1JZGauQ

AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
Recording the Iron Curtain
Conveying the information gained through these studies to the reader is a
complicated process in itself in which materials, documents, photos and
impressions are converted into text. Here there is an element of
interpretation every step of the way. Ehn writes that the observations we
make become history as soon as we verbalise and communicate them
(Ehn 2009:56). In an attempt to write an objective description of the
Docklands in London, Högdahl became aware of the difficulty in writing a
description of something without letting one’s personal assumptions and
preconceptions interfere. She describes the process from the first observations,
a selective process in itself where some things fall within our
sphere of interest, others outside. We then use words to initially write
down our observations and later we will process these words into a text
using different analytical tools. She explains this process as a series of
translations (Högdahl 2009:111). The texts we eventually produce are
therefore a result of this long line of interpretations of which we may only
be aware of some parts. Hodder has suggested that archaeological writing
in the field has stayed largely unchanged due to a feeling of a kind of
“guardianship” keeping records for the state and is often seen as separate
to the process of making interpretations (Hodder 2003:57). As Hodder
points out, despite this tradition of viewing the fieldwork as something
objective, we in fact interpret every step of the way and we therefore need
to be transparent about this process.
Photos have been important throughout my work. I have taken thousands
of pictures throughout my fieldwork. They have worked both as a
document for me to constantly go back to in my work as a way to help my
memory or to discover new things that I have not previously seen. The
photos have helped me discover and rediscover both physical objects and
relationships at the sites that I have studied or helped to capture a feeling
encountered. In the writing of this thesis they have become a way to
portray how I interacted with the material as well as an attempt to demonstrate
the relationship between objects or the feelings that the sites have
evoked. Archaeologists Yannis Hamilakis and Aris Anagnostopoulos
(2009) have discussed the role of photography within archaeology and
suggest that photographs often falls within three categories: the official
site photography and laboratory photography; the unofficial photographs
taken by those who are excavating or by visitors (these two categories also
stated in Bateman 2005); and the photographs that can be seen as pos-
26