Contemporary Archaeology Research Articles

Skolbrandsarkeologi

Skolbrandsarkeologi (“School Fire Archaeology”) is an artistic excavation (2022–2026) of Slättgårdsskolan in Skärholmen, Stockholm, led by artist Patrick Kretschek. The art project uses contemporary archaeology, participatory art, and documentary methods to explore the aftermath of the June 1, 2020, school fire. It combines text, photography, film, and artifacts to narrate the event through testimonies from students, teachers, parents, and the public. Exhibited locally at culture house FOLK in Skärholmen, it offers a space for reflection on loss, memory, and reconstruction.

Reflexiones sobre metodologías colaborativas: proyecto de investigación para el retorno de los ancestros a territorio atacameño lickanantay (2021-2024)

Extractivist archaeological practices have been carried out in the Atacama Lickanantay territory, Antofagasta region, northern Chile, ever since the 19th century, excluding or denying the voice and/or participation of members of the local indigenous community. However, the beginning of the 21st century saw a change in this sense bringing new experiences of collaboration between Atacameños and archaeologists. Our goal is to reflect on the definitions and applications of collaborative methodologies in archaeological projects, through discussion focusing on the global, through the national and finally the local, from where we approach a particular collaborative project. The research, conducted between early 2021 and mid 2024, studies the history of the collection and patrimonialization of indigenous bodies in the Atacameño Lickanantay territory, and socializes this information among the local communities. Based on this work, we conclude that all research in the territory must involve and be authorized by the Atacameño communities. Also, we consider that the Atacameños should stop being the object of research and instead become researchers who lead or collaborate in the studies within their communities and in their territory. The originality of this paper lies precisely in the fact that it brings a global discussion of contemporary archaeology to a concrete case.

What Makes a Wasteland? A Contemporary Archaeology of Urban Waste Sites

In this article, I undertake an archaeology of urban “wastelands.” In doing so I ask how such places are materially and conceptually “made” and examine the effects that such labeling has on how postindustrial urban sites are used and valued. Taking examples from the capital cities of England and Scotland (London and Edinburgh), I show that the meaning of “waste” at such sites is temporally and socially contingent. Establishing certainty between which landscapes are “wasted” and which are not can prove difficult, and, in some cases, archaeologists themselves may be implicated in labeling and then “cleansing” wastelands, with archaeology operating as a form of waste management. While wastelands may appear as dissonant and associated with negativity or decay at first glance, I show that these places can also facilitate surprisingly generative and creative uses and provide new forms of heritage value.

Геоинформационное моделирование рельефа для выявления перспективных участков археологических исследований на примере памятников Саратовской области

This article provides an overview of modern remote sensing techniques in archaeology and their practical applications. The widespread use of GIS technologies and remote sensing methods such as photogrammetry and laser scanning is a distinguishing characteristic of contemporary archaeology. Remote sensing data is employed not only for the analysis of 3D archaeological objects and territories but also in the digital terrain models (DTMs) analysis to search for and identify potential archaeological excavation sites. The introduction of remote sensing methods in archaeology has brought about a change in the approach to conducting archaeological studies. In the field of international research, a distinct stage known as predictive archaeology, which involves preliminary reconnaissance of an area before excavation, has emerged. The study is focused on the archaeological sites of Stantsiya Krasavka and Akhmatskoe Gorodishche, located in the Atkarsky and Krasnoarmeysky municipal districts of the Saratov region. The selected study areas applied the DTM analysis, specifically using the “Hillshade” technique (analytical shading relief), which allows for the detection of previously overlooked terrain features. Based on the results, the potential of this technology for identifying individual archaeological objects using contemporary open DTMs and field geodetic survey data was analyzed. Experimental determination of the optimal DTM resolution for the identification and analysis of objects was conducted in areas previously subject to archaeological research. The experiments and comparative analysis of various laser scanning technologies led to the identification of optimal methods and filtering parameters to “exclude” vegetation and generate DTMs.

Experimental Archaeogaming

ABSTRACTArchaeogaming is an area of increasing interest within archaeology. As archaeogaming's theory and practice are being fleshed out, it is worth considering if there are parallels to traditional archaeological methods within the study of video games. Here, we examine one such possibility: is there an archaeogaming equivalent to experimental archaeology? As a case study, we explore the system used for the mid-1980s development of an unreleased video game prototype for the game company Activision. Through examining this development system, whose use would be otherwise invisible in the finished software artifact, we demonstrate how we have both reconstructed a seemingly lost piece of the system virtually and used this reconstruction for experiments. The methodology we describe can be applied to digital artifacts within contemporary archaeology beyond the scope of video games, and it illustrates some key differences between studying physical and digital artifacts.

Eastern Bloc Agents in West Germany

This paper highlights how contemporary archaeology can contribute to our knowledge of contemporary history, in a case where written sources no longer exist and any surviving protagonists either will not or cannot divulge what they know. Its focus is on a Soviet spy radio from the last years of the Cold War which was discovered during a recent archaeological excavation in Germany’s Rhineland. The radio was probably produced in 1987 and was soon afterwards concealed in woodland, most likely by someone working for Soviet military intelligence, the GRU. The findspot is close to various Cold War military installations involving nuclear weapons, and the radio would have enabled the swift transmission of military information into the Eastern Bloc that would have been useful in the event of war. As rare archaeological evidence of espionage, the radio can also help us to understand continuities between the Cold War and the present time.

WHEN IN STELLIS: AN AUTO-ARCHAEOLOGY OF A DIGITAL ARTIFACT COLLECTION FROM TEARS OF THEMIS

Primarily, this research aimed to appraise and discover how a 21st-century Filipino object owner collocates meaning with digital artifacts and identify what cultural underpinnings influence the affinity with these things. Two novel ideas in contemporary archaeology were utilized in this study: (1) auto-archaeology, a method of employing archaeological analysis on one's objects, and; (2) archaeogaming, which treats digitally constructed objects as artifacts (Reindhard, 2018). Using these postmodern perspectives, I conducted an auto-archaeology of my collection of digital artifacts from the game Tears of Themis (COGNOSPHERE, 2020) and aimed to unearth a retelling of my recent past as a posthuman Filipino. Informed largely by Ellersdorfer's (2021) autoethnographic archaeology and Woods' (2022) gacha game discourse, my case study involved extracting memories from select pieces from my collection of digital artifacts. Findings reveal that not only can these objects reconstruct their distinct semiotic context through the game design, story of acquisition, and in-game usage but also deconstruct off-game contexts that are personally attached by an individual owner to its immateriality through perception and affective embedding. In so doing, the digital artifacts amplify the different voices inscribed within each artifact in its decontextualized form as a unit in a rhizomatic network of digital objects.

Managing Contemporary Archaeology in the Mediterranean: Challenges Observed from #pubarchMED

Contemporary archaeology was one of the topics addressed within a large study to improve understanding of archaeological heritage management in the Mediterranean basin by the pubarchMED project. While 19th and early 20th century contexts are often studied, contemporary archaeology in the Mediterranean (especially post World War II period) still represents a challenge both for practitioners and heritage managers. This article delves into some structural issues of archaeological heritage management and archaeological practice of the contemporary world, disentangling the main challenges they reveal and the interesting questions they raise for archaeological practice.

Contemporary Archaeologies and Cultural Heritage in the Anthropocenic Age

The era in which the distinction between natural processes and human activity was clear has passed. Since at least the 'Great Acceleration' of the mid-20th century, we have entered a new phase where environmental changes, unprecedented in scale, are no longer purely natural. Instead, they stem from the growth of a hybrid aggregate, both natural and artificial. Consequently, things and places can no longer remain unchanged; they do not adhere to our previous conceptions. 'Non-human' entities now respond to our actions, rendering them inherently cultural and anthropogenic. Operating within the present, these entities not only act but also accumulate a form of material memory over time. Even seemingly inert matter is alive, facing the challenges of the Anthropocene: an era characterized by devastation and the destruction of material memory. Thus, the concept of heritage takes on new significance: what does it mean now, and what purpose does it serve? How do we define saving, protecting, or even acknowledging what we continue to call archaeological heritage? The most profound transformations of the Anthropocene are yet to unfold, underscoring the limitations of archaeological practice, which primarily focuses on human creations at a human scale.

Finding the Wrong People. Challenges of contemporary archaeology in Poland

The immediate past has been of interest within Polish archaeology only very recently. Research was first undertaken in 1967 and was incidental, tending not to change the general view of archaeologists focused on periods spanning prehistory to the Middle Ages, and then gradually adding the 17th and 18th centuries. A permanent change came in the 1990s with the emergence of development-led archaeology in Poland. Excavations preceding construction of motorways and other infrastructure projects revealed relics dating back to 1800-1945 on an unprecedented scale. Initially, insufficient historical knowledge made archaeological research particularly difficult. Now, after a few decades, this pioneer era is coming to an end, and there are archaeologists focusing mainly on the contemporary period e.g. archaeology of armed conflicts in the broadest sense of the term or narrowly specialised forensic archaeology.

French historical and contemporary archaeology: a critical assessment

Modern and contemporary archaeology, the French equivalent of historical archaeology, emerged in the 1970s. Subsequent attempts at theorising this sub-discipline have been hindered by a lack of broad professional recognition and funding. While the archaeology of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries is now more widely recognised in France, studies of the post-nineteenth-century period remain limited to a few specific contexts. Here, the author offers an overview for the Anglophone readers of modern and contemporary archaeology in France and argues that greater theorisation, cross-fertilisation with other archaeological traditions and a diversification of the range of themes considered might enhance recognition of this sub-discipline within and beyond France.

Contemporary archaeological perspectives on intersectional inequality in a welfare state in twentieth-century Finland

AbstractSocial inequalities and marginality often go unrecognised in the Nordic welfare states. This project examines the effects of neoliberalism and intersectional inequality in Finland from a contemporary archaeology perspective; the case study is a Second World War German military camp turned into a working-class community occupied until the 1980s.

Paradigm or Practice? Situating GIS in Contemporary Archaeological Method and Theory

Paradigm or Practice? Situating GIS in Contemporary Archaeological Method and Theory

Nowoczesna archeologia Profesora Jana Żaka (1923-1990). W 100. rocznicę urodzin

On March 23rd, 2023 the 100th anniversary of Professor Jan Żak’s birth was marked with an exhibition and a seminar meant to present the modern archeology he had been creating. In addition to Professor’s scientific achievements, there were fragments presented of three documentaries to illustrate his involvement into popularization of archeology. The article discusses also Professor’s work and scientific activities in the field of early medieval archeology, methodology of archaeology and general prehistory, widely recognized and appreciated not only in Poland but also abroad. In 1945 Jan Żak took part in the military operations of the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division, and his professional life took place in the realities of the People’s Republic of Poland. Particularly important were his organizational achievements as well as scientific contacts with researchers from Western Europe. The article also presents the direction of contemporary archeology methodology established by J. Żak, continued by his students and subsequent generations or archaeologists.

Historical archaeology at the interstices between archaeology and history

This paper explores the relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and history through the lens of historical archaeology. This is not a unified subdiscipline and has indeed been defined in various ways. Here, the term will be used as a shorthand for (later) medieval, post-medieval and contemporary archaeologies.
 Historical archaeology is first and foremost archaeology focusing on material remains and producing knowledge claims about the past (history) from things. But it can complement and confront the data gleaned from the material sources with other types of evidence (textual, pictorial, oral), so it is an archaeology with texts. This represents a methodological and epistemological challenge. An uncritical reliance on textual information over the material has often been warned against as “the tyranny of the historical record”.
 Many (historical) archaeologists have been inspired by various historiographical concepts and approaches, such as cultural history, the Annales school of social and economic history, Braudel’s concept of the longue-durée, the history of the everyday (Alltagsgeschichte), and microhistory. Conversely, the knowledge produced by archaeologists tends to be disregarded by most historians. This is unfortunate, as the material evidence offers important insights into past lifeworlds and should not be ignored.

“Here Be Dragons”: Historical and Contemporary Archaeology and Heritage in the Aegean Sea

Postmedieval, modern, and contemporary remains are ubiquitous, yet their study and curatorship are uncommon in the Aegean geographic context. In this article I discuss the materiality of these uncared-for ruins, drawing from rural and urban remains in the Aegean, contrasted with other littoral sites in the Mediterranean. I focus on their social and cultural impact and their role in contemporary communities, along with the state provisions organized to protect and manage them in Greece and Turkey. I propose a present and socially engaged archaeological praxis and emphasize the need for historical/contemporary archaeology to be more politically involved, raising awareness and broadening the representation of marginalized communities.

Project Loops, “Edgelands” and the Permanent Reimagining of Landscape

This article proposes that Boris Groys’s claim that contemporary life is mediated via an ongoing loop of speculative, unfinished “projects” can be used to explore the production of particular kinds of interfaciality and “Edgelands”, as defined by Marion Shoard. I examine the Granton Waterfront area, a region of Edinburgh, Scotland, that has witnessed redevelopment projects initiated and abandoned over the last three decades, and where construction materials, half-finished roads, derelict gates and rezoned “development” areas are constantly revalued and reinhabited by humans and non-humans in looped cycles. Utilizing photographic images produced at various points over a decade to construct a visual narrative of the site, as well as drawing on the work of cultural geographer Hamish Kallin, I demonstrate how Shoard’s and Groys’s concepts, most often applied in art, cultural geography and planning contexts, can be useful tools for contemporary archaeologists in examining and reflecting upon the production and ongoing lives of ‘waste’ landscapes.

World War II in Western Massachusetts: Contemporary Archaeology of a Plane Crash

World War II in Western Massachusetts: Contemporary Archaeology of a Plane Crash

Chapter 11 Sacred Places and Contested Spaces in Maine: The Long Shadow of Colonial Science in the Light of Repatriation

ABSTRACTThe Nevin site in Maine has become a contested space as Wabanaki people seeking to repatriate their ancestors confront archaeologists who adhere to the antiquated postulates of their predecessors. Warren K. Moorehead, of Phillips Academy's archaeology department, focused field work on Maine's so‐called “Red Paint” cemeteries from 1912–1920. Moorehead acknowledged the antiquity of the cemeteries but saw the people as members of a “lost civilization” culturally distinct from later Indigenous groups. Douglas Byers succeeded Moorehead and excavated graves at the Nevin site from 1936–1940. Despite radiocarbon dates and a better understanding of the Archaic period, Byers did not attribute Nevin's lavish grave goods to that early era. The confusion sowed by Moorehead and Byers still influences contemporary archaeologists and museum personnel who resist Wabanaki efforts to repatriate their ancestors under contemporary legislation. Despite the lack of robust research on in‐migration, prevailing ideas about the Late Archaic in Maine envision a population replacement by southern immigrants. This hypothesis opposes claims of cultural connectedness by contemporary Wabanaki peoples. Here, we explore the archaeological legacy associated with the Nevin cemetery and challenge archaeologists to confront colonialist science that permeates repatriation.

Heritage-making in the capitalocene: deconstructing fishing heritage and regeneration in an English fishing port

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how heritage-led regeneration has mediated the reconfiguration of North Shields Fish Quay. North Shields is a town in the North East of England, once home to among Britain’s largest deep-sea trawling fleets. Following the collapse of the trawling industry in the late twentieth century, ongoing fisheries crisis, and undelivered Brexit promises, fishing heritage has become valued as a tool for social and economic development. However, this deployment of heritage generates both opportunities and threats. Situated between contemporary archaeology and critical heritage studies, this paper employs archaeological ethnography and critical discourse analysis to examine the material and discursive unfolding of heritage-led regeneration at North Shields Fish Quay. I situate heritage-making in the Capitalocene and argue that heritage-led regeneration represents a capitalist response to capitalism-induced crisis. By foregrounding the long-term exploitation and alienation of fishing communities, and their physical and social separation from the landscape, this paper demonstrates that heritage-led regeneration profits from, perpetuates and obscures these abuses.