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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN (Pétursdóttir 2012:584). The material we encounter in the places of the Cold War may not look like we expect them to and this is an important point to make. As they may tell other stories they may not fit into our known narratives and accounts. Narratives can be seen as a consequence of the ‘linguistic turn’ and according to Solli “[c]onsidering the legacy of the linguistic turn nothing is proving more resilient than narrative” (Solli 2011:43). Criticising this narrativisation can therefore be seen as a quite natural part of a ‘material turn’ in which there is less stress on translating objects and the study thereof into narratives. It is an important point to make as it has consequences for the material that we study. In trying to fit them into our known accounts and narratives we can actually cause damage to these sites in the process. By excluding those fragmented objects and the memories they entail because they may not fit into our narratives we are actively forgetting them. Pétursdóttir demonstrates through her research that “archaeological remembering of this site, and its inclusion in historical narration, can in fact easily result in the active forgetting of things, their fragmented and discontinuous memory and their utter silence” (Pétursdóttir 2012:577). The sites and materials that are not included in the historical narratives are therefore in danger of disappearing altogether. Maybe this is not an issue in itself, not everything can remain, but will be if we think that what we have left in our historical narratives and accounts is representative of a particular time, period or event. How the material of the former borders has been treated in Slovenia/ Italy, Czechoslovakia/Austria and Berlin varies. In Berlin the historical narratives of the Cold War and the metaphor of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain are highly established. Here the story of Cold War division became so physical and obvious and as shown in Chapter 2 the idea of the Iron Curtain intertwined with the physical Berlin Wall. Through history writing, politics, popular culture and media the story of the Berlin Wall as the Iron Curtain was created. The treatment of sites and objects of the Berlin Wall therefore have to relate to this narrative and metaphor. To allow the remains to stand on their own as different fragmented stories that do not relate or fit into this grand narrative causes problems. On the Slovenia/ Italy border the remains have not really been connected to the larger historical narratives in the same way and have therefore not been burdened with such a heavy requirement. Instead we find smaller, more local stories connected with the changing of the border line, smuggling and trade across the border etc. Interestingly, the local narratives here appear to be in a process of trying to connect with the European Cold War history, possibly 207
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN as a wish to connect to European narratives. In this process the border is used to connect to a wider historical narrative of the Iron Curtain and here the physical remains of the border such as the watch tower made into a museum and the images and remains of the former more militarised border at the Railway Museum are being lifted forward as a link and possibly as a way to authenticate this connection. In the Czech Republic the stories of the border is as fragmented as the materiality that remains. The different parts do not really fit into a clear narrative even though it is of course possible to relate parts of it to the general historical narratives of the area as well as to more regional and global accounts. The three cases I have used have very different contexts. The study area by the Slovenian/Italian border has always belonged to a living community with traffic across it and a relationship across the border. Berlin has even more of a living community and the border here no longer exists. It has returned to be one town, one homogenous society. Yet again, in the Czech Republic/Austria these areas have been depopulated over long periods of time and are still sparsely populated today. Here there is much less interaction over the border today despite EU and Schengen memberships. But despite their different contexts, or maybe just because of these differences, a comparison between them still demonstrates the different processes that are involved in how we write our history and create our heritage. It is impossible to study everything. ‘Stuff’ will inevitably disappear unnoticed and the historical accounts that we have got used to ordering our past into within our post-modern society will be written, but by being aware of this process and by taking a different approach to the sources and the materials that we study we can try and challenge this method of creating archaeology in a historical way even when we are dealing with historical archaeology. As mentioned above Olivier suggests that we should understand archaeology more in relation to memory, as more fragmented than the historical chronology as “memory-time functions in a way which has nothing to do with history-time” (Olivier 2004:211). Through really looking at the material, through experiencing it and describing it we can see different constellations than those we encounter in the history writing. We have to be able to see that the narratives are an important part of how we see the past but it is not the only way of seeing the past. Materiality, for example, often provides different constellations than historical narratives and these should not be valued any less. 208
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain
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Contents Acknowledgements 11 CHAPTE
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The end of a journey 212 Sammanfatt
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction Standing on
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1: INTRODUCTION carried out of the
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1: INTRODUCTION they may be… It i
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1: INTRODUCTION where the observer
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1: INTRODUCTION former Iron Curtain
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1: INTRODUCTION criticism from othe
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1: INTRODUCTION itioned somewhere i
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1: INTRODUCTION World War II dividi
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CHAPTER 2 A physical metaphor Concr
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR established
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR The changing
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR the events t
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR As time has
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR highly influ
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Figure 16: Postcard of the newly op
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402 Kojsko Hum 402 THE OSIM
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CHAPTER 5 Case Study 2 The Czech/Au
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5: CASE STUDY 2: THE CZECH/AUSTRIAN
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Figure 55: Bunker near the crossing
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Figure 59: Military map from 1980 o
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Page 216 and 217: Sammanfattning (Summary in Swedish)
Page 218 and 219: SAMMANFATTNING En fysisk metafor I
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