Abstract
This paper aims to present how the past is viewed in contemporary cultural and social narratives, and defines contemporary attitude to the past among Poles. My deliberations are placed in the context of the present-day society/culture and their constituting processes, namely the phenomenon of forgetting the past, democratization of the past, its privatization/individualization, commodification of the past and new ways of experiencing it. The paper will specifically concentrate on the archaeological past - that is the past created by archaeologists, and on archaeological heritage. It address three crucial issues, namely: (1) how changes in the historical context of post-1989 Poland influenced the emergence the renaissance of the past and different narratives about it; (2) what are the most important and widespread forms of presenting and/or experiencing the archaeological past in the present?, and (3) what are the main motivations that lie behind contemporary Poles interest in the past, archaeological heritage and activities undertaken around it? Finally, it is argued that the changes in the people’s attitudes towards the past have led also to a transformation in the hierarchy of aims and methods in education and dissemination of the knowledge about the past within institutions concerned with the past on a professional level.
Highlights
In the following paper I present how the archaeological past is viewed in contemporary cultural narratives
The abovementioned changes have stimulated substantial reappraisal in the historical culture of Polish society and gave rise to the development of a historical sensitivity, which ought to be understood as a collection of ideas, norms, behavioural models, socially respected values, which regulate the way we relate to everything, what is recognised as the past in any given culture, independent of the current state of affairs. (Szpociński, 2010, p. 9)
I pay attention especially to characteristic elements defining the nature of the present-day attitude to the past as evidenced through archaeology and activities undertaken around archaeological heritage
Summary
The beginning of changes in attitudes to the past can be observed through phenomena that appeared in Great Britain, the United States and many West European countries much earlier than in Poland, as already in the early 1980s. A couple of interrelated aspects which constitute the change in today’s attitudes towards the past can be listed, namely: (1) the increasing importance of memory in public life; (2) democratisation of the past; (3) the privatisation of the past, based on creating personalised visions of the past; (4) the conviction that direct contact with the past is possible through personal and sensuous experience; (5) the commercialisation of the past / cultural heritage, connected with the transformation of the essence of the past into a marketable product in the form of goods, services or experiences; (6) a search for identity and new forms of spirituality I pay attention especially to characteristic elements defining the nature of the present-day attitude to the past as evidenced through archaeology and activities undertaken around archaeological heritage
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