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1: INTRODUCTION criticism from others is an important part of the research ethics that we must abide by and something that needs to be considered through all parts of our work from planning our interviews and conducting them through to the way we publish the words of others in our work (Pripp 2011:65). This is also something that is particularly important to stress within contemporary archaeology where people often do not have the same training in ethnographic fieldwork as for example an anthropologist or ethnologist. In this thesis I have made a distinction between those who have spoken to me in an official capacity as for example museum staff or historians, who are not anonymous, and those that have spoken to me about their private life who have been given other names. The distinction is not always clear as those in an official role have also told me personal stories but the distinction is still there and their official role is important to know to understand the context or to validate the information. Archive research was carried out in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy and the UK. These were not meant to be full archive studies but rather a way to get an idea of what kind of material is available about these sites. Anything more would have been too much of an undertaking within this project. Although language was sometimes a problem, these archive studies did help in providing background knowledge. Of particular use were maps and photos as these helped to provide an understanding of the kinds of physical material that had existed along the Iron Curtain and how the borders’ different areas had looked in the past. Photos, often of a more personal nature, were also found on an online forum for former Czechoslovakian soldiers. Through this forum I also managed to get in contact with three former border guards who could tell me about their time as soldiers along the borders. Conversations between the soldiers themselves on the online forum were all written in Czech and therefore could only be understood in small parts (Army Forum Website). Outside Germany there is little literature written about the former Iron Curtain or the guards who once protected the militarised borders. Instead literature was mostly used to provide historical background to the larger political events. In Germany, however, the situation is different and I was able to gain a good understanding of both the general history as well as the physicality of the Inner German Border and, in particular, the Berlin Wall through literature (Huyssen 1997, Faversham and Schmidt 1999 and 2007, Dolff-Bonekämper 2002, Klausmeier and Schmidt 2004, Harrison 2005, Schmidt and von Preuschen 2005, Taylor 2006, Sheffer 2007 and 2008, Rottman 2008, Klausmeier 2009, Hamberg 2009). 25
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN Recording the Iron Curtain Conveying the information gained through these studies to the reader is a complicated process in itself in which materials, documents, photos and impressions are converted into text. Here there is an element of interpretation every step of the way. Ehn writes that the observations we make become history as soon as we verbalise and communicate them (Ehn 2009:56). In an attempt to write an objective description of the Docklands in London, Högdahl became aware of the difficulty in writing a description of something without letting one’s personal assumptions and preconceptions interfere. She describes the process from the first observations, a selective process in itself where some things fall within our sphere of interest, others outside. We then use words to initially write down our observations and later we will process these words into a text using different analytical tools. She explains this process as a series of translations (Högdahl 2009:111). The texts we eventually produce are therefore a result of this long line of interpretations of which we may only be aware of some parts. Hodder has suggested that archaeological writing in the field has stayed largely unchanged due to a feeling of a kind of “guardianship” keeping records for the state and is often seen as separate to the process of making interpretations (Hodder 2003:57). As Hodder points out, despite this tradition of viewing the fieldwork as something objective, we in fact interpret every step of the way and we therefore need to be transparent about this process. Photos have been important throughout my work. I have taken thousands of pictures throughout my fieldwork. They have worked both as a document for me to constantly go back to in my work as a way to help my memory or to discover new things that I have not previously seen. The photos have helped me discover and rediscover both physical objects and relationships at the sites that I have studied or helped to capture a feeling encountered. In the writing of this thesis they have become a way to portray how I interacted with the material as well as an attempt to demonstrate the relationship between objects or the feelings that the sites have evoked. Archaeologists Yannis Hamilakis and Aris Anagnostopoulos (2009) have discussed the role of photography within archaeology and suggest that photographs often falls within three categories: the official site photography and laboratory photography; the unofficial photographs taken by those who are excavating or by visitors (these two categories also stated in Bateman 2005); and the photographs that can be seen as pos- 26
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Page 8 and 9: Contents Acknowledgements 11 CHAPTE
Page 10: The end of a journey 212 Sammanfatt
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Page 16 and 17: CHAPTER 1 Introduction Standing on
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Page 28 and 29: 1: INTRODUCTION itioned somewhere i
Page 30 and 31: 1: INTRODUCTION World War II dividi
Page 32 and 33: CHAPTER 2 A physical metaphor Concr
Page 34 and 35: 2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR established
Page 36 and 37: 2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR The changing
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Page 40 and 41: 2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR As time has
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
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402 Kojsko Hum 402 THE OSIM
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Figure 50: Map demonstrating the bo
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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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Figure 77-78: Painting inside the f
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CHAPTER 6 An archaeology of the Iro
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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTA
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Figure 102: Fence and Watch Tower a
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Sammanfattning (Summary in Swedish)
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SAMMANFATTNING En fysisk metafor I
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SAMMANFATTNING komst och kunskapsf
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SAMMANFATTNING Fältstudier av läm
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SAMMANFATTNING som försöker ta si
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SAMMANFATTNING mets dilemma”. Han
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Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations
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33. Sofie Bedford, Islamic activism
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67. Anne Kaun, Civic Experiences an
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Stockholm Studies in Archaeology Se
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29. LINDGREN, Christina. 2004. Män
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The Iron Curtain was seen as the di
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