Pasts Otherwise

Developing an objects-based approach through detailed engagements with WWII remains on a remote headland of Arctic Norway, this book attempts to unleash archaeology's potential by opting for pasts that resist historical time and reveal the fundamental importance of an archaeology that is other than history. In this book, two leading theoretical archaeologists and the founding figures of what has been called “symmetrical archaeology” turn their attention to the kinds of pasts that archaeology makes possible. This book attempts to unleash archaeology's potential by opting for pasts that largely resist historical time and the tropes of succession and replacement which has defined the discipline for nearly two centuries.Olsen and Witmore take up this task by targeting objects associated with one of the periods most thoroughly studied by historians, World War II. Building on over a decade of archaeological fieldwork and excavation at Sværholt, an erstwhile Wehrmacht artillery battery at the outermost terrestrial edge of continental Europe, they demonstrate precisely what difference archaeology can make with objects routinely saturated by history. Through in-depth archaeological engagements with the prisoner-of-war camp, fishing hamlet, battery, and garrison they offer pasts other than what archaeologists have always assumed to take historical form.Among the innovations of this richly pictorial book is a novel design that begins with the encounter and works toward pasts otherwise. Along the way, the authors articulate new conceptions of presence, patience, waiting, and the post-history of things, also accompanied by text boxes that offer points of pause, reflection and excursus. Through a detailed engagement with what remains above and below the surface, Olsen and Witmore touch on the central problems of archaeological engagement, inference, and interpretation.