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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
An archaeology of a metaphor
The metaphor of the Iron Curtain, as demonstrated in Chapter 2, is strongly
connected to the narrative history created through historical accounts,
media, films, novels, materiality etc., but how does this connect to the
materials The impact of popular culture can be seen to have had a major
effect on the idea of the Iron Curtain as well as the Cold War. The effects of
historical films have, for example, been discussed by historians Robert
Rosenstone (2006) and Alun Munslow (2007) who suggest that film
production is also a way to write history that needs to be taken seriously and
not be dismissed as less legitimate. It is recognised that film can have a
cognitive mechanism and “create experiential and emotional complexities
way beyond the printed page” (Munslow 2007:572). The idea that experiences
are becoming increasingly important to people has been raised by
several researchers such as archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf (2007). Similarly
to other researchers, of which many of them are active within marketing
studies such as Pine and Gilmore (1999), he claims that the importance lies
in “engaging people sensually, cognitively, socially, culturally and emotionally”(Holtorf
2007:6). Much of the influences of Holtorf, Pine and Gilmore’s
work come from the thoughts of sociologist Gerhard Schulze (1993), who
claimed that society was becoming increasingly focussed on how things feel,
a “commodification of the eventful” (Löfgren 1999:14). Ethnologist Orvar
Löfgren, whose interest lies in tourism, suggests that Schultze’s claims of
this being a completely new phenomenon is not really true as these ideas
have been around for quite some time within travel and tourism (Löfgren
1999:16). But as Holtorf also points out this ‘experience value’, has now
extended into almost every field including archaeology and heritage and
suggests that it is the experience of the sites and the stories that are more
important than the acquisition of new knowledge (Holtorf 2007:4).
Although not true for everyone we have to understand that some people are
more interested in using the sites and the materiality to confirm and
authenticate their already existing view of history. This can be seen as one of
the issues with the two Berlin museums, where one, Documentation Centre,
corresponds better with material story (possibly a bit less impressive and
more fragmented) whilst the other, Haus am Checkpoint Charlie,
corresponds more to the metaphor and the historical narratives of the
Berlin Wall, of the Iron Curtain and of the Cold War that have been created
and recreated since World War II. This can also be seen on a much smaller
scale in Slovenia where the ‘idea’ of an Iron Curtain has started to make its
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