Cultural Remembrance

The megalithic phenomenon is one of the most exciting subjects of study in prehistory. The practice of monumentalising places of special significance by erecting large stones started during the Neolithic period, approximately 10.000 years ago. On time, it acquired such a social and ideological depth that it became one of the most geographically and temporally widespread cultural phenomena ever known in Europe. In Andalusia,  megalithic sites and landscapes express themselves with great richness and diversity, representing an exceptional source of scientific information for our understanding of our forebears’ ways of life, as well as a unique and beautiful historical legacy. This book combines the contributions of various university professors, who bring us up to date with their research, with excellent photographic illustrations and, for the first time, reflects the spread of this cultural phenomenon throughout Andalusia. It is suitable for both those who wish to deepen their knowledge of this professional specialisation and those who seek the pleasure of a satisfied interest.

Remembrance and commemoration of traumatic historical past has become one of the major issues of the international museological practice over the last decades. By means of architectural and exhibition design the contemporary museum poses questions concerning history, memory, identity, alternative perceptions of the past and the present. These questions become crucial not only for the self-consciousness and self-identification of certain groups of people, but of the whole nations, or even of the entire society. The present essay briefly examines a number of these issues in relation to several memorial museums of the last three decades, and poses theoretical questions concerning future museological perspectives on the realm of difficult memories.

The ongoing Centenary of the First World War (2014-18) has seen a massive increase in interest in the landscapes of the Western Front, an area charged with meaning and a deeply-felt sense of place. Tourists come in a spirit of pilgrimage to visit the graves of their ancestors and the sites where they fought. They also come to visit the sites of war, its material heritage and a commemorative landscape of cemeteries and memorials. But overall they come to see and understand what happened and why.

This paper will examine the nature of the contemporary tourist phenomenon along the Western Front. It will demonstrate that far from exhibiting the shallow and frivolous nature of much tourist practice these tourists have deep and, in many cases, life-enhancing experiences. Tourism is a powerful validating agent re-inscribing and perpetuating the memory of landscape, the sites of war, artefacts and the practice of conflict archaeology itself. It can also reformulate and fashion new commemorative practices and instil new or renewed meanings into places.

But its relationship to the area is not always harmonious and the paper will also explore some of the difficult ethical dilemmas that tourism brings particularly with regard to souvenirs and behaviour at sites of remembrance.     

The paper will draw on the author's own field-work where tourists, guides and local inhabitants were interviewed.

It concludes with a strong advocacy for a practice which succeeds in drawing more people towards a better understanding of the conflict and the places where it was fought.