SCIENCE IN INTERNATIONAL MEMORY POLITICS: ISOTOPE ANALYSIS AND THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE HUMAN REMAINS OF WORLD WAR II COMBATANTS IN THE BALKANS By KATHARINE E. KOLPAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2017 © 2017 Katharine E. Kolpan To William, my favorite space zookeeper ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, a very heartfelt thank you to Ian Hanson, Tom Parsons, Senem Skulj, James Murphy, James Fenn, Almir Olovcic and everyone else at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) who helped facilitate my research. This dissertation would not have been possible without your help and support. I would also like to thank the Missing Persons Institute (MPI), the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Mostar Prosecutor’s office in Bosnia and Herzegovina for allowing me to access to the remains and providing me with permissions to take the samples needed to complete this isotope research. I would like to thank Drs. Susan Gillespie, James Davidson, Michael Warren, Norman Goda and George Kamenov. Your insights into my research have proven invaluable and you have enriched my depth and breadth of knowledge immeasurably. Dr. Gillespie made me a much better archaeological and anthropological theorist and her advice has expanded my dissertation into realms I would likely never have considered otherwise. Dr. Davidson’s political insights and counsel are always appreciated and have served me well over the last seven years. Dr. Warren’s osteological knowledge, as well as his insights into mass burials, human rights and excavation in the Balkans, have been incredibly useful and are highly valued. I would like to thank Dr. Goda for providing me with vast amounts of information about the Second World War and supplying me with advice and insight into Germany prior to, during and after WWII. I owe an incredible debt to Dr. Kamenov for providing me access to the clean lab and patiently teaching me how to conduct all of the chemistry necessary to obtain the information necessary to write this dissertation. I am also grateful for all of 4 the hours he and I spent running ideas about the data and isotope work in the Balkans back and forth. I would like to thank Dr. Jason Curtis in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida for the mass spectrometry wizardry he performed on my oxygen isotope samples. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Ashley Sharp, who spent many hours very patiently making sure that I had the skills necessary to run a proper column sample and use the MC-ICP-MS correctly. A big thank you to my labmates in the UF Bone Chemistry Laboratory. Thank you to Ben Valentine, Chin-hsin Liu, Ellen Lofaro and Gypsy Price for teaching me the ropes. I would also like to thank Michelle Eusebio, Laura Van Voorhis, Devi Pellier, Lisa Duffy, Petra Cunningham-Smith and Kylie Williamson, who helped me with ideas and provided support. Lastly, I would like to thank Ann Laffey, who read many drafts of my grant proposals, provided me with advice about presentations and contributed endless moral support during this process. I would also like to acknowledge Lisa Booth, Koki Mendis, Greg Mason and Dr. Alice Freifeld at the Center for European Studies (CES) at the University of Florida, all of whom worked tirelessly to make sure I had all of my paperwork in order to facilitate my international travel and fellowship opportunities. Thank you for providing me with funding for my language training and research. I would also like to thank Jim Robbins, formerly of CES, for providing me with information about the scholarship opportunities available through CES. I wish to thank the staff at the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the Deutsche Dienstelle and particularly the Bundesarchiv Militär in Freiburg, Germany. I 5 could not have completed my research without all of the historical information and insight that you made available to me. I would like to thank the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate School at the University of Florida for providing some of the funding and support for my dissertation. The Anthropology Department has always supported my endeavors and I am grateful for your continued encouragement and support. I would be remiss if I did not thank Karen Jones, Juanita Bagnall, Pat King and Pam Freeman, who are, hands-down, some of the hardest working people in the UF Department of Anthropology. Nita, thank you for all of the reminders about deadlines, keeping track of all of my paperwork over the years and making sure I was staying on track to graduate. Karen, thanks for all of your help and support over my long tenure at UF. Thank you to Alisa Jordan and Jeffrey Vadala for humoring me through countless hours of theoretical discussions and for distracting me with dinner when I needed. Additionally, thank you Jeff for looking over my theoretical ideas and making sure they made logical sense. I would like to thank my family and William’s family for their continued love and support as I embarked on the daunting task of completing my Ph.D. My brother Ned deserves particular acknowledgement since he has always served as my confidant and ensured that I kept myself focused. I owe my husband, William, a huge debt of gratitude for he is the unsung hero of this dissertation. He endured multiple cross-country moves, a barrage of new people and new places, and the prolonged absence of his wife, all so that I could follow my 6 academic dreams. I am also entirely certain that I my husband is solely responsible for ensuring that I remembered to eat and to have a little fun every once in a while and for that I am eternally grateful. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the large contribution made the head of my committee and my dissertation adviser, Dr. John Krigbaum. Dr. Krigbaum spent many hours reading over my grant proposals, articles and research ideas. He has been, and continues to be, a tireless advocate for his students and I am very lucky that he agreed to supervise my academic endeavors. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... 11 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 12 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 17 Human Remains, Mass Violence and the “Forensic Turn” ...................................... 20 Archaeological Uncovering and Making the Absent Present .................................. 21 The Excavated Body, Memory Politics and Potential Stakeholders Involved with the Sutina Remains ............................................................................................. 23 Bosnia and Herzegovina .................................................................................. 23 Germany ........................................................................................................... 27 Austria and Italy ................................................................................................ 30 Bodily Agency: Human Remains as Representation and Human Remains as Materials .............................................................................................................. 33 Human Remains as Representation ................................................................. 34 Human Remains as Materials .......................................................................... 38 Organization of this Research ................................................................................. 40 2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ................................................................................ 42 Interwar Political Intrigue and the Creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia .............. 42 Yugoslavia and World War II: The German Attack, 1941........................................ 46 The Wartime Partitioning of Yugoslavia .................................................................. 50 The Partisan and Chetnik Resistance Movements ................................................. 53 Wehrmacht Divisions Stationed in the Balkans ....................................................... 59 Yugoslavia after WWII: Official Discourse and Collective Memory ......................... 62 The Memory of WWII in Germany .......................................................................... 64 East Germany .................................................................................................. 64 West Germany ................................................................................................. 65 Reunification and Debates over Guilt and Victimization ................................... 69 The Volksbund Deutsche Krigsgräberfürsorge: Germany’s War Graves Commission .................................................................................................. 74 The Memory of the War in Austria .......................................................................... 77 The Memory of the Nazi Past in Italy ...................................................................... 79 8 3 ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND OSTEOLOGICAL