Whitewashed empire: Historical narrative and place marketing in Vienna

ABSTRACT

The historical narrative of Habsburg grandeur has played a decisive role in branding the Austrian capital of Vienna. While scholars have situated place-marketing strategies within de-historicized frameworks of the neoliberal city, the nostalgic framing of imperial spatial assemblages should be critically interpreted from a historical vantage point. In tourist spaces such as the Kaiserforum, urbanists, museum curators, right-wing groups, and real-estate investors employ the discourse of Habsburg patrimony to leverage past spatial inequalities for contemporary purposes. Such nostalgic narratives obfuscate the historical material conditions of their making. I argue that this very obfuscation constitutes a continuing legacy of empire. I call this process ‘whitewashed empire,’ the redeployment of imperial structures through the preservation, renovation and assemblage of material heritage. As a memorial assemblage of narrative selection and a political economic relation of exploitation, imperial nostalgia extends the work of Habsburg spatial production into the present.     

Displaying marginalised and ‘hidden’ histories at the Imperial War Museum London: The Second World War gallery regeneration project

Using Imperial War Museums’ redeveloped Second World War Galleries as a case study, this provocation discusses the ways in which refocussing outmoded British narratives to a transnational viewpoint and using the interpretive framework of ‘total war’ can help us to deliver new, authoritative and multifaceted narratives where ‘hidden’ histories can be displayed, and scrutinised, in plain sight.     

壁画酥碱病害研究概述

酥碱病害是壁画最为严重的病害之一,被称为壁画的“癌症”。因其受诸多因素的影响,使得病害产生机理复杂、修复材料匮乏和修复方法难度大等问题,严重制约着酥碱病害的修复与防治。本文系统梳理酥碱病害的成因、病害机理、加固材料、地仗修补材料,以及针对不同盐霜的保护修复方法的研究成果,客观评价酥碱壁画修复过程中的经验和教训,为古代壁画酥碱病害的防治与修复提供系统的技术参考和实践借鉴。     

Matilda,Leonor and Joanna: the Plantagenet sisters and the display of dynastic connections through material culture

The material culture related to Duchess Matilda of Saxony, Queen Leonor of Castile and Countess Joanna of Toulouse (and former Queen of Sicily) offers a rich resource that allows us to understand how, when and why they connected themselves to their father, Henry II of England. The objects studied in this article prompt significant questions regarding the relation between material culture and royal women, which allow us to explore the formative phases in women’s lives as well as their roles in the promotion and construction of a dynastic consciousness. Even though the sisters probably acted separately, they did so with a shared awareness of their positions as royal daughters and the need to communicate this collectively. By centring on the three sisters’ objects, this article proposes that the study of material culture is crucial for a better understanding of the co-operation between siblings and can contribute to a more nuanced interpretation of power.     

The nation in bronze and granite: Creating national monuments in post-Soviet Bishkek

Scholars of nationalism have long looked to material forms of symbolic power to understand the politics and cultures of nations, and national monuments specifically have been studied as reflections of ideological programmes of political regimes. However, these approaches have paid insufficient attention to processes of creation. Given the importance of material symbols as sites through which the nation is understood, I argue that analysing the dynamics of creation expands our understanding of symbolic nation making. Using the case of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and focusing on moments of creation and the actors involved in them, I build a conceptual framework for understanding the construction of national symbols on the ground based on three interconnected and co-constituting dynamics: spatial, temporal and aesthetic/semiotic. Using this framework, I demonstrate how meaning and materiality are related to one another both as component and consequent in the creation of national monuments and how it is their very imperfection as material representations that provides the context for the nation to emerge as a category of discourse.     

Storied landscapes makes us (Modern) Human: Landscape socialisation in the Palaeolithic and consequences for the archaeological record

The unusual nature of the Neanderthal archaeological record has attracted the attention of archaeologists for the past 150 years. On the one hand, the technical skill apparent in their lithic technology, the practice of symbolic cultural behaviours (such as burials), and their successful survival in harsh environmental conditions for more than 200,000 years demonstrate the adaptive success and underlying humanity of the Neanderthal populations. On the other hand, the apparent lack of abundant and repeated use of symbolic material culture has resulted in a number of researchers arguing that these populations were largely incapable of symbolism – a conclusion with significant implications for social organisation. This paper reviews ideas regarding the use of ‘place’ or ‘landscape’ by Neanderthals and argues that the identified differences between the archaeological records of Neanderthals and late Pleistocene Modern Humans is not so much the result of significant variance in cognitive capacities, but rather the use of contrasting approaches to interaction with the physical landscape. ‘Landscape socialisation’ is a Modern Human universal, but what if Neanderthals did not participate in this kind of landscape interaction? Would this difference in behaviour result in the apparently contradictory archaeological record which has been created? The ideas presented in this paper are drawn together as a hypothesis to be developed and tested.     

Contested archaeological approaches to mass grave exhumations in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Within the last 50 years, present day Zimbabwe, (Figure 1), formerly Rhodesia, a Southern African country, has gone through various pogroms resulting in the death of over 50,000 people in total both within and outside the country. The massacres consist of the Liberation War (1966–1979); political violence characterized by every election since 1980; the Matabeleland Democide (1982–1987); and the diamond conflict in Marange, Eastern Zimbabwe (2006–2018). These various episodes of violence have produced a myriad of human body depositional sites which include mine shafts, mass graves at schools and hospitals, burials at detention centres, pit latrines, and caves. This paper will analyse the disagreements and antagonism between professional archaeologists and vernacular exhumers that emerged during various limited exhumation of mass graves within the country. The paper will conclude by offering avenues of approaches to mass graves exhumation as the material evidence might in future, subject to judicial inquiries, contribute towards truth telling and peace and reconciliation.     

陕西境内遗址表面CaSO42H2O产生之水盐运移规律研究

陕西境内遗址出土后短时间内表面产生白色物质CaSO₄2H₂O是非常普遍的现象。本研究利用土柱模拟遗址出土后表面产生CaSO₄2H₂O的过程,通过监测土柱中土壤的湿度、含盐量及离子变化综合分析CaSO₄2H₂O产生的原因,研究结果表明遗址出土后形成了新的界面层,在蒸发的作用下,地下水沿土壤孔隙向上迁移,同时将可溶盐带入土壤中,表面的可溶盐含量逐渐增大,达到峰值后不再增加,实验后测得表面土壤中的Ca²⁺和SO2-₄是原始土壤的数十倍,说明遗址表面产生CaSO₄2H₂O是水盐运移的结果。本研究可为遗址出土后预防CaSO₄2H₂O的产生提供依据。