Archaeo-Ethnography, Auto-Archaeology: Introducing Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past

After significant research effort and publications over the course of a decade, a new generation of writings and research into archaeologies of the contemporary past is beginning to emerge, with a social and political awareness that appears more acute and more focused than before. Perhaps it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this new generation of contemporary archaeologies can contribute in some small way to addressing specific problems and challenges that face contemporary and future society. In this introduction we begin to touch on this possibility, and introduce the papers and authors that explore it in further depth.     

Understanding the July 2016 Military Coup: The Contemporary Security Dilemma in Turkey

This study explores the link between religious identity and conflict in contemporary Turkey by examining the dramatic reversals in the relations between the country’s two prominent Islamic social forces, the ruling party AKP and the Gülen Organization. It shows how a particular trajectory of power and identity between the two religious forces transformed into a brutal security competition in the Turkish society and polity. It puts the analytical foci on the following puzzle: how did the Gülen community — once a confidential ally of AKP — turn into a coup plotter in the Turkish military to bring down the elected government? In order to explore the puzzle, the study offers significant departures from the standard approaches to religious identity and conflict by employing a distinct concept — the inter‐societal security dilemma.     

Early pan‐Arabism in Egypt's July revolution: the Free Officers' political formation and policy‐making, 1946–54

Between 1952 and 1970, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt's Free Officers Movement established the paradigmatic pan‐Arabist revolution from above. Yet it has become something of a cliché to maintain that the Free Officers had no blueprint of action before seizing power and that they later instrumentalised pan‐Arabism in their foreign policy, thinly veiling their actual commitments to Egyptian nationalism and imperialism. By contrast, this contribution underlines the impact of the British colonial context on the Free Officers' political formation and their early identification with pan‐Arabism in turn. Drawing on pamphlets, speeches, media output and memoirs, it shows that the Free Officers developed a distinctive form of anticolonial nationalism that emphasised social justice and invoked overlapping Egyptian and Arab identities. Their aspirations for liberation thus entailed a connected foreign policy and nation building programme in which pan‐Arabism was a prime – and early – component.     

The Limits of Sasanian History: Between Iranian,Islamic and Late Antique Studies

This essay discusses the position of Sasanian Studies from its inception in the late nineteenth century, to its reinvigoration at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The work also discusses the development of the field of Sasanian history and civilization vis-à-vis the three fields of Iranian, Islamic and Late Antique Studies. It is posited that Sasanians have benefited from cross-disciplinary and new historical frameworks that go beyond the traditional field of Iranian Studies, which was never as interested in the history of the period.     

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming": NASA, Oral History,and the Contemporary Past

Over the forty-five years since its creation, NASA has completedliterally thousands of oral histories with people involved inthe agency and its programs. These include formal oral historiesthat collect information on the career of the individual, andshorter oral histories focusing on specific activities. Whilemany were done by scholars working on book projects there havebeen many, and increasingly so in recent years, completed tocapture the recollections of space scientists and engineerswithout a larger project envisioned. This presents a major resourcefor understanding the history of the U.S. space program.Thisarticle discusses the nature and extent of the oral historycollection at NASA, the processes in place for the colRoger