ENGLISH

Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts

By Philip L. Kohl , Mara Kozelsky , Nachman Ben-Yehuda

Book information

Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Year
2008
ISBN
9780226450582, 0-226-45058-9, 0-226-45059-7
LCC
CC135 .S45 2007
Open Library ID
OL10192228M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (3113240 bytes)
Pages
419\419
Topic
History
Library
torrents.ru tech collections 2009-11-14
Time added
2010-01-11 02:35:34

Description

When political geography changes, how do reorganized or newly formed states justify their rule and create a sense of shared history for their people? Often, the essays in Selective Remembrances reveal, they turn to archaeology, employing the field and its findings to develop nationalistic feelings and forge legitimate distinctive national identities. Examining such relatively new or reconfigured nation-states as Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, India, and Thailand, Selective Remembrances shows how states invoke the remote past to extol the glories of specific peoples or prove claims to ancestral homelands. Religion has long played a key role in such efforts, and the contributors take care to demonstrate the tendency of many people, including archaeologists themselves, to view the world through a religious lens—which can be exploited by new regimes to suppress objective study of the past and justify contemporary political actions. The wide geographic and intellectual range of the essays in Selective Remembrances will make it a seminal text for archaeologists and historians. (20070911)

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