1JZGauQ

1: INTRODUCTION
where the observer has the ability to scrutinise his or her own observations
(Arvastson and Ehn 2009:20). Ehn writes that “ethnographic observations
are not something one just does, but something that is created and used for
a more or less conscious purpose. It is here the researcher’s objectivity and
fantasy meet” (Ehn 2009:54 [my translation]). But our interpretations are
not created out of nothing. By being transparent about how a site affects us
we can make the process of our interpretation more clear. We may interpret
a site in different ways but it is still based on the material we have at hand.
My way of writing can be seen as a less traditional archaeological approach
as I place myself firmly in my texts. As archaeologist Joanna Brück points
out, as we observe, we interpret and this means the author is always present
(Brück 2005:56). I am not suggesting that the impressions that affect me
would necessarily have affected others in the same way in the past and I am
therefore not suggesting that people who were in the vicinity of the border
areas during the Cold War period would have had the same thoughts as me.
I do believe, however, that our impressions affect us whether we are aware
of this bias or not. As researchers, the impressions of a site will affect our
results and our conclusions.
It is, however, more difficult to describe the feeling of a place, or the way
it affects us than to describe the physical features of it. The subjective has
previously had little room in the reports that we produce even if it has
always affected the way archaeologist work (Berggren 2002:24). The body’s
interaction with the material we interpret is something that has become
more acknowledged in more recent years (see discussion in Harris and
Sørensen 2010, Edgeworth et al. 2012). By referring to the writings of
Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Latour, Olsen (2010) challenges us to
rethink the ontology that our attitude towards things is based on and to
emphasise the importance of the body in the world. He quotes Heidegger:
“we are always-already in the world, the world is part of our being – not
something external, ‘out there’ to eventually be embodied” (Heidegger
1982:137 quoted by Olsen 2010:96). In Persistent Memories Andreassen,
Bjerck and Olsen write of their work at a former Soviet mining community
in Svalbard, which closed in 1998: “Our fieldwork was preliminary and
experimental, attempting to grasp and sense the place” (Andreassen, Bjerck
and Olsen 2010:24, emphasis in original). Harrison and Schofield highlight
the importance of experiencing a place and write that “an experimental
approach can work, conveying a sense of what the place is like, in situations
where detailed survey is just too vast an undertaking” (Harrison and
21