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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN original). Walkover survey certainly has been a cornerstone in my fieldwork but the lack of formal methodology has at times made me question the validity of what I was doing. Somehow it seemed less legitimate than excavation or other ‘proper’ archaeological methods. Archaeologist Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal rightly points out that we as a profession are the only ones to have “developed a whole methodology to see what is beneath the surface” and this is certainly something that should not be disregarded, neither as a metaphor nor as a methodology but this heavy emphasis on the excavation process itself has caused other methods to appear less valid. As mentioned in the introduction chapter archaeologists Laura McAtackney (2008), Rodney Harrison (2011) and Paul Graves-Brown (2011) have all questioned the way archaeologists often use archaeological techniques such as excavation or buildings recording to validate their practice even in cases where it does not actually bring much to the research. Surely it is in our interaction with the material, whether under or over the surface of the ground, which matters and which provides validity to our research Archaeologist Matthew Edgeworth writes about the encounter with the material during excavation and that we should take more note of the importance of our bodies’ interaction with the material. He suggests that “[o]ur basic stance in the world and orientation towards things is given in part by directionalities and flows that emerge from our encounters with material evidence” (Edgeworth 2012:91). Edgeworth is particularly describing the process of excavation, following a cut, but the same happens when we encounter materials on the surface, when we wander around the landscape. In our interaction with materials, whether singular objects, ruins, landscapes or archaeological sites our own experiences and our bodies through which we experience become vital. In his Phenomenology of Landscape (1994) Archaeologist Christopher Tilley writes: “[p]henomenology involves the understanding and description of things as they are experienced by a subject” (Tilley 1994:12). Archaeological practice, in which practice and theory are in their nature so intertwined, is not just a gathering of information to be theorised over at a later date. The practice itself involves us in a way that we cannot distance ourselves from. Tilley as well as other archaeologists such as Barbara Bender and Vicky Cummings have been criticised for their efforts to use phenomenology in landscape studies as a way to reach the thoughts of people in the past and understand the motivations behind changes to the landscape carried out in the past (Barret and Ko 2009). As pointed out by Barret and Ko it is not necessarily our own contemporary engagement with the material, in order 195
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN to describe and understand a site, a series of objects, a larger landscape, that is problematic in itself. Rather, it is when we believe that our own experiences can tell us something about people’s experiences in the past that it becomes problematic (Barret and Ko 2009:279). The use of phenomenology within an archaeological framework should be seen as more ‘basic’ and bodily than this in that it is in the bodily encounter with the material we investigate that it resides, not in our later reflection of it. As Edgeworth suggests it is in our engagement with the materials that the meaning of it is created (Edgeworth 2012:76) but still our interaction with the sites that we investigate is rarely discussed in the reports later written. The writing of Michael Polanyi Graves-Brown speaks of embodied knowledge as a transaction between actors and materials as non-linear but rather more in the form of constellations, “[e]mbodied knowledge is tacit precisely because it exists as constellations, not narratives” (Graves-Brown forthcoming) and as such it escapes words. “[W]e can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi quoted in Graves-Brown, forthcoming). It is in this direct interaction with the material, whether through excavations or other interaction, that our engagement with it helps us create a knowledge of what we study. Several researchers have written about the way ruins affect us (Van Reijen 1992, Edensor 2005a, Edensor 2005b, DeSilvey 2006, Andreassen et al. 2010, Pétursdóttir and Olsen forthcoming, for an historic overview of the subject see Woodward 2002). Something happens when people leave the scene and the objects are allowed to take centre stage. In ethnologist Susanne Wollinger’s description of a brigade in Sweden the things are nonexistent, overshadowed by the humans that use them, walk amongst them and depend upon them (Wollinger 2000, see Chapter 5). Andreassen et al. note on their interaction with the former Soviet mining site of Pyramiden that in a post-human state “[t]hings suddenly ‘appear’ to us in ways never noticed previously, exposing some of their own unruly ‘thingness’” (Andreassen et al. 2010:23). Pétursdottír (2012) lifts the importance of the materials themselves, independent of our archaeological interpretation, and it is often in the abandoned and the leftover that the things get a chance to stand on their own, to be seen for what they are. DeSilvey has, in her studies of a derelict homestead in Montana, shown how the decay of material, often seen as something negative can ”be generative of a different kind of knowledge” (DeSilvey 2006:323) letting ”other than-human agencies to participate in the telling of stories about particular places” (DeSilvey 2006:318). In a similar way the objects and the ‘thingness’ of the decaying 196
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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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Page 146 and 147: 5: CASE STUDY 2: THE CZECH/AUSTRIAN
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Page 216 and 217: Sammanfattning (Summary in Swedish)
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Page 242 and 243: Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations
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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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