Monumental memories

Díaz-Guardamino, Marta, Sanjuán, Leonardo García & Wheatley, David (ed.). The lives of prehistoric monuments in Iron Age, Roman, and Medieval Europe. 2015. xviii+356 pages, numerous b&w illustrations, 6 tables. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-872460-5 hardback £85.

Kristan-Graham, Cynthia & Amrhein, Laura M. (ed.). Memory traces: analyzing sacred space at five Mesoamerican sites. 2015. xxx+231 pages, numerous b&w illustrations. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; 978-60732-376-1 hardback £65.

We are familiar with the idea that monuments are constructed to create meaning and order in the present, and to project these concepts into the future. But all the volumes under review here agree that, however carefully crafted the script, such monuments may hold multiple meanings and are open to constant reinterpretation.

The re-use of prehistoric monuments in the past has been thoroughly explored in the British context, but less so elsewhere in north-western Europe. The lives of prehistoric monuments in Iron Age, Roman, and Medieval Europe, edited by Díaz-Guardamino, García Sanjuán and Wheatley, takes an expanded geographic canvas and a more international cast of contributors (Austria, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Serbia, Spain and Tunisia, as well as the UK). The editors observe that a ‘biographical’ approach to monuments “makes the divide between prehistory and history look increasingly like an unbearably old-fashioned and tediously ineffectual intellectual artifice” (p. 12). They also reject the notion of afterlives, arguing that this unreasonably prioritises original form and function over subsequent phases.

Thirteen case studies cover the re-use of prehistoric monuments through to the nineteenth century and beyond. Geographically, these range from Knowth, Newgrange, Avebury and Jelling in the north, via the Val Camonica, Novi Pazar and Crete in the east, to the Maghreb in the south, and with a strong focus on Atlantic France and Spain in the west. There are far too many fascinating case studies to be individually discussed; two will have to suffice. Vejby examines the re-use of megalithic tombs in Brittany during the Roman period. She focuses on the presence of Venus statuettes at a subset of tombs around the Gulf of Morbihan, including one known as ‘La Butte de César’ (local legend holds that Caesar viewed his decisive naval victory over the Veneti in 56 BC from its summit). Vejby draws together the strands of evidence to propose that Roman-period votive offerings at megalithic tombs close to the location of the battle may have connected themes of victory and defeat through the figure of Caesar and his descent from Venus. This is all temptingly plausible, although discussion of exactly who might have been responsible—‘Romans’ or ‘local Gauls’—and what motivated them moves into more difficult and less convincing territory. (Also focusing on Brittany, Laporte et al. consider the re-use of standing stones, for example, as Gallo-Roman milestones, Christian crosses and baptismal fonts; on the latter, see below.)

Moving south, Sanmartí et al. present their project on the Numidian and Roman town of Althiburos in north-western Tunisia. At the associated megalithic necropolis of El Ksour, around 800 funerary monuments have been identified. Excavation of a sample of these suggests construction during the mid first millennium BC. The tombs were then re-used at various dates through to the third century AD. The evidence is fragmentary, and it is unclear whether the intention was to bury more deceased, or to engage with ‘ancestors’. Regardless, the authors situate this re-use in the context of wider questions of change and continuity in Roman North Africa, suggesting that the activity was undertaken by “a social group that had all the reasons to feel the independent past as a time decidedly better than living under the order imposed by Rome. This could have played a major role in forging a deliberately retro-reconstructed memory”; this was not “innate conservatism” but is rather to be “understood in the context of the inequalities created by the order imposed by Rome” (p. 302).

The collection rounds off with two chapters grouped under ‘Recapitulation and conclusions’, although both contributions offer useful case studies in their own right. Weiss-Krejci demonstrates how post-medieval kingdoms and states appropriated sites and material culture in order to create fictive lines of descent, and to secure political legitimacy. Maximilian I, for example, decreed that a Roman cremation urn be interred at Graz Castle and commemorated with an inscription linking the Habsburg monarchy to ancient Roman authority. Meanwhile, Bradley provides an overview of his work on Scottish stone circles. He identifies four different ‘pasts’, or phases of use, from 2000 BC to AD 600 with specific activities, wider contexts and associated meanings varying between them.

This is a valuable collection, adding geographic and chronological range to discussions of the ways in which memories are constructed and reconstructed through monumental forms. The case studies are diverse but cohere well. The text has been carefully edited and is supported by neatly reproduced illustrations and photographs.

Next, we cross the Atlantic with Memory traces: analyzing sacred space at five Mesoamerican sites, edited by Kristan-Graham and Amrhein. This collection of six papers, plus introduction, derives from a Society for American Archaeology session that brought together art historians and archaeologists, although the latter did not ultimately contribute to the published volume. That absence perhaps explains the particular take on memory pursued. The Preface indicates that the book's title refers to the work of the US land artist Robert Smithson, and in particular his explorations of “ruins in reverse” (p. xiv), juxtaposing ancient ruins (including Maya sites) and modern constructions. The emphasis of the volume, however, falls more solidly on the second part of the book's title: the analysis of sacred space. The editors discuss the range of concepts developed in the chapters, yet the word ‘memory’ is rarely used and the broader concept is absent from the key paragraph (p. xxi) summarising the volume's purpose. Indeed, explicit discussion of memory is not as evident in the chapters as might have been expected; it is performance that emerges as the central theme. For example, Sarro and Robb explore wall painting at Teotihuacan in order to capture the experience and meaning of moving through the city's residential compounds.

The two papers that engage most explicitly with memory are Kristan-Graham's on ‘Building memories at Tula’, and that by Wren et al. on the colonial period. Kristan-Graham, looking partly to work on prehistoric Britain for inspiration, interprets buildings at Tula as “both homages to, and pastiches of, past and present buildings and landscapes; these spaces were sacred venues for rituals and activities where family, ancestry, and polity were equated and commemorated” (p. 82). Building 3, she suggests, can be understood as a symbolic Tollan, or place of origin, evoking a “foundation myth from which ruling peoples derived authority and links to ancestral, cultured people” (p. 92). Wren et al. examine ‘How indigenous portraits were moved, mutilated, and made Christian in New Spain’. The authors follow the ‘social life’ of two sculptures as they were “carved, venerated, neglected, discovered, moved, mutilated, recarved, reinterpreted, moved again, and then ensconced in a new setting” (p. 172). One of these is Tonina Monument 28, a portrait of a seventh-century AD ruler, which was truncated and converted into a font by Spanish friars. The authors look to the Old World to understand the friars’ motivations and methods. The mutilation of these monuments focused particularly on heads and thighs/legs—the latter holding deep ideological meaning in the Maya world—and proclaimed Spanish triumph and religious conversion. But at some point the truncated portrait-cum-font may have become problematic, for it was eventually removed from the church. Iconography is polysemic, and the desecrated statue may have become a colonial embarrassment.

Some ‘Final thoughts’ by Dunning and Weaver extract connecting themes—again making interesting points about the nature and experience of sacred space, but without much explicit consideration of memory. I trust that I have not misunderstood the editors’ intentions with their prominent use of the word in the book's title. The discussion in co-editor Kristan-Graham's own paper of such staples of memory studies as Halbwachs, Connerton and Küchler would suggest not. Regardless, the chapters provide interesting and useful analysis of sacred space and, especially, performance in the iconographically rich architectural spaces of Mesoamerica.

Religious memory

Raja, Rubina & Rüpke, Jorg (ed.). A companion to the archaeology of religion in the ancient world. 2015. xiii+502 pages, several b&w illustrations. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell; 978-1-4443-5000-5 hardback £120.

Hobley, Brian. The circle of God. An archaeological and historical search for the nature of the sacred: a study of continuity. 2015. v+807 pages, numerous colour and b&w illustrations. 2015. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-78491-137-9 paperback £110.

Does memory have a material correlate, or is it primarily performative? This is clearly an issue of importance for archaeology, and for archaeologies of religion in particular. Another in the Wiley-Blackwell series of companions, A companion to the archaeology of religion in the ancient world, edited by Raja and Rüpke, positions itself at the intersection of archaeology and religious studies. It presents 35 contributions on varied aspects of religious practice across the Graeco-Roman and late antique worlds. Unlike some recent handbooks, the editors provide an extended introduction explaining the rationale for the selection of topics. They place particular emphasis on religion as practised (orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy) and as documented through the archaeological evidence.

The chapters are divided into sections: ‘Archaeology of ritual’; ‘Embodiment’; ‘Experiences’; ‘Creating spaces of experience’; ‘Designing and appropriating sacred space’; ‘Sharing public space’; ‘Expressiveness’; ‘Agents’; and ‘Transformation’. Memory, therefore, is not highlighted as a core theme and, although it is touched on in several chapters (including Weiss's contribution on ‘Perpetuated action’ linking ephemeral speech acts and monumental writing), its presence is muted. This thematic variety helpfully reminds us that memory is neither a universal nor default interpretive framework for dealing with sacred or, more specifically, religious space. The chapter by Christopher Smith on ‘Urbanization and memory’, however, focuses directly on that theme in relation to republican Rome. He makes the case that personal and collective remembering are central to religious practices, but he also sounds a note of caution about both the intellectual origins of ‘memory’ and its interpretive limits. He questions, for example, the applicability to the ancient world of ideas advanced by Assmann and Ricoeur, on the basis that they were developed in response to particularly modern sensibilities. His case study of republican Rome links memory to the emergence of urbanism through architecture, calendars, spectacles and the decision to preserve, destroy or reconstruct sacred buildings as part of urban development. What is valuable here is that Smith makes explicit some of the assumptions about memory that lurk unstated behind papers in several of the other volumes under review.

Several contributions touch on memories of ancestors, especially Parker's ‘Public and private’ chapter and von Hesberg et al.’s ‘Religion and tomb’. Other topics include amulets, anatomical ex votos, dance, processions and communal dining. Méniel takes us through the evidence for the gruesome sequence of ‘Killing and preparing animals’ for sacrifice at Gallic sanctuaries, and the chapters by Rüpke, and Mol and Versluys explore individual choice in religion and communal religious identity respectively. Ironically, the chapter on ‘Images’ offers only a single photograph, and the volume as a whole feels under-illustrated.

That visual sparseness stands in stark contrast to The circle of God. An archaeological and historical search for the nature of the sacred: a study of continuity by Brian Hobley. The title page of this enormous volume announces that it contains: “Over 400,000 words (excluding appendices); 800+ pages, 1,050 illustrations”. The Contents alone are listed across nine pages, and the indices—one for the text and one for figure captions—take up 70 more. The hypothesis with which Hobley launches into this monumental work, however, is simple: “circularity in Greco-Roman and ‘barbaric’ western European art and architecture—whether in the form of a circle, sphere or related motifs may be not only decorative or structural, but also symbolic” (p. 10). Specifically, he aims to link circularity to the divine in the form of the Sun. The 45 chapters of densely printed text and abundant illustrations are divided into 10 sections. Part 1 provides introductory chapters on symbolism, and Part 2 considers ‘The Sun as a universal symbol’. Part 3 turns to ‘Neolithic and Bronze Age circular structures’, and Parts 4–9 move to the Greek, and especially Roman, world. Part 10 deals with ‘The solar world of Christianity’.

Hobley makes clear that he must transcend disciplinary divides in order to address his question, and, following a brief theoretical excursus—touching only lightly on cognitive archaeology—he presents hundreds of archaeological, architectural and iconographic examples. Circular monuments, buildings, artefacts and symbols follow one after another in a seemingly unending catalogue: Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, the Nebra disc, Greek tholos tombs, the Pantheon and Mont Saint Michel to name only a fraction. Despite the number and diversity of examples presented, not one of these is casually tossed in. Each is discussed in detail and scrupulously referenced in the footnotes (these are not quantified on the title page but must run to 5000+). The literature cited is scholarly but thins notably from the turn of the millennium, perhaps an indication of the inordinate amount of time it must have taken to compile this volume.

The mass of examples presented stems from Hobley's working method: “the consistency and continuity of [the circle's] association with deity, in particular solar deity, become much more suggestive when a broad spectrum of sources is considered” (p. iii). He explicitly notes that the book “is not meant to argue at length the validity of symbolism [. . .] since this argument is ongoing”, but rather it “is meant to provide a resource for those with learned interest in the broad meaning of circular symbolism and who wish to extend their archaeological and historical investigations across different disciplines in a more comprehensive way” (p. iii).

The origins of Hobley's interest in circularity can be traced back to his work on an unusual circular enclosure excavated in the 1960s at the Roman fort at Baginton in Warwickshire. Back then, he interpreted the structure as a gyrus (horse arena). Fifty years on, he now suggests that “it can be understood as a geographical Tropaic sacred solar axis mundi centrality structure” (p. 670). He implies that his earlier interpretation must be rejected as the structural form has no parallel in the Roman world, although it is not obvious that universal symbolism explains its uniqueness within Roman military contexts either.

Hobley's book is about far more than circular structures. He works exhaustively through concepts and examples relating to alignments and arches, cones and concentricity, obelisks and the omphalos, pyramids and palm trees, sky props and pillars, wheels and zodiacs; there is even a section on the tonsure. With such a mass of material, it is inevitable that a few errors have crept in; the now lost monument of Arthur's O'on, for example, stood close to the Antonine Wall, not Hadrian's Wall (p. 340).

Where Hobley's study intersects with memory is through Christian appropriation of ancient sites: the erection of crosses (especially the Celtic Ring cross), or the construction of churches within circular monuments such as the henge at Knowlton in Dorset. But whereas the other volumes under review allow for the meanings of these sites to change over time, Hobley sees “a remarkable continuity” (p. iii). For example, in his discussion of Scottish stone circles in The lives of prehistoric monuments, Bradley notes that although “certain elements were retained or copied when these sites were reused: their orientations, their concern with the setting sun, and their association with the dead, [it] is not clear whether it happened because cosmologies were especially resilient” (p. 340). By contrast, Hobley's review of the evidence leads him to a more confident position: “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, collectively, human kind since earliest times recognised and identified with the beneficially divine nature of the cosmos/sun either directly or through theological surrogacy (deities)” (p. 672).

It is not easy to digest a book of such immense ambition and content, and to appreciate all of its strengths and weaknesses. Hobley emphasises the centrality of the archaeological evidence, even though much emphasis falls on iconography and architecture; the sections on the Roman and Christian eras are the most substantial (and nuanced), enriched by the insight available from textual sources. Many will be uneasy about what they perceive as a random, if substantial, assortment of archaeological examples assembled from across disparate geographic and temporal contexts. The criteria for inclusion are, after all, not always apparent. Why, for example, are nuraghi included but not brochs? And why Bronze Age round houses but not Iron Age ones, even though the latter have attracted much work on cosmological significance? Conversely, would material that is all but excluded, such as square Romano-Celtic temples (briefly mentioned on p. 126) change the conclusions? Hobley would argue that the very existence of circular forms and solar alignments from such diverse periods and places supports his contention, but, out of context, it is difficult to appreciate fully their specific meanings or how those meanings may have changed over time.

The breadth of material presented in this book is extraordinary, and Hobley's passion for this project is apparent on every page. It raises intriguing research questions and connects with a long history of studies that have sought a connection between the sun and circular monuments; for example, William Stukeley on Avebury (briefly discussed on p. 163); the more recent work of Richard Bradley (Reference Bradley2012) on the persistence and significance of circular archetypes is, however, uncited. Nonetheless, among the abundance of material that is discussed, few readers could fail to find something new.

Fieldwork memories

Gero, Joan M.. Yutopian: archaeology, ambiguity, and the production of knowledge in northwest Argentina. 2015. xxv+367 pages, 134 b&w illustrations, 25 tables. Austin: University of Texas Press; 978-0-292-77202-1 paperback $27.95.

Kirch, Patrick Vinton. Unearthing the Polynesian past: explorations and adventures of an island archaeologist. xix+379 pages, 70 b&w illustrations. 2015. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press; 978-0-8248-5345-7 hardback $45.

If people in the past used monuments, artefacts, sites and symbols to create memories and to allude to earlier times, then the practice of archaeology itself is no less a form of memory making, actively selecting and prioritising particular periods and places for wider cultural and political attention. The next two volumes each look back on archaeological fieldwork, recalling memories of people and experiences—but with quite different motives.

Yutopian: archaeology, ambiguity, and the production of knowledge in northwest Argentina by Joan Gero recounts a collaborative US-Argentinian field project undertaken in the 1990s to study an early Formative-period (200 BC–AD 500) site called Yutopian in the Cajón Valley, Argentina. But this is no conventional site report; indeed, it intends to explore “the venerated genre of archaeological writing called ‘the monograph’” (p. 5). Critique of the dispassionate and objective site report is, by now, well known. Alternative formats, however, have not proved easy to find. Gero provides one possible model, embedding in the narrative what might conventionally be dismissed as irrelevant details: how the collaboration began (over a steak dinner in Cambridge), how the site was located (in the fug of a fever) and how a small test pit fortuitously aligned exactly with an in situ grinding stone (perfect for convincing funders of the wider potential of the site). Gero argues that all of these coincidences, negotiations and decisions, conventionally excluded from traditional site reports, feed into the production of knowledge: “I will try not to gloss over the messy parts and ambiguous bits. Without wanting to produce a full-length confessional document, at least I will try not to replicate the sins of my forbearers [sic.] by making the facts look obvious, unambiguous, transparent and natural” (p. 11).

The book adopts an innovative format of short alternating sections that divide the text into ‘Narrative’ (explaining the project), ‘Argument’ (“a priori intellectual positions”, p. 6); ‘Episodes’ (describing fieldwork); ‘Backstories’ (context); ‘Socio-politics’ (confronting the realities of archaeological practice); ‘Andean Ways’ (recounting “vivid moments [. . .] not as ethnographic parallels but rather to stir the imagination about how lives are lived differently”, p. 7); and ‘Data’. The latter requires no gloss here—but that is the point that Gero contests. What we presume to understand as objective ‘facts’ are actually constructs (a theme outlined in a section categorising the ‘Cleaning, ‘Pushing’, ‘Stretching’ and ‘Machining’ of data). The book's 100 sections—inelegantly called ‘bits’—are gathered into 10 larger groups organised in chronological order from the project's origins, through fieldwork and finds analysis, to wider conclusions. Although fragmented into many sections, the text is designed to be read as a coherent narrative rather than cherry-picked for data or interpretations.

Gero's aim is not simply to prevent what might otherwise be relegated to folkloric memory from being written out of the record—actively forgotten—but to recognise how all of this intimately shapes the conduct, results and conclusions of a project. The resulting book is a very readable account, and anyone who has worked on an archaeological project, especially in a foreign country, will recognise the problems and serendipities thrown up by the social, cultural, political and financial realities of fieldwork. For example, Bit 9, ‘Why excavate at Yutopian?’, describes the transition between the discovery of the site and the formulation of the research questions required for grant applications. Those questions revolved around the perceived paradox of dispersed and undifferentiated settlements, with the extensive circulation of exotic goods such as decorated pottery. Gero confesses that, in fact, “for us, the site was the answer, not the question” (p. 49), and that the sterility of the funding application contrasted with the personal and “passionate memories of the site” (p. 50).

So what did the project discover about the Early Formative in this region of Argentina? Summing up, or ‘Putting the project to bed’ (Bit 98), Gero discusses the successes and the things that might have been done differently (regrets even—“I'm afraid many old assumptions are still intact”, p. 344). What might conventionally be called the conclusions is labelled ‘Postscript: Early Formative society: where's the monumental?’ Here, Gero provides a brief comment on the research question that underpinned the funding, if not necessarily the original motivations. The circulation of exotic goods are understood to have reproduced “chains of social knowledge and obligation” that in time came “to define and hold in balance much of what is central to the Early Formative identity” (pp. 367–68). This exchange network should be understood, tentatively, as ‘monumental’ in the sense of bringing people together, cooperatively, across time and space.

The volume is nicely illustrated with photographs of landscapes and artefacts, drawings, plans and maps (although not graphs—“conventional mechanisms of closure [that] stabilize notions with variable meanings”, p. 344). In exposing the production of knowledge as it does, this book is highly innovative; yet at the same time, the experiences discussed by Gero will confirm what many archaeologists—explicitly or implicitly—already know about the practice of archaeological fieldwork. For a book about archaeological ambiguity, it is perhaps apt that it is both revelatory and familiar.

A different take on memory is provided by Unearthing the Polynesian past: explorations and adventures of an island archaeologist—the archaeologist in question being the author, Patrick Vinton Kirch. This substantial and highly readable memoir has three aims: “to convey the sheer adventure of doing archaeology in the islands of Polynesia” (p. xiv), to communicate what has been learnt by this work and to document the change in archaeological thinking that has occurred during Kirch's professional lifetime.

The story unfolds across 23 chronologically arranged chapters. We hear about Kirch's childhood interest, partly inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki voyage, and, especially, the role of the Bishop Museum in nurturing his fascination with the ecology and archaeology of the Pacific islands. And he started early, developing contacts and working in the field from 13; he was soon undertaking his own excavations and planning sites with a plane table and alidade (a technique that “To this day, I prefer”, p. 28). The 1960s—Kirch's formative years—were pivotal and exciting times in Polynesian archaeology: radiocarbon was establishing the historical depth of island cultures, important discoveries were being made and new ways of thinking were in the air. If the wider history of these archaeological developments is well known, Kirch provides insight into the impact of all this on a curious young mind.

Reflecting on the summer of 1969, Kirch recalls “a special time, a time when archaeology was undergoing an intellectual revolution [. . .] It was also a more naïve time, before the pace of ‘development’ gripped the islands”. He continues “it was a simpler time; I do not regret having lived it” (p. 43). Kirch certainly makes clear some changes are less than welcome (“the incessant barrage of e-mail that occupies ever increasing chunks of my time”, p. 333)”, but this is not a nostalgic memoir. Nor do Kirch's many memories of his encounters with a stellar cast of Polynesian archaeologists ever feel immodest. The text strikes a perfect balance between the narratives of wider archaeological research in Polynesia, Kirch's own fieldwork projects and his personal life; in fact, they merge seamlessly.

The book concludes with ‘Reflections’, in which Kirch reviews the developments in archaeological theory and method from the 1960s through to the present, and his own contributions to, and criticisms of, them. He classifies himself firmly as a processual archaeologist (of the cultural evolution strand) and is critical of the more extreme forms of post-processualism (a path that leads “in ever tighter and convoluted circles of self-criticism until you fly up your own arse and disappear”, p. 329). Methodological, especially scientific developments, including radiocarbon, U/Th dating and XRF have transformed understanding in ways unimaginable to the young Kirch. The rise of CRM archaeology, meanwhile, is characterised as the Good, the Bad and Ugly—respectively, more money, more grey literature and more corners cut. He also puts in a plea for the future of the Bishop Museum, which played such a pivotal role in stimulating his early interests: institutions that no longer expand their collections or engage in research are “museums of museums” (p. 336).

Although written from a different theoretical perspective and in a different style to Gero's account of Yutopian, Kirch's book skilfully shows how social networks, coincidences and events are integral to archaeological theory and practice. These are not anecdotal memories; they are integral to an understanding of Polynesian archaeology. Fluently written, nicely illustrated and as informative as it is engaging, Unearthing the Polynesian past is highly recommended.

Contested memories

Starzmann, Maria Theresia & Roby, John R. (ed.). 2016. Excavating memory: sites of remembering and forgetting. xv+405 pages, several b&w illustrations. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; 978-0-8130-6160-3 hardback $100.

Jenkins, Tiffany. Keeping their marbles. How the treasures of the past ended up in museums—and why they should stay there. 2016. ix+369 pages, several b&w illustrations. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-965759-9 hardback £25 & $34.95.

In closing, we turn to books that deal with memory in the context of heritage and museums. Excavating memory: sites of remembering and forgetting, edited by Starzmann and Roby, presents 17 chapters, plus introduction, examining how memory can become a point of contention, particularly between official and unofficial accounts. The contributors explore how some social groups use remembering and forgetting to make themselves dominant by silencing “a noisy cacophony of unofficial memories” (p. 10); nation-state building is the most obvious example. As with Gero above, co-editor Starzmann here argues for reflection on positionality: are we “implicated and complicit [in these] hegemonic discourses” (p. 19)?

The papers are divided into four sections: ‘Sites of contestations: memory work in the nation-state’; ‘Unremembered heritage: memories and silences’; ‘Storied landscapes: memory as embodied practice’; and ‘Violence and conflict: excavating painful memories’. Most of the case studies concern examples from twentieth-century contexts, with wide regional coverage including Europe, Central and South Africa, North America, India, Russia and Armenia. Some of the highly diverse examples are already well known, including Dachau, Francoist Spain, the US-Mexican border and Ireland's Magdalen Laundries; others, including Blair Mountain in West Virginia, less so. As before, it is impossible to discuss every contribution, and two must suffice.

González-Ruibal provides a compelling account titled ‘Land of Amnesia: power, predation, and heritage in Central Africa’. Reflecting on his experience of archaeological fieldwork in Equatorial Guinea, he asks “What happens when the work of domination has been so systematic and violent that alternative memories have been thoroughly shattered?” (p. 131). He argues that as heritage is a specifically Western concept, its absence in non-Western contexts should not be inherently troubling. Cultural memory, on the other hand, is universal, and he turns to Gramsci's notion of hegemony to consider what happens when collective memory has been so thoroughly erased that subaltern responses to official discourses are non-existent. He recounts the effects of Spanish colonialism and the politics of post-independence, examining their impact on the reception of his fieldwork results by local communities who see little connection with, or value, in the past. Describing a lecture in a local school, González-Ruibal recalls that “the students kept asking me questions about Knossos, Pompeii, and the Romans, despite all my efforts to illustrate archaeological questions with African sites” (p. 142). González-Ruibal seems to concede that his conclusions are bleak, but they also provide a powerful political and intellectual critique.

The chapter by González-Tennant, ‘Hate sites in places: folk knowledge and the power of places in Rosewood, Florida’, turns to a very different geographic context: the south-eastern USA. In 1923, an outburst of violence led to eight murders and culminated with the complete destruction of all the African-American buildings in the settlement of Rosewood. González-Tennant presents his detailed archive research and fieldwork to reconstruct the Rosewood community and to understand its violent end. One strand of evidence is folklore, and he discusses a ghost story attached to the locality. Initially, he dismisses the story as a trope—the ‘vanishing hitchhiker’—but he comes to recognise the tale as a form of memory that both recalls the event yet erases collective responsibility for it. González-Tennant therefore argues that the expression of racism through interpersonal violence has been replaced by symbolic violence; not coincidentally, he notes that an interpretation panel at the site “is the most vandalized historical marker in the entire state of Florida” (p. 235).

A ‘word cloud’ of this book would surely emphasise terms such as trauma, violence, erasure, damage, abuse and destruction. The contributors engage deeply with memory and its social and political significance in order to reveal these injustices, swept under the carpet by official narratives, and to highlight the insurgent histories fighting back. After reading this collection, one might feel rather ground down and uncertain as to whether painful memories can ever be overcome. Conversely, one might feel uplifted by the exposure of historical wrongs and the proactive attempts to improve lives in the present. Either way, it is noticeable that as we move from memory in the distant past to the memory of more recent events, the tone changes. Heritage, González-Ruibal reminds us, is “the creation of distances” (p. 136).

A final take on memory is provided by Tiffany Jenkins in Keeping their marbles: how the treasures of the past ended up in museums—and why they should stay there. The subject matter—control of the past—is similar to that addressed in Excavating memories, but Jenkins adopts a very different approach. Her premise is that museums have lost their way and are “struggling to find their place in the new millennium” (p. 9). The causes lie in the rise of the ‘culture wars’ and ‘identity politics’ that have emerged in the vacuum created by post-modernism and political disillusionment. The subsequent challenges include calls for the repatriation of objects and demands for museums to reinvent themselves as socially relevant in the present, and to correct the historical wrongs of the past. Jenkins is “intrigued as to why museums stimulate such hostility, not only in relation to historical collecting practices but also with regard to their role today” (p. 159).

The chapters are grouped into two sections. The first examines how some of the great museum collections were acquired; the second considers how issues such as repatriation have undermined the role of these museums in recent decades, and how museums might respond. The earlier chapters cover material that includes the expeditions of James Cook, the evolution of cabinets of curiosities into public museums, Napoleon in Egypt, and the British in Benin and China. Most of the examples will be familiar but are ably discussed here. Jenkins's own position is relatively clear from the start—she describes herself as a “repatriation sceptic” (p. 7)—but this is not a one-sided account. In addition to building a case for the positive effects of these collections—challenging Scripture, transforming Western art and so on—Jenkins also gives space to those critical of collectors at the time and how, and the text does not shy away from the increasingly rapacious and politicised nature of collecting throughout the nineteenth century. The narrative gathers pace closer to the present, moving more swiftly through the effects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring.

Part II documents how the rise of post-modernism has recast museums as bastions of Western rationalism and objective knowledge, leaving them open to the accusation that they are colonial and elitist, and vulnerable to claims for the repatriation of objects. Central to Jenkins's argument, however, is that repatriation demands are as strong from within institutions as from outside and it is consequently no surprise, she argues, that the response of museums to such claims has been inadequate. Similarly, she perceives a failure of museums to reassert robustly their core mission (“loaning hundreds of precious artefacts is not the same thing as making an argument for the museum and its universal value”, p. 247). She concludes that “The negativity around museums today invites repatriation claims, and undermines the good reasons for museums to hold artefacts” (p. 181).

Jenkins picks through the repatriation debate, and, although sceptical about such claims, presents the arguments on both sides; she even concedes the emotive power of museum objects. But ultimately she refutes any “causal relationship between those artefacts from ancient civilizations and people's sense of identity in the here and now” (pp. 207–208). Instead, she makes a case for common humanity or universalism: a concept that seems to be undergoing a wider revival of interest.

To resolve all of this, Jenkins turns to an approach based on “what is best for the object, scholars, and the public: where is the artefact best preserved, best displayed, and best understood?” (pp. 248–49). Although the book is explicitly not intended to resolve specific cases, Jenkins takes the Elgin Marbles as an example of how the approach might work. Here, she reasons that the status quo works well: it allows the two parts of the collection—in the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum—to do different and complementary jobs. One provides the physical context through proximity to the original site, the other provides the broader context of world art influenced by the sculptures. If claims based on national ownership are set aside, she suggests, more is lost than gained by concentrating the objects in one place.

This is not just a book about repatriation. It also covers wider ‘culture wars’ and the rise of ‘identity museums’, the pros and cons of embedding archaeologists in war zones, and much more. The main concern expressed throughout is that “We have lost sight of what museums can do, whilst explicitly expecting them to achieve far more than is possible” (p. 322).

Her conclusions are stated in terms rather different from those in Excavating memory: “It is time to stop revelling in the wrongs of the past” (p. 323); “The mission of museums should be to acquire, conserve, research, and display their collections to all. That is all and that is enough” (p. 324). She continues, “The object should be at the centre of the museum, not you and me. The questions that should be at the heart of museums are these: who came before us, how did they live, what did they believe, what did they make, how did they make it, and what did these treasures mean?” (p. 324). Whether the proponents on either side of the repatriation debate can be reconciled through this line of argument is probably too much to hope. Jenkins, however, throws down questions that extend far beyond such issues and that merit serious discussion within and beyond museums.

If some issues around heritage, such as the Elgin Marbles, seem to have achieved stalemate, others are fast moving, such as the continuing human and cultural fall-out from the civil war in Syria. A news story about refugees who have fled to Germany being trained to guide visitors around Berlin's museums is too recent to have been included by Jenkins, but it surely illustrates her argument. For the project's organisers found that the Syrian and Iraqi guides not only connected with objects acquired from the Middle East, such as the Ishtar Gate from Babylon, but also with displays about post-war Germany. Imagery of ruined German cities “gives them hope that destruction in war is not the end of history. For many, it is a kind of eye-opener, and it gives them hope for the future of their countries” (BBC News). Memory, as the monument builders of prehistoric Europe knew well, is as much about the future as it is about the past.