial stage of an archaeological site. His absence accentuated the presence of his material world – and enhanced an awareness of how he was mirrored in his things.

Kämme, Löffel und Stacheldraht-archäologische Funde erzählen vom Leben in den nationalsozialistischen Zwangslagern. Zwischen 1933 und 1945 bildeten Lager, in denen Menschen inhaftiert oder zwangsweise untergebracht wurden, ein wichtiges Herrschaft s-instrument des NS-Regimes. Dabei hatten Konzentrationslager, KZ-Außenlager, Lager für zivile Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbei-terinnen sowie Kriegsgefangenenlager verschiedene Funktionen im System der Zwangslager. Seit den 1990er Jahren werden an ehemaligen Lagerstandorten in Berlin und Brandenburg archäologische Grabungen durch-geführt und massenweise Funde geborgen. Die Ausstellung "Ausgeschlossen. Archäologie der NS-Lager" zeigt viele dieser Dinge zum ersten Mal. Über 300 Objekte in sieben Kapiteln geben einen Einblick in das komplexe System der Zwangslager, in ihre archäologische Über-lieferung sowie die Arbeit der zeithistorischen Archäologie. AUSGESCHLOSSEN Archäologie der NS-Zwangslager AUSGESCHLOSSEN Archäologie der NS-Zwangslager

The archaeology and significance of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
ROBERT MAXWELL
(University of Sydney)

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is an area of some 30-square kilometres surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This area includes the city of Pripyat, founded in 1970 and built specifically to house the workforce of the Chernobyl Plant and their families. Outside of the city, over 150 villages existed, some since the Middle Ages, with a local population which had lived in the area for generations.

On 26 April 1986 all of this changed. The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident was the largest release of radioactive material in peacetime during the 20th century, and is till regarded as one of the worst disasters in world history. Its legacy is one which we feel today – in the media, in language and in our gut responses to the worlds ‘nuclear’ and ‘radioactive’. Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl became a diagnostic site. It is a place where history happened.

This paper consists of photographs and accounts from two seasons of field work within the zone, as part of my current PhD project on urban abandonment. My presentation is an archaeological introduction to Chernobyl. Why is the site considered to be archaeology? What does it tell us about the 20th century, and how can we use that information to learn? I hope to answer these questions and give people a new perspective on archaeology.

Der unbefangene Umgang mit Kampfmitteln ist Alltag für Archäologen, "Faustkeil und Bronzeschwert" (so der Titel eines Archäologie-Klassikers von Geoffrey Bibby aus dem Jahr 1972) sind immer auch schon zum Kampf gegen Mitmenschen verwendet worden. Ganz zu schweigen von eisernem Kriegsgerät aus den späteren Epochen bis ins Mittelalter und die frühe Neuzeitniemand wird ihren Bodendenkmal-Charakter in Zweifel ziehen. Kampfmittel im Sinne der entsprechenden Verordnung für das Land Brandenburg (2018) sind jedoch in erster Linie Munition und deren Reste, mit und ohne Explosivgehalt, z. B. auch Zünder, Exerziermunition, Granaten-und Bombenkörper, kurz zur (modernen) Kriegsführung bestimmte Gegenstände militärischer Herkunft und Teile davon. Aus gutem Grund gibt es hier eine Anzeigepflicht. Wer Kampfmittel entdeckt oder in Besitz hat, ist verpflichtet, dies unverzüglich bei der Ordnungsbehörde oder Polizei zu melden. Dies betrifft gleichermaßen die Kenntnis von Fund-oder Lagerstätten. Verboten ist es, nach Kampfmitteln zu suchen, sie zu berühren, ihre Lage zu verändern, sie in Besitz zu nehmen, zu beseitigen oder zu vernichten sowie Flächen, wo Kampfmittel vermutet werden, zu betreten. Gerade Brandenburg als Schauplatz intensiver Kämpfe in der Endphase des Zweiten Weltkrieges und zahlloser Bombardierungen ist ein Schwerpunkt in Deutschland, was auch in der archäologischen Denkmalpflege eine Rolle spielt. Während bei Bauvorhaben die Kampfmittelbelastung im Vorfeld geklärt werden muss, ist dies bei der Geländetätigkeit der ehrenamtlichen Beauftragten nicht der Fall. Diese durchlaufen-über die auch für sie geltende Kampf

The Albany Bulb is a former landfill on San Francisco Bay known for its wild art, spectacular views, dogs, and history of settlement by homeless people. In order to capture the cultural landscape of this place prior to an eviction of the landfill residents to make way for a state park, we employed collaborative oral histories, participatory photography projects, traditional and mobile-app-based mapping, contemporary archeology, and art.  No single method adequately represents the human experience of the place, and all raise profound ethical questions of agency and the ownership of place and story.

Archaeological excavations undertaken between 2004 and 2008 at Wednesbury Forge, Wednesbury, West Midlands encountered extensive remains of timber and masonry structures and other features. Historical and archaeological evidence revealed a sophisticated ironworking complex in existence by c. 1600, which was subsequently continually adapted and redeveloped until the site closed in 2005. Processes included finery and chafery forges, nail-making,
saw-making, gun-making and edge-tool manufacture. Later developments included a wind-powered grinding mill, internal railway networks, water turbines, rolling mills, housing and workers’ recreational facilities. Archaeological investigations comprised documentary research, excavation, building recording, oral history and process recording.

Between the late 19th century and the 1960s hundreds of thousands of people emigrated from Galicia. From the 1970s onwards many of these emigrants returned to their homeland and with them came a sense of shame for their old premodern peasant identity. In this article, the relationship between former emigrants and their houses is explored. Material culture in general and (ruins of) houses in particular are actively used to make statements about history and identity and to (re)construct biographies.