Timothy Kaiser on the Politics of Archaeology in the Balkans

The war [in the Balkans] today has been built upon historical falsehoods. Using first selective readings and misreadings of history to mobilize support, leaders in the conflict then offered up a version of the past as a blueprint for the future. In effect, each side saw the contested parts of Croatia, Bosnia, and Hercegovina as having once been ethnically unmixed and sought to restore that condition. Of course, nothing of the sort ever existed. However, since micro-regional ethnic homogeneity was the goal, and since what is determinative of ethnicity is history, it follows that history, or rather specific parts of the past as they exist in the present, must be eradicated. And that means that places intimately associated with another group's past---a minaret, a bridge, a hillfort---become important targets marked for destruction.

Timothy Kaiser. 1994. Archaeology and ideology in southeast Europe. In Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, edited by Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.