Dr Aline Sierp has contributed the chapter ‘Memory, Identity and a Painful Past: Contesting the Former Dachau Concentration Camp’ to the volume edited by M.T. Starzmann and J.R. Roby ‘Excavating Memory: Sites of Remembering and Forgetting’ published by University Press of Florida.
This interdisciplinary volume–melding anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, philosophy, literature, and archival studies–explores such diverse arenas as archaeological objects, human remains, colonial landscapes, public protests, national memorials, art installations, testimonies, and even digital space as places of memory. The writers show how the materiality of specific locations features centrally in the production of memories and counter-memories, revealing the conflicts surrounding marginalized, underprivileged, and silenced stories. Examining important sites of memory, including the Victory Memorial to the Soviet Army, Blair Mountain, Spanish penitentiaries, African shrines, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the contributors highlight the myriad ways communities reinforce or reinterpret their pasts. In doing so, they demonstrate the political relevance of analyses of social memory to community archaeology, public history, heritage studies, and education.
