Archaeology and Memory
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
An offprint from Archaeology and Memory Edited by Dušan Borić © Oxbow Books 2010 ISBN 978-1-84217-363-3 Contents List of Contributors v 1. Introduction: Memory, archaeology and the historical condition 1 (Dušan Borić) 2. Th e diversity and duration of memory 35 (Alasdair Whittle) 3. Happy forgetting? Remembering and dismembering dead bodies at Vlasac 48 (Dušan Borić) 4. Forgetting and remembering the digital experience and digital data 68 (Ruth Tringham) 5. Layers of meaning: Concealment, containment, memory and secrecy in the British Early Bronze Age 105 (Andrew Jones) 6. Constructing the warrior: Death, memory and the art of warfare 121 (Bryan Hanks) 7. Memory and microhistory of an empire: Domestic contexts in Roman Amheida, Egypt 138 (Anna Boozer) 8. Th e depiction of time on the Arch of Constantine 158 (Adam Gutteridge) 9. Archaeology and memory on the Western front 171 (Paola Filippucci) 10. Terra incognita: Th e material world in international criminal courts 183 (Lindsay Weiss) 11. YugoMuseum: Memory, nostalgia, irony 195 (Mrdjan Bajić) 12. Memory, melancholy and materiality 204 (Victor Buchli) 7. Memory and microhistory of an empire: Domestic contexts in Roman Amheida, Egypt Anna Boozer As this wave from memories fl ows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. ... Th e city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand written in the corners of streets, the gratings of windows, the banisters of steps, the antennae of the lightening rods, the poles of the fl ags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls. (Calvino 1972, 11) People foolishly imagine that the broad generalities of social phenomena aff ord an excellent opportunity to penetrate further into the human soul; they ought, on the contrary, to realize that it is by plumbing the depths of a single personality that they might have a chance of understanding those phenomena. (Proust 1993, 450) Introduction architectural construct of the inhabitants’ identity Within an imperial framework, individuals and in Roman society because they served as a nexus groups invoke memories of the past to denote both for refl ecting and forging both domestic life and their social identity and their placement within the public careers. As the material embodiment of the empire. An examination of quotidian mnemonic self, the Roman house signifi ed social and ancestral processes off ers an opportunity for us to explore the status to visitors, thereby enabling the inhabitants ways in which local peoples negotiated, infl uenced, to affi rm or eschew a Roman identity (Hales 2003). and responded to imperial social climates. Th e Domestic wall paintings, in particular, served as Roman Empire provides a salient framework for essential ciphers of identities (both of the owner and exploring memory because it was the iconic ancient the visitor) because they often included vignettes empire, inscribing its control over a vast range of that necessitated a classical education. In order to territories and peoples, each with its own distinct assemble narratives from these paintings, viewers history and identity. Th e present work explores required familiarity with historical events, classical two Roman Egyptian houses as touchstones training, and creativity. Individuals outside of this for the complex post-conquest conditions that cultural sphere may have had a host of responses to intertwined memory, identity, and empire. traditionally Roman works that would have been Roman domestic spaces provide an ideal nucleus infl uenced by their ethnicity, gender, age, and so for exploring identities and memories because the on. Th e process of assembling narratives from Roman house served as a vessel for the cultural domestic wall paintings was creative and displayed identity and memory practices of its inhabitants. one’s placement with respect to Roman culture Although Roman houses diff ered architecturally to and education (Bergmann 1994). As such, the varying degrees across the Empire, they retained narratives deployed in such domestic decoration a similar cultural role. Th e material residues of were deeply embroiled in identity politics, memory these houses provide a compelling visual and practices, and the Roman Empire. 7. Memory and microhistory of an empire: Domestic contexts in Roman Amheida 139 Th is chapter contextually analyses two houses agent experiences many shifting facets of identity from Roman Egypt in order to draw attention throughout the life span (Meskell 2001, 189). to the signifi cance of mnemonic practices within Social categories of identity are generally enduring the daily lives of individuals who lived within and regenerative while an individual identity an imperial framework. I fi rst explore imperial includes facets that can be fl eeting, fragmented, frameworks as fertile arenas in which memory and contextually contingent. Both individual and practices reinforced signifi ers of individual and group identities comprise multiple influences community identities. I then turn to domestic such as heritage, genealogy, ethnicity, gender, age, contexts, which are critical zones for exploring economic class, and so forth. Because identities how individuals drew upon memories when are multiply constructed and maintained they performing their daily lives. I then examine two are fl uid and contextually dependent and should Roman Egyptian domestic contexts from Amheida be considered with reference to an individual’s (ancient Trimithis) in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt. perceived sameness or exclusion and opposition One house was high status and displayed a to these multifarious infl uences. Roman-Greek heritage in wall paintings, texts, and Th e multiplicity and permeability of identities material culture, while the other house displayed a produce real challenges for archaeologists, even subdued, hybrid Roman-Greek-Egyptian heritage in contexts that are reinforced by contemporary in the material culture. I off er specifi c examples of written sources. Th e most accessible means of memory and identity from these domestic contexts assessing identity archaeologically is through and the implications these signatures would have exploring mechanisms of identity construction when viewed within the greater social fabric of and maintenance. These mechanisms loosely imperial consolidation. tether facets of identities to historically understood trajectories and take the form of social, material and memorial practices. A study of memory promises Conceptions of Memory a fruitful approach towards understanding how Most theoretical expositions of social memory identities are socially created and maintained. follow the usage originated by Maurice Halbwachs, Indeed, memory infuses social meanings into a sociologist, who contended that memory must the past, present, and future (Connerton 1989; be understood as a social phenomenon. Halbwachs Fentress and Wickham 1994 [1992]; Fagan 1996; also founded the concept of collective memory, Lovell 1998). Memories of heritage – be they real which denotes a group’s shared, constructed, or or mythical – are particularly potent forces in the inherited memory (Halbwachs 1992 [1925]). collective imagination of identity. Subsequent scholarship augmented the concept of Within archaeology, Van Dyke and Alcock a group identity separate from individual memory describe four converging categories for exploring and described the exploitation of social memory social memory transmission: ritual behavior, to create and reinforce a sense of individual and narratives, representations, and places (Van Dyke community identity (Basso 1996; Blake 1998). and Alcock 2003, 4–5). These categories of Given the significance of identity within memory are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. memory practices, it is worth delving into the Th e current work engages the last two categories of concept in greater detail. Th e concept ‘identity’ material memories (representations and places) in expresses the ways in which individuals and groups an exploration of identity politics. Paintings and diff erentiate themselves in their social relations other representational media may commemorate with other individuals and groups (Jenkins past events, such as mythic narratives, and thereby 1996, 4). Identity positioning functions on two aid the memory process. Material displays of past diff erent planes: on one hand the greater social identities serve as reminders of the past invoked milieu defi nes identities by formal associations and by the present and as incentives that shape the categories; on the other hand, the single subjective future (Lovell 1998, 14–15). A single synchronic 140 Anna Boozer image can stimulate a host of memories, reforming this conquest was not the fi rst time that this and coalescing their diversity and contradictions, ancient civilization had been occupied. Egypt’s thereby positioning the past in the present and long and layered history of foreign domination had creating collective images in the present. Places potent implications for memory practices under associated with past events or attachments serve as the Romans. When Cambyses conquered Egypt signifi cant vectors for exploring memory because in 525 BC, the Persians were the fi rst outsiders they evoke a spectrum of emotions and memories to incorporate Egypt within a larger imperial ranging from mundane, everyday activities to power structure. Th e Persians did not settle in monuments or sites of violence. Egypt and relied on hegemonic imperial practices rather than on territorial integration.