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CHAPTER 6 An archaeology of the Iron Curtain Artefacts, text and everything else in between To utilize a familiar archaeological metaphor, I suggest that we think about the present as a surface – a physical stratum that contains not only the present, but all its physical and imagined pasts combined. (Harrison 2011:153) Historical narratives, myth, metaphor and materials; they are all parts of an iron curtain. All intertwined and sometimes separate. My research of the former Iron Curtain was firmly embedded within the historical accounts of the Cold War as I have been brought up with it. Ideas that started forming there on the shore of the Baltic in the 1980s and that have been influenced by the books I have read, the news reports I have heard and the films that I have seen. But what stood out most in the places I visited was not the way the places helped me get a better understanding of the Cold War, how they helped to confirm or contest historical events or the way they connected world history with the local (although they of course had this effect as well). What became most obvious was how the sources from these places had so much to say and how my interaction with these sources created stories far beyond what I had expected. I had planned to let the different sources mix, to take them all into account and to create something from this mixed material, an account of the Iron Curtain. I had expected the sources to say different things, at times to tell the same story and at times to tell different ones and to give different perspectives. What I had not accounted for was the way the different sources were capable of saying so much on their own. I have realised that by really appreciating a source for what it is, not only for 187
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN how it fits in with other sources, new insights can be made. This was especially true for the physical materials I encountered. I wrote in the introduction chapter that to an archaeologist it should not come as a surprise how important the materials are for how we view history but it still did. Considering that materials are the main source of information for an archaeologist and that it has always been at the heart of this study that may sound ludicrous. But still here I am at the end of the study surprised at the materials’ ability to act and interact. When dealing with a history close to our own there are often more sources available for information than when we are dealing with earlier archaeological periods. Archaeologist Anders Andrén discuss what he calls the dilemma of the in-betweeness, created by the specialisation within modern science and means that archaeology of historical periods can find itself in an ambivalent space between material culture and text. He suggests that we have to acknowledge that they are part of two different discourses and although we should attempt to decrease the distance between them we will not solve the problem by seeing objects and texts as the same thing (Andrén 1998:14). Instead we need to approach the material across the disciplines through methodological discussions. Often discussions regarding different sources concentrate on contradictions between them and if one story is more correct than another. In other cases it is the many stories or angles of an event, a period or a place that are in focus and the sources certainly do tell different stories. Within my research, for example, this could be discussed through: the archives from East and West showing official documents from governments with different ideological views; the oral accounts of people who have had very different experiences of the border, as well as the material which often has been altered after its use as a militarised border. When dealing with material from the 20 th and 21 st century it is, however, not enough to discuss the sources from just the discourses around materiality and text. In my research I have had to deal with both objects and texts but also other sources such as film, news reports, oral accounts, song lyrics and art. All these sources are important in the understanding of the materials that we encounter today and need to be recognized. It is also clear from my fieldwork that it is very difficult to define these different sources in order to fit them into a source category. Is writing on a wall a text or material How do we classify a memory awakened by an object or a photo accompanied by an oral account Although they may be ontologically different in their makeup they are still all sources that face us as we approach our material. At times they require different methods but at times they appear surprisingly similar. If anything they demonstrate the different 188
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain
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Contents Acknowledgements 11 CHAPTE
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The end of a journey 212 Sammanfatt
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction Standing on
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1: INTRODUCTION carried out of the
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1: INTRODUCTION they may be… It i
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1: INTRODUCTION where the observer
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1: INTRODUCTION former Iron Curtain
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1: INTRODUCTION criticism from othe
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1: INTRODUCTION itioned somewhere i
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1: INTRODUCTION World War II dividi
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CHAPTER 2 A physical metaphor Concr
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR established
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR The changing
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR the events t
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR As time has
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR highly influ
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR popular idea
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Figure 16: Postcard of the newly op
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402 Kojsko Hum 402 THE OSIM
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Figure 50: Map demonstrating the bo
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CHAPTER 5 Case Study 2 The Czech/Au
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5: CASE STUDY 2: THE CZECH/AUSTRIAN
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Figure 55: Bunker near the crossing
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Figure 59: Military map from 1980 o
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5: CASE STUDY 2: THE CZECH/AUSTRIAN
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Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations
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33. Sofie Bedford, Islamic activism
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67. Anne Kaun, Civic Experiences an
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Stockholm Studies in Archaeology Se
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29. LINDGREN, Christina. 2004. Män
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The Iron Curtain was seen as the di
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