Abstract
This article is concerned with personal heritage and the role of material things in the construction of place-attachment. My interest lies in interrogating my own sense of place-attachment (or belonging) to my home. I argue that personal experience can provide comparative information for investigating other peoples’ experiences of their ‘special places’. That is, by critically reflecting on my own connectivity to place I aim to gain a base-level of data that informs my understandings of other peoples’ experiences of place; that is, the social values of heritage places and/or archaeological sites. I argue that self-awareness and reflexivity are important tools in the work of archaeologists who seek to recognise and respect personal and communal place-attachments.
Highlights
These words appear on a card I recovered on 24 August 2007
As an archaeologist – I am trained in the practice and theories of archaeology – and a community member – I share expertise in, and feelings for, my local environment alongside other residents – I am in an ideal position to apply critical self-reflective or auto-ethnographic methods
ENVISIONING COMMUNITY MEMBERS AS ARCHAEOLOGISTS? What are the implications of this personalised account of home, identity and memory for the work of archaeology and heritage practice more generally? The major point I make harks back to the seminal edited volume Writing Culture by James Clifford and George Marcus.[35]
Summary
An archaeologist: a person who finds things, who resurrects objects from worlds that have disappeared and brings them back to the present, who goes forth with his eyes on the ground where the memory of eras gone by lies buried, who scans the surface of the earth, where time is recorded, in search of traces of the subtle workings of memory.[21]. My second narrative concerns a group of objects recovered in 2007 from the leaf-filled gutter that extends along the front of the house. In addition to the objects found in the house and gutter, I have encountered, through gardening, a vast amount of stuff, a world of things, at the Fairview Street property.[23] Fragments of glass, ceramic, metal, bone and plastics are common and occasionally I have encountered intact small bottles, marbles, beads, coins, buttons, animal teeth and plastic toy soldiers. The massive quantity of material things points to all kinds of activities: evidence of the presence of children, women and men through things that have decayed, been abandoned and discarded or lost
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