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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
we think cannot create enough of an interesting discussion in relation to the
accounts that we know we need to let them stand by themselves. Instead of
taking the view of Yaneva’s ‘hasty sightseer’ discussed above, who only
reproduces concepts of society and culture, we need to go with the flow and
follow the connections. An archaeology of surface should not be seen as
equivalent to superficiality but should instead be seen it as an opportunity
to stretch our research in all directions, horizontally as well as vertically.
When we follow the different tracks and paths that the sources lead us
through we can make connections and find stories we were not expecting.
We can see how materials and periods are intertwined in often unexpected
ways and that the past that we see in the present is here for us to see as a
result of a long list of influences. For the Iron Curtain these influences
involve many factors such as the materiality, the narratives, the metaphors,
people’s attitude in the past and today, media, popular culture and how
different people interact with the material today. It is important to see all
these factors in order to understand how the material was created. It is a
long and at times rather random process which is constantly recreating the
material and the attitudes of it.
One of the consequences of following the material of the Iron Curtain is
that I have been led to sights that were so much less monumental and much
more mundane than what I had expected. Starting from one of the most
monumental of Cold War icons and metaphors, the Iron Curtain, I found
smaller sites that at first may appear rather insignificant but when you look
at them, really look at them, they surprise you in the way that they connect
with so much more such as different time periods, physical places, people,
objects, histories, stories etc. and it becomes clear how significant these
places really were during the Cold War. How these different connections
extend into today varies. Those parts that do not fit are often forgotten,
consciously or not.
The observant reader is likely to have noticed the heavy emphasis in this
thesis on the eastern side of the borders, especially in my fieldwork studies
where remains in Slovenia and the Czech Republic has come to figure much
more than the remains in Italy and Austria. This was not intentional but
was a result of the material that I studied. It is also something which
demonstrates that the physical side of the Iron Curtain, the militarised
borders, were in fact here, on the eastern side, sometimes a few kilometres
inside the East/West divide. This puts it in an interesting contrast to the
idea of the Iron Curtain which is, as we have seen, much of a Western idea.
So the friend, whom I mentioned in the beginning of this thesis, who
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