http://hdl.handle.net/11089/25308 2026-04-03T22:19:54Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/25377 Kufer pełen wspomnień: (auto)biograficzne podejście do dziedzictwa Kobiałka, Dawid This paper analyses the so-called biography of a thing as a way of thinking about the value and meaning of heritage. A certain, almost 100 years old, trunk is used as a case study to present how heritage is constituted trough relations between people, things, and places. Indeed, heritage is a kind of relation between humans and non-humans. To back up this thesis, this article offers a five-step approach.First, the starting point is Michael Shanks’ thesis that “we are all archaeologists now”. The British archaeologist – it can be said – argues for broadening the archaeological discourse and to look archaeologically at the world we all live in. From this point of view, a Neolithic pot sherd and a contemporary thing such as a trunk, for example, represent the same category of an archaeological artefact. Through their materiality, they both might be objects of an archaeological scrutiny.Second, I shortly discuss the archaeological research on the recent past. Archaeology is a practice anchored here and now. One of the archaeological perspectives that analyses the relics of the recent past is the approach where archaeologists study their own heritage i.e. the histories of their own families. This is the perspective developed further in this paper.Third, it is argued that the theoretical concept known as biography of a thing, can be useful in the context of the archaeology of the recent past. It is the concept that takes into account the past and present of each artefact, landscape or practice. This approach allows for studying both the social and the material memories which are crucial apropos of the archaeological research on the recent past. Here, archaeologists take into account things as well as people’s memories about them.Fourth, an analysis of a trunk which the author found in the grandmother’s basement is used as a case study to present the potential of the archaeological research on the recent past. Some episodes of the biography of a trunk are highlighted to claim that heritage is constituted through different kinds of relations between many agents, both humans and non-humans.And the last point, the trunk is a good example that shows the limitations of archaeological thinking about heritage through the lens of its preservation and management. Indeed, the crucial conclusion of this article is that, sometimes, the less preservation and management of (archaeological) heritage the better for heritage itself. In other words, destruction and decay of heritage are the very part of its biography. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/25378 Relikty zanikłych jednostek osadniczych na pograniczu mazursko-mazowieckim. Interdyscyplinarny projekt badawczy Majewska, Anna The paper presents the proposal for an interdisciplinary, humanistically oriented analysis of extinct settlements on the example of the results of the author’s research project realized on the territory of the Pisz county in the Warmińsko-Mazurskie voivodship. The project, embedded in the current research trend on the transformations of the contemporary landscape, was focused on the analysis of the relics of the 20th century extinct settlement structures and their material heritage. The research topic was based on the compilation of theoretical assumptions of historical geography (e.g. Koter 1994; Figlus 2016) and fieldwork methodology developed through historical archeology, including contemporary archeology (e.g. Vařeka et al. 2008). The results of the study were published in the article on the case study of the disappearing village – Sokoły Górskie. The research results presented both in the form of cartographic synthesis and field surveying studies conducted within landscape structures show the large quantitative and qualitative dimension of transformations that were taking place as a result of violent socioeconomic changes of the 20th century (e.g. rapid depopulation), which were the effect of global armed conflicts. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/25376 Niemieckie zbrodnie nazistowskie w Lesie Lućmierskim w świetle badań etnoarcheologicznych Ławrynowicz, Olgierd; Badji, Justyna; Majewski, Maciej For several years, regular archaeological excavations have been conducted in the Forest of Lućmierz near Zgierz in Central Poland. They focused on searching for the collective graves of hundreds Poles executed by Nazi Germans in Zgierz in 1942, and the location and exhumation of the contents of burial graves from 1939–1940, in which the remains of victims of the German Inteligenzaktion were originally hidden. In both cases, the main difficulty for the researchers was the fact that the Germans carried out actions to erase the traces of the crime, consisting in the cremation of the remains of the victims extracted from the grave. Unclear information regarding exhumations, which was provided by the new Polish administration in the spring of 1045, did not facilitate the research either. The archival inquiry and archaeological research did not answer all the questions. Therefore, in 2014, some ethnographic interviews with the residents of the towns located around the Forest of Lućmierz were carried out. The article cites extensive fragments of the interlocutors’ statements, which have been commented on from the point of view of the needs of the archaeological research. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11089/25375 Problem zanikania pamięci o miejscach spoczynku żołnierzy poległych w walkach nad Rawką i Bzurą w latach 1914–1915 Zalewska, Anna Izabella; Cyngot, Dorota The article deals with the causes and manifestations of the process of disappearing remembrance of war cemeteries from the area of combats on the Rawka and the Bzura rivers during the Great War. The disappearance of the war cemeteries from the landscape and from the social consciousness we describe on the example of one of the communes included in the framework of the project Archaeological revival of the memory of the Great War (acronymically described as ARM). We discuss the attempts to determine the number of resting places of the fallen soldiers as well as the ways to achieve better understanding of cause-and-effect relations, which brought about the current condition of these places. Resulting from war operations of the First World War led from December 1914 to July 1915, tens of thousands of soldiers of Russian and German troops lost their lives in this region. The remains of the fallen in battle, those never buried, and those deposited in war cemeteries and war graves – were left behind on the battlefield. It is worth mentioning that the remains of the fallen, previously unburied soldiers, will be buried in ossuaries, whose foundation we (as archaeologists) postulate in the context of two war cemeteries. One of the recommended places (Joachimów- Mogiły War Cemetery) is situated in the area of discussed here Bolimów commune and the other is in the area of the Nowa Sucha commune (Borzymówka War Cemetery).Referring to the disproportion between the number of places currently regarded as war cemeteries (in the formal and conservatory sense) and the potential number of actual resting places of soldiers killed in the battles of the Rawka and the Bzura in 1914–1915 (in the ontological and humic sense), we confronted what is real with what is formal. This prompted us to ask the following questions: why were the war cemeteries from the First World War left out from the study area; how does this obliteration manifest itself and what contributed to the fact that these cemeteries were deprived of the status of protected places – despite the applicable legal provisions? Helpful in recognition of the undertaken problems was the confrontation of data that made up various forms of prolonging the memory of the Great War such as: ‘archives’ memory’, people’s memory, ‘memory of earth’. These include: • results of the archaeological research identification of selected sites related to military operations through analysis of archival and contemporary aerial photographs and the Digital Terrain Model (DTM – generated from the Airborne Lasser Scanning data, as part of the ARM project, as well as surface surveys and survey excavations of selected objects etc.); • archival data (Files of the City of Łowicz, Chronicle of Łowicz history from the first 9 months of the Great War 1914–1915, W. Tarczyński, Files of Bolimów Commune, regimental books, wartime memoirs etc.), • information obtained by using ethnographic methods (interviews with inhabitants of the region where the battle took place); • anthropological data (anthropological analyses of the remains of soldiers taken during archaeological research from outside war cemeteries).The outcome of correlation of these data is the presentation of the current state of resting places of soldiers killed between 1914 and 1915 in the area of Bolimów commune and a reflection on the links between the past and the present.Based on the critical analysis of the information available, we argue that archaeology can play the role of a common ground for the actions undertaken in relation to the difficult heritage of the not-so-distant past that we encounter in the case of material remnants of the Rawka and the Bzura rivers after the First World War.In our opinion, this example shows that the work of an archaeologist may constitute a unique and valuable field for socially engaged transdisciplinary research. It can also become the basis for reflecting on how far the war, cultural reevaluations and direct and indirect consequences of military actions affect the current state and constant transformation of the entangled anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic entities of the complex landscapes of the former battlefield as well as the landscape of remembrance of the Great War. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z