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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN<br />
ial that we study and by making sure we do not make objects mere props in<br />
our history writing.<br />
Moving in memories<br />
In a story where we start at the materials themselves time is less relevant.<br />
We can see in the landscape today how the materials from all periods are<br />
intermingled and mixed, all there in the present. Archaeologist Laurent<br />
Olivier highlights archaeology’s close and problematic affiliation with<br />
history and that through this affiliation we are used to seeing time as<br />
unilinear. He suggests that the objects that archaeologists study are<br />
“memory recorded in materials” (Olivier 2004:211) and should be understood<br />
rather for their similarity to memory rather than to narrative history<br />
writing. This follows the Freudian idea of memory as fragmented and<br />
constantly created and recreated in the past and in the present. He means<br />
that the past exists in the present as “fragments of the past […] embedded<br />
in the physical reality of the present” (Olivier 2004:209) as well as the<br />
present exists in the past as we read it through our own horizon and our<br />
own behaviour (Olivier 2004:210). This idea of the present as multitemporal<br />
has also been expressed by archaeologist Gavin Lucas as he moves<br />
the attention of prehistory from its chronological emphasis to an ontological<br />
one and suggests that “prehistory was, above all, history studied through<br />
material culture, not through texts” with the consequence that “even<br />
archaeologists studying the material culture of the historic past … are doing<br />
prehistory, not history” (Lucas 2004:111). This is true to some extent and an<br />
important observation within historical archaeologies that are often so<br />
highly dependent on historical sources and narratives. At the same time we<br />
cannot, and neither should we want to, escape from the fact that in a period<br />
closer to our own we will always be affected by other sources apart from the<br />
physical ones. It is not in the distinction between the different sources that<br />
the problem lays but rather it is in our way of valuing them differently that<br />
the issues arise. We have to appreciate our past as fragmented, that all its<br />
pieces does not match up, and that sometimes it creates constellations that<br />
we do not expect.<br />
In the Podyji Park time intermingles. The monument to Felicia was<br />
constructed as a memorial by Countess of Mniszek and has stood there ever<br />
since but it has acted in different situations since its inception: as a<br />
memorial in the 1800s, reborn to become the target of the border guards’<br />
shooting practice linking two parts of the park’s history that are otherwise<br />
unlikely to be connected, since reborn again in our present following a<br />
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