Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past

Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas (editors). 2001. Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. Routledge, London. 191 pp; bibliographies for each chapter and an index.

When the first modern material culture studies got going in the 1970s, there was perhaps an understandable skepticism about their intrinsic value. Despite the anthropologist Laura Nader's recommendations that we should "study up," there are still archaeologists (and certainly large portions of the public) who find the idea of poking around modern day rubbish as trivial or comic. After all, the argument goes, why bother with archaeology if you can ask the people themselves, read historical documents, investigate census records? Don't we know enough about modern day occurrences to make archaeological investigations a waste of time?

The new book Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past goes a long way to discredit the notion that studying the archaeological deposits of modern day peoples is a waste of time. The main chunk of the book is broken into three thematic groups, each introduced by Buchli and Lucas. The first, "Production and Consumption," includes a discussion of consumerism as represented by 19th century Euroamerican fondness for Japanese-style ceramics by Teresita Majewski and Michael Brian Schiffer; a description by Greg Stevenson of 20th century kitsch ceramicist Clarice Cliff as a representation of how consumer goods are affected by current taste, and affect current taste; and a synthetic article by William Rathje on the things learned over 25 years of the Garbage Project.

Part II is entitled "Remembering and Forgetting," and its three articles are David Hart and Sarah Winter on what happens to national monuments when the political structure radically changes, with a case example from South Africa; the Ludlow Collective on their experiences with the Colorado Coal Field War investigations; and Laurie Wilkie on the difficulties and joys of working with informants, be they black sharecroppers or white fraternity boys.

Part III, "Disappearance and Disclosure," is the most harrowing of the three, discussing the fairly new study of forensic science. Articles in this section include a study of the archaeology of a World War II plane wreck by Jean-Pierre Legendre; an article by Mercedes Doretti and Luis Fondebrider on the efforts of several archaeological teams investigating mass political murders in Third World countries; an article by Margaret Cox on why she believes forensic archaeology is so interesting to students today; and a final chapter by Buchli and Lucas on their investigation of the personal effects left behind in a recently-abandoned council house in London. Three summary articles by Buchli and Lucas, Laurent Olivier and Ian Hodder are provided at the end.

But a listing of the table of contents doesn't really do justice to this book. Several ethical points are addressed, such as: How do you include present multivocality when some view points conflict with the archaeological evidence? How do you memorialize horrendous occurrences without glorifying them? What and to whom is the social responsibility of the archaeologist in these situations? What does a National Monument mean and what is it supposed to reflect? What do you do when the answers you find are either not of interest to your public, or worse, contrary to what your public wants to hear?

Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past is a good, interesting book for the professional archaeologist, and really a crucial insight for anyone in heritage management.