Introduction to Webs of Memory, Frames of Power: Collective Remembering in the Archaeological Record

Abstract

Over the past few decades, archaeologists have increasingly viewed collective memory as critical to the establishment and legitimation of power relations. For societies in the past and present, collective memory can be drawn on to clarify group identity, justify or subvert hierarchies, invent traditions, and define behaviors. The contributors to this special issue focus on the process of remembering, how it produced multiple archaeologically visible understandings of the past, and how these viewpoints impacted power-laden social negotiations. To better elucidate this process, this introduction situates the concept of collective remembering within recent materialist frameworks that emphasize the integration of human and nonhuman actors into webs of interaction. We suggest that by viewing collective memory from the standpoint of interactions, multiple viewpoints can be recognized. We argue in turn that accounting for the diverse actors invested in memory production provides archaeologists a means to delineate how the past becomes a site of contested values that social groups are constantly reworking to define membership, justify social hierarchy, and validate resistance.On January 22, 2017, during an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press (NBC News Productions 2017), Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to President Donald Trump and one of the public faces of the Trump administration, spoke of Balternative facts^as a way of explaining White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's contention that the media deliberately underestimated the size of the crowd at Trump's presidential inauguration. Conway claimed that Spicer had presented Balternative facts^as evidence for the large crowd size at Trump's inauguration. She was heavily derided for the use of the term Balternative facts,^with J Archaeol Method Theory (2017) . Conway and Spicer's statements were an active attempt to produce an alternative set of memories that contradicted other widely held recollections of the inauguration. These actions were clearly power-laden-those at the top of a power structure wished to perpetuate a more complimentary version of events, despite documentary evidence that this Balternative^account was fabricated. As of this writing, it is too soon to say how these two accounts of Trump's inauguration will fair over time. However, it seems likely that these Balternative facts^may survive and be remembered by groups who choose to believe in an alternative version of what happened. Narratives of the past have incredible influence on power dynamics. Over the past two decades, archaeologists have been increasingly interested in investigating how memories impacted social and political interactions in past contexts. Just as in the modern day, ancient institutions and identities were constructed on a foundation of collective memory-an understanding of the past shared by two or more people (see Halbwachs 1980Halbwachs [1950Halbwachs ], 1992Halbwachs [1925). Collective memory functions as a set of ideas that can be drawn on for many purposes, i...

Focal Nodes and Ritual Economy in Ancient Maya Hinterland Communities: A Case Study From San Lorenzo, Belize

“…Yet despite the volume of recent studies, relatively few scholars have specifically targeted small-scale public locations in rural settlements for in-depth exploration (for exceptions, see Brown and Gerstle [2002], Gerhardt and Hammond [1991], Hyde [2011, 2014], Peuramaki-Brown [2012, 2013], and Powis [1995]). While there is a relatively robust body of literature on rural sites usually called secondary centers or minor centers (Connell 2000, 2003; Mixter and Henry 2017; Robin 2013; Robin et al 2005; Walden et al 2019; also see Valdez et al 2022), these sites are larger than the spaces discussed here. They presumably served as focal nodes for larger groups of people and played different roles in ancient social processes and dynamics than smaller focal nodes like the one discussed here.…”

“…While there is a relatively robust body of literature on rural sites usually called secondary centers or minor centers (Connell 2000(Connell , 2003Mixter and Henry 2017;Robin 2013;Robin et al 2005;Walden et al 2019; also see Valdez et al 2022), these sites are larger than the spaces discussed here. They presumably served as focal nodes for larger groups of people and played different roles in ancient social processes and dynamics than smaller focal nodes like the one discussed here.…”

The politics and historicity of megalithic places in early South India

“…This framing of megalithic monuments has some parallels to recent scholarship addressing “new materialisms” and “posthumanist” approaches to the social sciences and humanities that warrants brief discussion of the significance of materials, especially as archaeology has increasingly embraced these frameworks (cf. Alt and Pauketat, 2003; Coole and Frost, 2010; Govier and Steel, 2021; Mixter and Henry, 2017; Webmoor and Witmore, 2008; Whatmore, 2002). In rearticulating the boundaries and associations of “the social,” for example, Latour (2005) has called attention to the role of materials as “mediators” of human relationships—that is to say that they hold the potential to “transform” and “modify” the historical contexts that they partly comprise.…”

“…Pushing beyond Trouillot and others, we suggest that these monumental traces did not simply “set the stage” for a politics of the past (Trouillot, 1995: 29), or the production of what many archaeologists and historians have often termed “social memory” (cf. Eaton and Wagoner,2014; Mixter and Henry, 2017; Van Dyke, 2019; Van Dyke and Alcock, 2003); rather, they were part and parcel of the generation of collectivities and historicities, simultaneously calling both into being. To develop this argument, we begin by briefly reviewing previous archaeological approaches to studying South Indian megalithic monuments.

Figure 1.Generalized distribution of megalithic monuments in South India, and the location of the Maski Archaeological Research Project and Hire Benakal.

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Finding Archaeology in 2017: What Is Archaeology and Why Are We Doing It? Why Should We Be Doing It?

“…; Schwartz ). Many archaeologists in 2017 explored alternate concepts of time and the role of memory in past societies (Hamilakis ; Haskell and Stawski ; Mixter ; Mixter and Henry ; Morehart ; Overholtzer and Bolnick ; Pool and Loughlin ; Sinamai ; Van Dyke ; VanValkenburgh ; Yao ).…”