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The Materiality of Troubled Pasts

Archaeologies of Conflicts and Wars

The Materiality of Troubled PastsArchaeologies of Conflicts and Wars

Edited by Anna Zalewska, John M. Scott and Grzegorz Kiarszys

Warszawa – Szczecin 2017

The Materiality of Troubled Pasts. Archaeologies of Conflicts and Wars Edited by Anna I. Zalewska, John M. Scott and Grzegorz Kiarszys

© Anna I. Zalewska, John M. Scott and Grzegorz Kiarszys © Contributors 2017

Authors are legally and financially responsible for the illustrations used in their individual contributions in this volume.

Scientific reviewWłodzimierz Rączkowski

Published byDepartment of Archaeology, Szczecin UniversityRoadside History Lessons Foundation

Book designDariusz Skalski

Printed byMD−Print Skalski [email protected]

Front cover Archival photograph from 1915 of the mass grave in Korbka (central Poland). Courtesy of Jacek Czarnecki.

ISBN: 978-83-943365-3-0ISBN E-Book: 978-83-947370-1-6

AcknowledgementsThis volume has been supported by a number of institutions whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Financial support for printing of this book has been provided by Szczecin University, NEARCH, National Science Centre and Roadside History Lessons Foundation. Publikacja została zrealizowana przy wsparciu finansowym Komisji Europejskiej. Publikacja odzwierciedla jedynie stanowisko autorów i Komisja Europejska nie ponosi odpowiedzialności za umieszczoną w niej zawartość merytoryczną.

Druk jednego z rozdziałów tej publikacji został sfinansowany ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki przyznanych na podstawie decyzji numer DEC-2013/10/E/HS3/00406.

Thank you SVD and KJP

Warszawa – Szczecin 2017

Contents

Notes on Contributors ............................................................................................ 7

Introduction: Materiality of Troubled Pasts. Archaeologies of Conflicts and Wars .................................................................................... 11Anna Zalewska, John M. Scott, and Grzegorz Kiarszys

I. Troubled Landscapes and Contested Places ...................................... 21

Inconspicuous and Forgotten Material Memories of the First World War: The Case of a POW Camp in Czersk, Poland ..................... 23Dawid Kobiałka, Mikołaj Kostyrko, and Kornelia Kajda

Babi Yar & Rep`yahiv Yar. Reconciliation of 1942 GX Luftwaffe Air Photos With Horizontal 1941 Wehrmacht Imagery Taken by Johannes Hahle ........................................................................................ 41Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski

Absent Presence of Great War Cemeteries in the Municipality of Bolimow, Central Poland ........................................................................ 55Anna Zalewska and Grzegorz Kiarszys

II. Archaeologies of Crimes and Troubled Heritage ............................. 83

From the ‘Coursed Soldiers’ to the ‘Steadfast (Unbroken) Soldiers’ in Poland. Towards Restoring Individual Identity of the Stalinism Victims .. 85Krzysztof Szwagrzyk

Archaeological Studies on World War II Totalitarianism in the Yard of a Mediaeval Hill Fort in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine ................... 99Dominika Siemińska

Between Clause and Reality – the Case of Unknown Human Remains from Kałuszyn ............................................................................................... 121Aleksandra Orłowska

The Archaeology of a Mass Grave from Nephi, Utah, and One Event ofthe Walker War, Utah Territory. Excavations at 42JB1470, Nephi, Utah .... 137Ronald J. Rood

III. Scenes of Troubling Events. Narrating Material Remains ........... 163

The View From the High Castle. Babylon Transformed and the Ambiguity of the Aerial Perspective .......................................................... 165Grzegorz Kiarszys

The Bombing of Pantelleria Island (Italy) ................................................. 179Marco Belogi and Elena Leoni

A Hundred Years of Memory of the Great War in Western Ukraine: Case Studies of the Battlefields at Makivka and Lysonia ........ 197Adrian Mandzy

Wadi Yutm, Southern Jordan: Modern Conflict Archaeology Illuminates The Great Arab Revolt ................................................................................. 215John M. Scott

Notes on Contributors 7

Notes on Contributors

Marco Belogi holds a degree in Geological Sciences and is a Geographic Officer in the Italian Army. He holds the present rank of Lieutenant Colonel and has served in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. Scientifically, LTC Belogi is involved in studying aerial photography and cartography as applied to military history. He is the author of two books, Pantelleria 1943 - D-Day nel Mediterraneo published in 2002 and Spring 1945 – From the Apennines to the Po river published in 2011.

Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski was born in Scotland and now lives in the United States of America. He has authored several studies on WWII era GX air reconnaissance photography, most notably the seminal study, Katyn: An Interpretation of Aerial Photographs Considered with Facts and Documents published in 1995.

Kornelia Kajda is an archaeologist and cultural anthropologist working at the Institute of Archaeology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland). She is a researcher with two European projects: ANHER and NEARCH. Her works concentrate on issues connected to the contemporary archaeology, heritage studies and public archaeology.

Grzegorz Kiarszys is an archaeologist at the Institute of History and International Relations, Szczecin University, Poland. His main research interest focuses on methodology of archaeology, non-invasive methods, social theories, and both practical and theoretical consequences of the application of GIS in archaeological landscape studies.

Dawid Kobiałka is an archaeologist and cultural anthropologist from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His work focuses on the archaeology of the recent past, public archaeology, and heritage studies. Recent publications include articles in Current Swedish Archaeology, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, Antiquity and International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

Mikołaj Kostyrko graduated in archaeology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland). He is interested in biography of landscape and application of remote sensing techniques in archaeology. He is a PhD student in the Institute of Archaeology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

Elena Leoni is an archaeologist who works mainly in the Middle East and Central Asia. She is also a Selected Reserve Officer in the Italian Army and actively works in preservation of military history and archaeological heritage.

8 Notes on Contributors

Adrian Mandzy is Associate Professor of History at Morehead State University (Morehead, KY). He has conducted battlefield studies for more than 15 years and has worked on military sites in the Ukraine and the United States. His works include studies of the the Siege of Zbarazh (1649) and the Battles of Zboriv (1649), Poltava (1709), Blue Licks (1782), the Crater at Petersburg (1864), Lysonia (1916) and Kosmach (1945).

Aleksandra Orłowska holds a degree in archaeology. She is a PhD student at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Science. She works as the inspector of archaeological monuments at the Provincial Office of Monuments Preservation in Warsaw. Her main interests are preservation and management of archaeological heritage, legal regulations, theory and practice of the preservation of the monuments in Poland, and ‘public archaeology’.

Ronald J. Rood is archaeologist who has worked across the Intermountain West and has 30 years of archaeological experience working for private consulting firms, academic institutions, and state and federal agencies. For 15 years he was the Utah Assistant State Archaeologist where he focused on public outreach and education and managed the Antiquities Section’s field research and human remains recovery programs. In that position, he assisted with permitting and Section 106 Compliance. He has supervised numerous large-scale archaeological inventory and data recovery projects in Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota and Utah. His research interests include the analysis and interpretation of animal bone from archaeological sites, the analysis of human remains, hunter-gatherer research and public education in archaeology.

John M. Scott holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in anthropology from the University of Northern Colorado that were focused on the antiquities of the Arabian Peninsula. He also holds a PhD from the University of Bristol, UK, for which he conducted archaeological surveys in southern Jordan using the theoretical approach and methods of Modern Conflict Archaeology. As a senior staff archaeologist at Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc., Eagle, Colorado, USA, he has 34 years of North American and international archaeological experience. Scott has also lived in the Middle East and was involved in Great Arab Revolt archaeology in southern Jordan for seven years.

Dominika Siemińska holds a PhD degree in archaeology. She is a member of the team conducting archaeological excavations and exhumations of the victims of World War II in Polish territory, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Since 2012, she has been the head of research at Vladimir Volyn and at other locations of World War II Polish martyrdom. Currently she works as an archaeologist for the Institute of National Remembrance.

Notes on Contributors 9

Krzysztof Szwagrzyk is an historian whose brainchild is the programme ‘Search for the unknown places of burial of communist terror victims 1944-1956’, aimed at locating, disinterring and identifying those executed and murdered in the Stalinist period. The programme is implemented by the Institute of National Remembrance. He is the author of numerous scientific works on the long awaited process of research, discovery, and recognition of the individual identity of those murdered during the communist period in Poland. Since 2016, he has held the position of vice-president of the Institute of National Remembrance. He is also a university lecturer.

Anna Zalewska, archaeologist and historian working at the Institute of Archaeology at the Maria Curie- Sklodowska University and Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences; interested in methodology and history of archaeology; pro-social archaeology; uses and abuses of material remains; transdiciplinary studies; memory studies; landscape studies; non-invasive archaeology; material-discursive practices; the history of chemical weapons from the perspective of victims; modern conflicts archaeology and education for peace. She is currently (2014-2018) the Principal Investigator of the project on Archaeological Revival of Memory of the Great War (ARM).

Anna Zalewska, John M. Scott and Grzegorz Kiarszys

Introduction: Materiality of Troubled Pasts. Archaeologies of Conflicts and Wars

The phenomena of troubled pasts composed of conflicts and wars seem to be an inalienable part of being human. Social relations and social processes of conflict, specifically war, have long drawn the attention of researchers in the social sciences and humanities. For Example, the fields of psychology (Ramirez 2003:17) and sociology (e.g., Simmel 1904; Coser 1956; Dahrendorf 1957; Rummel 1975-1977), have accepted the paradigm that conflict underlies much, if not all, human social interaction. Anthropologists have also regarded conflict as a social phenomenon that triggers and interacts with other social events and processes (e.g., Haas 1990; Otterbein 2004). Archaeologists began analysing social conflict by focusing on violence and war from a biological evolutionary point of view and took the sociopolitical approach during the 1940s (Otterbein 2004:2-23). Recent archaeological investigations (Schofield 2005; Allen, Arkush 2006; Saunders 2010) have clearly shown the efficiency and relevance of material culture studies for conflicts and warfare which have occurred in prehistoric, historic, and contemporary cultures. Also, in the contemporary, interdisciplinary archaeologies such as Modern Conflict Archaeology (Saunders 2010; Scott 2015) and Combat Archaeology (Schofield 2005, 2009) that are identifying and investigating the modern phenomena of massive industrialized warfare and global conflicts in which the horrors of war are exponentially multiplied.

What we stress with the presentation of this volume falls within a dynamic anthropological approach which clearly indicates that the current human presence in the world is significantly shaped not only by the actions of past conflicts but also by the current social and material memories of conflicts. These memories anchored in the long history that has shaped us (González-Ruibal 2008; Zalewska 2013; Moschenska 2015) can over time become altered and corrupted. Proving that these horrors occurred and continue to occur can sometimes be difficult.

As demonstrated by the papers of this volume, contemporary archaeologies reach beyond the simple recording of the remains of battlefields and zones of conflicts. They attempt to understand conflict with its past and continuing horrors and their social implications, which will help maintain the integrity of our social and material memories. We hope that by documenting the material culture of conflicts and by making others aware of these horrors, we are contributing to a more peaceful future.

The papers presented in this volume are multidisciplinary and advance the study of conflicts and wars by providing clear examples

12 Introduction: Materiality of Troubled Pasts...

of how troubled relations, that have occurred across time, are in many ways still present and are currently as much local as global and as much personal as universal. These papers pose poignant questions and make unique observations on the phenomenon of the materiality of troubled pasts.

The origins of the volume

This volume is not a post-conference collection of papers. However, some chapters are rooted in individual presentations given during two different conference sessions. The first one titled Contemporary Archaeology. Conflict Archaeology. Martyrdom of the Twentieth Century Archaeology was part of the First Congress of Polish Archaeology held in Warsaw on 20 September 2013. It was during this conference that, for the first time in Poland, the challenging issues related to the archaeology of the recent past were discussed collectively and publicly (Zalewska 2016). The second session titled Archaeologies of War(s) (1914-2014) as the field of the entanglement of landscape archaeology, conflict archaeology, memory studies and... was held at the Annual Conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Istanbul, Turkey, on 13 September 2014. It was during this latter session that two of the editors of this volume met for the first time.

Both sessions were proposed by Anna Zalewska with her conviction that it is worthwhile and necessary to discuss the following questions both internally and externally (particularly in a transnational milieu): How can complex and sophisticated interdisciplinary methods, such as invasive and non-invasive landscape archaeology, impact materially-mediated memory of wars? In what sense can the strategy of ‘conflict archaeology’ be useful in ‘archaeological therapy’, understood as dealing with traumatic pasts and managing conflicting memories? Are the motivations of those interested in the meanings and roles of material traces of troubled pasts to be challenged from an ethical point of view?

During the intensive session in Istanbul, researchers from Western and Eastern Europe, America, and Australia responded to these questions in 20 presentations. Their responses established the value and necessity of developing trans-disciplinary approaches that blur the divide between archaeology of the contemporary past, historical archaeology, memory studies, landscape studies, and ethnography. This transnational session also revealed that numerous, often still pressing, and painful issues appearing ‘on the edge of the trowel’ or in research reports are present when one is in touch with the material culture of troubled pasts. This was no ordinary EAA conference; there was a vibrating atmosphere that resulted from the differences between East and West, ancient and postmodern, Asian and European, and what is obvious and what remains (and will remain) unspoken.

Introduction: Materiality of Troubled Pasts... 13

When the decision was made to organize the Archaeologies of War(s) session, it seemed obvious that it had to stress not only the ways in which the material remains of war had thus far been interrogated and reflected on through the use of archaeological tools, but it also had to emphasize the potential social effects and outcomes from such activities. These discussion led the participants into a wider debate on World War I heritage from the critical viewpoint of a real social actor’s experience, our ‘grandfathers’ (Nicolis et al. 2011). It is the ‘candid moral engagement’ that can help to build a multi-vocal and encompassing ‘archaeology of us’. Also, the recognition of ‘warscape’ as an intelligent path that led from rhetoric to enhanced realities, and as an eco-cultural resource driven by the present day role of cultural management, was crucial to further discussions, with Nicholas Saunders and Armando de Guio, who unfortunately did not manage to take part in that publication, but to whom we would like to thank in this place very much for the inspirations and inextinguishable encouragements.

The structure of the volume

In order to provide the reader with a better understanding of the volume’s focus, an explanation of its three sections with a summary of each paper is provided. The papers are problem-oriented and as such not presented in chronological order. This was done to keep the volume focused on certain phenomena that seems common to modern conflict and that are found in the abyss of experiencing the difficult past of and interaction with the remnants of conflict culture.

Troubled Landscapes and Contested Places

Conflicts and wars leave permanent marks on the landscape. It is these remaining constructed cultural landscapes that are often the longest existing witnesses to conflicts, and they may be the only perceivable material record of those conflicts. Depending on the needs of the present, these landscape records may be seen as evidence, (see Godziemba-Maliszewski in this volume) or as ‘material warnings’ (Zalewska 2013a, 2016; see also Zalewska and Kiarszys in this volume).

With the passage of time, these marks are permanently transformed by subsequent human activities and natural forces. Some are strengthened while others are weakened, and as true for semantics as well as material. In order to characterise the material remains constructed and deposited through these complicated processes, the metaphor of a palimpsest can be engaged (Crawford 1953; Saunders 2001). Within this metaphor, the surface of the earth is understood as a type of manuscript (the palimpsest) written and erased many times. It includes also the problematic material points of references left by recent past human actions important in shaping historical sensitivity and awareness (Zalewska 2013). Beyond the fact that the palimpsest metaphor was thought to capture landscape processes in


general, it fits particularly well with ‘conflict landscapes’ and ‘contested places’ (Saunders 2012) or, in this volume, ‘troubled landscapes’.

As used in this volume, ‘troubled landscapes’ are understood to include not only material relics and ‘signs’ that have been added, or subtracted, but also the material that has been altered in the course of transforming the landscape. In a broader and integral sense, ‘troubled landscapes’ integrate memories and identities created by the human experience from being in and acting upon the landscape. The combination of memories with the spaces in which they were initiated, constructed, and associated with on many levels, may create significant and often sensitive ‘places’.

There are community places, which are ‘cyclically active’ (McAtackney 2013: 236) and ‘multi-vocal’ (Saunders 2001: 37) and others that are passive and silent. More significant places can be the basis for ‘concepts of historic identity and contemporary meanings [of memory, which] are continually negotiated’ (McAtackney 2013: 236) and may be contested by various groups who engage with their materiality in dissimilar ways (Kobiałka et al. in this volume; Saunders 2001). Furthermore, places can be characterized by their ‘absent presence’ (Zalewska and Kiarszys in this volume).

Places connected with a difficult past and the memories transmitted by these ‘places’ can be re-recognized and reinterpreted at the community level by each successive generation and at the individual level by each witness, participant, descendant, and stakeholder, etc. The memories endure because they are passed from one generation to another and from one individual to another, even if selectively (Moschenska 2015). Social memories, specifically those of conflicts and wars constructed between their associated primary context of past events and the present, are often too painful to be recalled by some and even more difficult to be forgotten by others. As demonstrated by papers in this section, the entanglement of place and human memory can also be interrupted and changed by political and ideological forces.

It is through a dynamic anthropological archaeology that material remains and memories can be more closely realigned with the original circumstances of their formation, and it is through this process that they gain additional value and meaning. The legibility of such material ‘carriers’ of meanings (i.e., material remains and place burdened by conflicts and wars) found within the landscape depends largely on the ability of archaeologists to identify, interpret, and represent them in a unique manner. While ‘[f]acing the devastation and pain [modern conflict] brought about by failed modernities, ... what we need is a kind of revelation—another way of seeing Auschwitz or Belzec’ (González-Ruibal 2008:251), but also Czesrk, Bolimow, Babi Yar and Rep’yahiv and many many other contested places.

In the first paper of this section, Dawid Kobiałka, Mikołaj Kostyrko and Kornelia Kajda use archaeology to relate a story about Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk, a POW camp in Czersk, Poland.


The camp was established by Germans during World War I, soon after the first advances of the Prussian Army on the Eastern Front. It was primarily constructed for Russian POWs, however, some Poles (soldiers of the Russian army), Romanians, and a small number of Entente Cordiale soldiers (e.g., Frenchmen, Italians, and Englishmen) were imprisoned there as well. According to the testimonies of witnesses, the living conditions in the camp were horrendous, with a high rate of prisoner deaths contributing to its infamous reputation. The Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk camp ceased to exist in November 1918, and after the war, the camp was dismantled by the Polish Army. Archaeologists have tried to piece together fragmentary historical and archaeological sources in order to create a narrative about the dark years of the camp. The remains of dugouts, barracks, roads, ditches, and a railway line, as well as the whole spatial plan of the camp and the nearby cemetery are archaeological evidence-the material proof-of the atrocities recorded in the landscape. Together with uncovering unknown chapters of a World War I POW camp in Czersk, the authors discovered that they were in fact dealing with a contested place sentenced to be disowned and forgotten since the very beginning of its existence.

Waclaw Godziemba-Maliszewski presents in his paper an example of place where an unimaginable horror of World War II was experienced. His research combines Luftwaffe GX aerial photographs with photographs taken in 1941 by war photographer Johannes Hähle, proving that the two sets of images depict the same mass graves of executed Jews at the Babi Yar and Rep’yahiv ravines near Kiev, Ukraine. Godziemba-Maliszewski refers to both historical sources and eyewitness testimonies and points out that the locale had been used since at least the 1930s by Soviet Union security police for the concealment of thier executed prisoners. Thus, the ravines of Babi Yar and Rep’yahiv later became the aim of USSR propaganda to change the symbolism of these places and to obliterate collective memory about some of the ‘inconvenient’ facts from the past.

The last chapter of this section is by Anna Zalewska and Grzegorz Kiarszys, who discuss a very specific category of contested place: the war cemeteries left along the Eastern Front of the Great War in central Poland, where approximately 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers from both the Russian and German armies lost their lives. This front considered to be among the bloodiest engagements in the eastern theatre of war where the German Army tested and used a chemical weapon several times. The authors’ begin with sketching the primary context of the soldiers’ deaths, whose shadow still lasts as absent presence of war cemeteries in the region of the Rawka and Bzura rivers. After presenting the battlescape where the static front was established by the end of 1914 and remained in place until July 1915, when the Russian Army withdrew from the battlefield to the east, the process of archaeologically reviving the material memory of those fallen is introduced. The material


remains of the battlefields, specifically the numerous war cemeteries, which are in different states of preservation and have varied status, are presented. The authors take into account not only what once was, and what is left of what once was, but also how it is treated today and why, and what might be the future of World War I cemeteries in the landscape and social discourses.

Archaeologies of Crimes and Troubled Heritage

The archaeological study of conflict often produces material discoveries which are difficult to manage. Evidences of war crimes, mass graves, battlefields, and war cemeteries are troubled heritage. Different than any other type of heritage, material remains of crimes are difficult to approach. It is emotionally and often politically charged material and frequently evokes personal feelings, making it subjective and difficult to interpret. It also raises radical attitudes, from full acceptance to total rejection - depending on the social context, and the horizon of experience and expectations.

The paper by Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, first in this section, refers to the wide scale investigation of crimes committed between 1944-56 by the Communists in Poland. It is an in progress investigation, expected for a very long time by a considerable number of Poles. The research led by The Institute of National Remembrance has so far uncovered facts about the methodical extermination of Polish citizens as well as national and ethnic minorities living within Poland’s territory. As the author points out, most of the crime scenes and burial grounds were purposefully concealed, so that they would not become places of commemoration for the regime’s murder victims. These circumstances made such locations difficult to identify for over half a century, until in Poland, striving ‘to discover the truth’ and ‘to restore the identity of those treacherously murdered and hidden’ became important, despite the fact that identification of the victims is difficult.

Planned archaeological investigation of troubled heritage had long been awaited, but was not easy to implement for political reasons. Dominika Siemińska discusses in her paper the way in which today’s archaeologists approach the scene of a crime that was conducted by the totalitarian regimes of the Nazi and Stalinist systems. Siemińska presents archaeological data on the mass graves discovered in the vicinity of the former prison in Volodymyr-Volynskyi (Ukraine), which is material proof of the countless murders and the tragedy caused to the victims’ families. This case study refers to the historical castle of King Casimir III the Great, which was turned into a prison in the 19th century. The prison used during World War II by the Soviet NKVD and later by the German Gestapo, was identified by witnesses as a place of execution and burial. After World War II, the Communist regime immediately concealed any discovered evidence of mass graves. It was not until 1997 when the first exhumation work was conducted in the castle that


the extent of the atrocities started to become known. In 2017, thanks to the results of archaeological research partially presented in this paper, the scale and specificity of the tragedies that took place seven decades before is now better known.

Archaeologists can be held responsible for ‘creating’ unwanted heritage, and their investigations can instigate dissonance when scientific conclusions do not meet social expectations. Aleksandra Orłowska in her contribution provides a discussion about just such a situation. She refers to a case study from Kałuszyn, a small town in eastern Poland where one element of the foundation of local identity was the memory of Polish insurgency during the January Uprising of 1863. The material symbol of this connection with the past was a so-called war memorial burial located at the centre of the town’s market square. Orłowska explains what happened when archaeological exhumations brought to light a completely different story than had been expected and assumed by the local community.

Ronald J. Rood provides the final paper of this section and presents material proof of an historical crime discovered accidentally by construction workers in Nephi, Utah, USA. Referring to historical sources and the written testimony of witnesses, Rood uses archaeological and anthropological expertise to conclude that the discovered anonymous human remains were Native American victims of a well-known crime that occurred in 1853 at the Nephi settlement during the ‘Walker War’. He reflects on the challenging role of the archaeologist in such situations and provides an interesting perspective in which archaeologists are not limited to the excavation or the recording of discovered relics.

Scenes of Troubling Events. Narrating Material Remains

The category of ‘conflict’ is often used as an explanatory vehicle in archaeological narrations due to its broad meaning and an inclusion of collective memories that are frequently contradictory. Different perspectives produce dissimilar versions of the same past events, especially those from the recent past. Thus, in what may seem a paradox, the papers collected in this volume are in fact not just about past conflicts but rather more about the reinterpretation of the collective memories of a troubled past. They are also attempts to understand cultural phenomena present in contemporary social discourse. With additions of changes in knowledge and perspectives, well-known historical events may appear in a new and unexpected light.

The first paper of this section is by Grzegorz Kiarszys who deals with political and historical circumstances connected to the ‘conflict zone’ in Middle East, with reference to the concept of cultural identity and the role of past events. He presents a case study of the unique archaeological site of Babylon that has long been considered one of


the main symbols of Iraqi identity, and which also became the scene of troubling modern events. From the very beginning of his reign, Saddam Hussein, the fifth president of Iraq, emphasized an interest and pride in Iraq’s cultural heritage. The site of Babylon played a crucial role in that narrative, and a larger part of the site was transformed in the 1980s to fulfill ideological expectations. However, Kiarszys points out that the interpretation of these motifs is not as straightforward as one may think.

In their contribution, Marco Belogi and Elena Leoni also refer to a specific myth created during a military clash. They discuss the circumstances of the World War II destruction of Pantelleria, a small volcanic Mediterranean island whose defences were reinforced between 1920 and 1939 by a decision of the Italian government. The Allied Command considered the capture of Pantelleria a crucial objective in their plan for the invasion of Sicily. The island of Pantelleria, however, had significant military defences consisting of numerous shore and anti-aircraft batteries, an aerodrome, and a large military garrison. Before its surrender, the island was heavily bombed for days, turning the harbour town into rubble. Yet, some eyewitnesses claimed that the town was actually demolished by the Allies several days after their landing. Belogi and Leoni search for the explanation of how the myth of Pantelleria’s ‘after battle destruction’ came to life and propose an explanation by engaging the arguments entangled with the material remains of that claim. The authors also stress that the remains of this troubling event are gradually being perceived as having great heritage value, but at the moment, some are still abandoned while others are transformed without any particular historical, architectonic or public archaeology criteria.

A closer view of the aftermath of military conflicts, together with their critical evaluation, may result in valuable conclusions for cultural studies. In his paper, Adrian Mandzy argues that the collective memory of war and certain events that occur during war may become a foundation of national identity. The author focuses on the history of a World War I Ukrainian Legion, a unit of volunteers in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and discusses the long term aftermaths and meanings of military engagements fought by that unit on Makivka Mountain and Lysonia Ridge. After World War I, Ukrainian Legion battlefields became important places and national symbols, but another battle over Makivka and Lysonia was soon to be fought, this time for the collective memory of these contested places. Due to political changes after World War II, the history of the Ukrainian Legion became a subject of Soviet propaganda, and these battlefields were not allowed to be publicly commemorated. After the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the memory and the meaning of the Makivka and Lysonia battles and the battlefields were revived. Mandzy stresses the crucial role they played in the process of establishing a non-Soviet Ukrainian identity.


John M. Scott presents a case study of the capture of Aqaba during the Great Arab Revolt (1916-1918), a rebellion of Arab Bedouin tribes against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Based on results from his Wadi Yutm Archaeological Survey in southern Jordan, the author attempts to debunk the myths that have grown over time around that conflict and T. E. Lawrence’s role in it. He refers to new archaeological evidence and local Bedouin oral histories to fill in gaps of knowledge about the capture of Aqaba. His reinterpretation strips some of the romance from the story of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and sheds a different light on the well-known historical event.

The Materiality of Troubled Pasts

Through analysis of the materiality of the multi-temporal layering of troubled pasts, archaeologists gain opportunities to realize and share with the audience both the cognitive complexity and the social importance of these pasts. The significance of ‘material witnesses’ and ‘material warnings’ along with the specific meanings (changing in time and depending on taken perspective) attached to them are becoming the subjects of growing interest and dynamic discussions among archaeologists and other stakeholders all over the world. We hope that the components of this volume in which the authors presented reliable outcomes of research, investigations, surveys that uncover and present the material and mental traces of past conflicts and wars will add profundity to an understanding of their social and material values and meanings.

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I

Troubled Landscapes and Contested Places

Dawid Kobiałka, Mikołaj Kostyrko, Kornelia Kajda

Inconspicuous and Forgotten Material Memories of the First World War: The Case of a POW Camp in Czersk, Poland

AbstractThis chapter is a case study of a prisoner of war (POW) camp in Czersk, Poland, established by Germans during the First World War. The site of the Czersk camp provides a context for the presentation and discussion of three issues concerning archaeological research of the recent past. The first issue concerns how each branch of archaeology, including archaeology of the First World War, is by definition archaeology in and of the present. The second discussion is an attempt to conceptualize the First World War as an archaeological event. The third issue concerns reclaiming material memories of First World War POWs of Czersk by using the remote sensing technology of LiDAR. The chapter concludes with the observation that there are inconspicuous and forgotten material memories of the First World War that can be reclaimed only through the craft of archaeology.Keywords: archaeology of the recent past, First World War, POW camp, memory, materiality, LiDAR, landscape

Introduction

The starting point of this chapter is a premise that archaeology does not approach and reconstruct the past; rather it approaches the material remains of the past in the present (Shanks 2012). In other words, archaeology is more about human relationships with what is left of the past than about the past itself. In short, it is material culture—the small, ordinary, banal, often broken and rusty things and their fragments—that archaeology has focused on as an academic discipline since the mid 19th century (Lucas 2004). Material culture has always been of interest to archaeologists. Indeed, archaeology is as much about studying material culture of the nineteenth twentieth or even twenty-first centuries as it is about studying Neolithic potsherds or any

Zalewska A.i., Kiarszys G. 2017. Inconspicuous and Forgotten Material Memories of the First World War: The Case of a POW Camp in Czersk, Poland. In: A.I.Zalewska, J.M.Scott, G. Kiarszys (eds.) Materiality of Troubled Pasts Archaeologies of Conflicts and Wars, Warsaw-Szczecin, pp. 23-39.

24 Inconspicuous and forgotten material memories...

other premodern material culture. This long standing relationship of archaeologists and material culture is precisely one of the reasons for the fascination and growing interest with the recent and contemporary past by current archaeologists (e.g. Buchli, Lucas 2001; González-Ruibal 2012; Harrison, Schofield 2010; Holtorf, Piccini 2009; Kobiałka 2014; Olivier 2004; 2013; Olsen 2010; Olsen et al. 2012; Schofield 2005). Some archaeologists have described the research of modern material culture as an archaeology of the contemporary past (e.g. Buchli, Lucas 2001), while others prefer archaeology of the recent past (e.g. Olsen, Pétursdóttir 2014a). Although there are some conceptual differences between the various terms (Burström 2008; González-Ruibal 2008), both can be reduced to archaeological investigations into the value and meaning of material heritage of the recent past in the present.

The consequences of paying attention archaeologically to material relics of the recent decades are reaching further than it may appear. In a nutshell, some archaeologists have convincingly argued for an abolition of designating what belongs to the domain of a proper archaeological research and what does not. To put it bluntly, each piece of material heritage has an archaeological value, no matter how old or new it is. It is matter that matters to the archaeologist, not the dating of a certain artifact. As Olivier (2013: 124) has accurately stated:

no lines can be drawn between what belongs to the province of archaeology and what does not. Everything is archaeological, even the near past, even the present moment in which we now find ourselves …. Appearances notwithstanding, archaeology deals only indirectly with the past. The object of its study is the present, or more precisely put, time as it is inscribed in the present.

From this point of view, every variation of archaeology is by definition archaeology in and of the present (Harrison 2011). There is neither Neolithic archaeology nor Bronze Age archaeology, for example. Neolithic potsherds are no less contemporary than the Soviet ruins in Poland built during the Cold War (Kobiałka et al. 2015a). Along these lines, Bronze Age material culture is as much a part of the present as is the material culture of broken glass and rusty cans found during this study’s archaeological survey of the POW camp in Czersk. Indeed, it can be said that all this material and landscape are historically constituted, and at the same time they constitute the material present; they are elements of material assemblages of the contemporary world (Olsen, Pétursdóttir 2014a). Eventually, this can be conceived as one of the fundamental premises of archaeological engagement with the material remains of the bygone and recent pasts. Here lies also a theoretical strength and uniqueness of archaeological perspective which we follow in this study (González-Ruibal 2008; Olivier 2004).

Inconspicuous and forgotten material memories... 25

It was with this prescribed anthropological perspective, presented above, that the archaeological survey of the Czersk POW camp was conducted. We go even further and claim that the First World War is an archaeological event. We argue that it is archaeology that can bring back material memories of that camp by analyzing material transformations in the landscape particularly through the use of the remote sensing tool of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). It is our conclusion that there are inconspicuous and forgotten material memories of the First World War that only archaeology can reclaim. The First World War, its material remains, and the transformations it caused in the local landscapes belong not only to the past. They are part of the present too. Namely, POW camps dated to the First World War are archaeological sites that deserve closer archaeological attention and field research.

The First World War as an archaeological event

The First World War (1914-1918) was a historic event. Simply put, the First World War was a global conflict that changed the world (Hart 2014). It is ‘History’ with a capital ‘H’, and its various aspects have been analyzed by historians almost since the day it ended (e.g. Hart 2014; Reynolds 2014). In contrast, archaeologists until recently viewed the material remains of the First World War as ‘too recent’ to have any archaeological value. The situation, however, changed around the early 1990s among archaeologists in Western Europe and the UK (e.g. Carr, Mytum 2012; Demuth 2009; Saunders 2007; see also Myers, Moshenska 2011; Moshenska 2013; Mytum, Carr 2013). Today, archaeologists study all aspects of the First World War and excavate trenches, battlefields, so-called no man’s lands, and, what is especially relevant to this discussion, POW camps.

However, in some Polish academic communities, archaeologies of the First World War and the Second World War (or, more generally, archaeologies of modern conflict [Schofield 2005]) are still often perceived as beyond the interest of a ‘proper’ archaeology. Fortunately, this understanding has been changing during the last years. In fact, one can say that modern conflict archaeology slowly gained its deserved ground in Polish archaeological discourse. Several authors provide examples of this reconfiguration in archaeological books and articles on the World Wars and their aftermaths (Głosek 2010; Kobiałka et al. 2015b; Kola 2005; Krzepkowski 2013; Ławrynowicz, Żelazko 2015; Zalewska 2013, 2016), and there are substantial archaeological projects on the material aspects of modern armed conflicts such as Archeologiczne przywracanie pamięci o Wielkiej Wojnie... (Archaeological Revival of Memory of World War I…)1 or Miejsca pamięci i zapomnienia. Badania interdyscypliarne Jury Krakowsko-Częstochowskiej (Places of Memory of

1 https://www.ncn.gov.pl/finansowanie-nauki/przyklady-projektow/zalewska, accessed 25.02.2017.


Forgetfulness. Interdisciplinary Research in the Northern Areas of Polish Jurassic Highland)2.

These and other examples call for recognizing the archaeological value of heritage of the recent past. In this regard, everything seems to be archaeological, as has been pointed out by Olivier (2013: 124):

It [archaeology] breaks down, layer by layer, the various transformations that have been effected as a result of man’s occupation of a site, beginning with the first stone laid, the first foundation raised. This explains perhaps why we need to study not so much what archaeology produces as what it produces has proceeded from. Archaeology that will affect the future, anything that is going to last, anything that is going to shape future constructions and transformations must be considered archaeological.

Hence, an archaeological event consists of all material formations, transformations and constructions of local landscapes, as well as artifacts found within these elements that last until the present, and potentially shape the future. Indeed, this is a broad definition, but its breadth allows archaeology to open up to new fields of interest and research problems. Olivier (2013) provides an example of such approach. According to this French archaeologist, the catastrophes in Chernobyl and Fukushima were events of archaeological importance. Equally, one could claim that the catastrophes were archaeological events precisely because they have transformed and materially shaped the local landscapes for hundreds of years. Similarly, we consider the POW camp is an archaeological site as much as the material culture used by soldiers at the Western and Eastern Fronts is archaeological heritage (Kobiałka et al. 2017; Rola et al. 2015).

The writings of the First World War seem to be dominated by the total and global aspects of conflict, but it must be emphasized that history always includes micro-histories and micro-events that touch only certain people, things and places. One such forgotten location where the First World War took place (to a certain extent) is the German POW camp at Czersk, Poland.

The site: the German POW camp in Czersk

Due to the first victories of the Kaiser’s army over the Russians in August and September of 1914 in East Prussia (e.g., battles of Tannenberg and Mława), tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were taken prisoner (Karpus, Rezmer 1997)3. The Germans were simply not prepared to

2 http://najurze.uni.lodz.pl/, accessed 25.02.2017.3 Karpus and Rezmer’s (1997) book is about a PoW camp in Tuchola which was

located approximately 30 kilometers from the camp in Czersk. Nonetheless, the


detain so many prisoners and were forced to quickly organize POW camps in West Prussia in which Russians could be detained. Among the biggest camps were those in Tuchola, Czarne, Bytów and Czersk (Figure 1). Our focus on Czersk (Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk) turned out to be an excellent case study for our archaeological investigations of material memories of the First World War (Kobiałka et al. 2017).

Although the camp was primarily built for Russian POW soldiers, surviving historical documents suggest that Polish, Romanian, and a small number of Entente Cordiale (e.g. Frenchmen, Italians and Englishmen) were prisoners at the camp as well. Czersk was eventually closed in November 1918 (Karpus, Rezmer 1997: 17).

Most of the barracks, dug-outs and other facilities in the Czersk camp were constructed by the prisoners. Camp guards and officials were stationed in wooden barracks (Figure 2) and the prisoners were kept in dug-outs (Figure 3). One prisoner described the moment of his arrival to the camp in the following way:

book contains very useful historical data about the camp in Czersk as well. We relied on these data while outlining a broader historical context of the Czersk camp.

Figure 1. Location of the camp (© Mikołaj Kostyrko).


The next day after unloading us from the cattle boxcars we were made to clear large areas of the forest. Emaciated by starvation from the first day of captivity, we had to work beyond human capability. – If you want to have a roof above your head in the winter – shouted Wachmans [the guards] – you have to work hard. After clearing this part of the forest you will build dug-outs here. Nobody will do it for you (Milewski 1993: 9; translated into English by the authors).

Indeed, according to Karpus and Rezmer (1997), living conditions in the camp were tragic. It was always wet and cold, particularly in the dug-outs, and the guards continually mistreated the prisoners. Rations were insufficient and, according to historical documents (Milewski 1993), the menu of the prisoners consisted of half a loaf of bread, with soup, for lunch and dinner.

Figure 2. Propaganda German postcard presenting the camp in Czersk (wooden barracks in the front) (© Archive of the Czersk Town Hall).

Figure 3. Propaganda German postcard presenting the camp in Czersk (dug-outs in the front) (© Archive of the Czersk Town Hall).


Caused by bad living conditions, poor rations, and infectious diseases, prisoner attrition was terrible. Karpus and Rezmer (1997) claim that 2,416 Romanian soldiers died in the camp just in 1917, and it is likely that by the end of the war, 8,505 prisoners had not survived their stay at the camp. Some of the German First World War camps were later reused by the Polish army during the Polish-Soviet War between February 1919 and March 1921. Their selection of camps for reuse was indicative of the suitability of various camps. For example, the German camp in Tuchola was reoccupied by Poles to detain Bolsheviks, but the camp in Czersk was in such poor condition that the Polish army decided to close and dismantle it (Karpus, Remzer 1997).

Unfortunately, no detailed plan of the camp has been found, and only a few historical documents concerning it exist today. First World War German propaganda postcards and pictures (Figures 2, 3) produced by the camp’s guards provide a small glimpse into life in the Czersk lager. It is in such cases as Czersk, where there is little documentation and razed structures, that archaeology might be in a privilege position to analyze forgotten memories of such places. Archaeology is able to reclaim inconspicuous and forgotten material memories of the First World War through the analysis of various material remains and transformations of the camp’s landscape. This is a crucial contribution of archaeology to the preservation of material heritage of the First World War.

Reclaiming material memories of the German POW camp in Czersk

Surviving postcards and pictures present the camp in Czersk as a huge centre for the detention of soldiers where the prisoners’ hard work changed the local landscape into a place. They cut down the woodland and built barracks, dug-outs, watchtowers, ditches, bath houses etc. There was also a railway line created by the prisoners. Rubbish pits also had to be dug. The place was again transformed after the end of the war with the barracks and other facilities dismantled by the Polish army (Karpus, Rezmer 1997).

The material relic that evocatively suggested that somewhere around Czersk there was a First World War POW camp is the cemetery located in the nearby woodland. It is one and a quarter hectares in size and a place where almost nine thousand prisoners from the camp in Czersk were buried. In a nutshell, the image of the cemetery is dreadful, consisting of a forest of concrete crosses in the woodland (Figure 4). The cemetery has recently been renovated with reconstruction of a wooden gate and fence. Unfortunately, the local authorities also changed some old concrete crosses for new ones, and the dog tags (metal military identification tags) placed on each of the old crosses are gone. In the central part of the cemetery stands a small pyramid, a monument built by the prisoners to commemorate their comrades who lost their lives in the camp. Thus, it appears that the


local authorities socially keep alive the memories of the prisoners who died in Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk. The cemetery is an official site of memory. However, the place where the prisoners actually lost their lives (the camp) is beyond any official protection. As a matter of fact, local authorities do not know exactly where the facilities were located – which became apparent during the interviews we conducted with civil servants in the town hall of Czersk.

The camp that once caused radical changes in the local landscape has been obliterated. Fortunately, material transformations in the landscape do not usually vanish completely. Something endures till the present (Figure 5). Of course, the rusty things once used by the prisoners and their guards as well as subtle remains of barracks and dug-outs for example do not offer a complex or personal account of the lives of the prisoners as do memories written by the guards (Milewski 1993). In fact, material memories (remains) afford a focus on a different kind of past. It is as Bjørnar Olsen and Christopher Witmore (2014b: 168) correctly noted about their research on a POW camp in Svarhold, Norway:

[A]s archaeologists our emphasis is on the slower material past that also provides the fundamental ontological grounding of our practice, since enduring things are what make our craft possible. And this fundamental ‘condition of possibility’, we assert, also enables the disclosure of different pasts and different memories from those conveyed in historical accounts and narrations.

Figure 4. Forest of concrete crosses in the woodland: the POW cemetery were prisoners of the camp in Czersk were buried (© Dawid Kobiałka).

Figure 5. Between social oblivion and material memories of the landscape: contemporary vista of the area where dug-outs were located (© Dawid Kobiałka).


One method of collecting data useful in the interpretation of the material transformation (memories) of landscape is Airborne LiDAR. This remote sensing technique (Airborne Laser Scanning) was introduced to archaeology at the end of the twentieth century (Holden et al. 2002) and has since become a valuable resource for landscape studies. LiDAR enables archaeologists to zoom in on the most subtle features in the landscape that had been beyond their focus until now (Mlekuž 2013a: 119, 2013b). The material memories of the POW camp in Czersk proved suitable for LiDAR mapping. Today, most of the remaining features where barracks stood and dug-outs were placed

Figure 6. An overview of the POW camp in Czersk. Interpretation of LiDAR-derived data [visualization: slope gradient, sky-view factor (16 no. of directions, search radius=10) and multi-hillshade (16 no. of directions, sun elevation angle 25°)] (© Mikołaj Kostyrko).


are not easy to discern during field-walking or survey. However, as we will present, it is possible to visualize these former structures and their positions from an analysis of microtopographic changes in the landscape, which can be observed through close inspection of LiDAR-derivatives (Figure 6).

The Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data were obtained by the authors from the Polish Government’s Geodesic and Cartography authority. The specific data used was originally collected for the country’s IT System for protection against extreme hazards. The area of our interest was recorded with no less of a density than eight points per square meter with ground points taken on an average spacing interval of 0.51m. This produced a 0.5m resolution digital terrain model (DTM), which was interpolated and later visualized using different algorithms (Kokalj et al. 2013).

Figure 6 presents a general interpretation of the camp based on LiDAR-derivatives. Interestingly, the material memories of the local landscape distinguishable in this image enabled us to distinguish two main parts to the camp: a northern one and a southern one, which visibly differ from each other. The northern part was located along the railway track which did not survive to the present. It consisted of two separate clusters of dug-outs along a north-south axis. One cluster consists of 26 distinguishable traces of dug-outs, which were approximately 40 meters long and eight to nine meters wide. Their remains are almost completely unnoticeable in the local landscape. The same situation existed for the second cluster of dug-outs in this part of the camp (Figure 7), which consisted of 22 dug-outs located along a northwest-southeast axis. Their shape and dimensions were very similar to the ones from the first cluster.

LiDAR-derivatives enabled us to also distinguish the probable location of the camp administrative buildings. They are smaller in comparison to the dug-outs and have a square-like shape, but are distinguishable from guard buildings which sat on the ground rather than being dug into it. The clusters were, as pictured in the aforementioned postcards, fenced. However, material traces of the fences were much harder to distinguish in the data visualizations. Other types of pits were distinguishable, but their function was indeterminable when relying only on the LiDAR data. The camp is also crossed by contemporary roads, which are in use by the forest administration and local communities. The local landscape is a material assemblage consisting of different (memories) remains from various contexts. It has been used and re-used during the last century in many ways, and memories of these various usages still endure in the forests near Czersk.

Due to the fact that this northern part of the camp was located along the railway track, the location of the dug-outs is accessible. As a consequence, this part of the camp has been to a great extent destroyed by so-called treasure hunters, as observed during the field-walk. However, there is documentation of the northern part of the camp in


some of the German propaganda postcards (Figure 8; see also Figures 2, 3).

In contrast to the northern part of the camp, the southern seems to be in a better condition (Figure 9). Its dug-outs were located approximately 300m from the cemetery. In this part of the camp, they are smaller and

generally square-like with each encompassing an area of 200 m2. We were able to distinguish 51 structures that were probably dug-outs. A fence is also remembered in the landscape. An empty space is between

Figure 7. An image presenting profile lines cutting thorough different structures indicating their shape and subtleness. Some are seen as depressions of less than 20 cm [visualization: slope gradient, multi-scale integral invariants (8 scales starting with radius=2) and multi-hillshade (16 no. of directions, sun elevation angle 25°)] (© Mikołaj Kostyrko).

Figure 8. The interpretation of the northern part of the POW camp based on LiDAR-derivatives and German propaganda postcards [visualization: slope gradient, sky-view factor (16 no. of directions, search radius=10) and multi-hillshade (16 no. of directions, sun elevation angle 25°)] (© Mikołaj Kostyrko).


the dug-outs and may have served as a parade ground (gathering place) for the administration of Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk. Apart from the above mentioned material memories of the camp landscape, we also documented two pits that were located beyond the fence. One interpretation is that they could be material traces of the camp latrines.

Prisoners complained about the tragic living conditions in the camp (Karpus, Rezmer 1997; Milewski 1993). Although stagnant water must have been often present in the dug-outs, a fishbone shaped drainage was documented outside of the southern part of the camp (Figure 9) that may date to the First World War. In accordance with that, it is assumed that the drainage system was built to drain some parts of the camp.

Figure 9. The southern part of the POW camp in Czersk [visualization: slope gradient, sky-view factor (16 no. of directions, search radius=10) and multi-hillshade (16 no. of directions, sun elevation angle 25°)] (© Mikołaj Kostyrko).

Całe to wykreślone zdanie proszę zamienić na:

Although stagnant water must have been often present in the dug-outs, a fishbone shaped drainage was documented outside of the southern part of the camp (Figure 9) that may date to the First World War.


Today, both parts of the camp are in the woodlands. While walking through the camp’s terrain, one encounters silent material memories of the people imprisoned in the Czersk camp. This material culture and the associated structures link the past with the present; they are the material past that endures and affects the present (Figure 10).

Conclusion

This chapter is just a small contribution, but it is also a call for further and more detailed archaeological studies on the First World War and its material memories in today’s Poland. We wanted to emphasize how archaeology, relying on different methods (e.g. LiDAR), can reclaim some of the more inconspicuous and forgotten material memories of the First World War, which was without any doubt, an archaeological event. Accordingly, the material remains of the War are an archaeological heritage worthy of closer archaeological attention.

The process of social commemoration and the reclaiming of memories at such sites as the German POW camp in Czersk is often only possible by the virtue of material memories, and it is archaeology that can reclaim these material memories from small, ordinary, often broken, rusty objects and their fragments as well as from material transformations in the landscapes caused by the First World War. This is an archaeological discipline that studies material memories and how things and landscapes remember and embody distant and recent pasts in the present landscapes.

It can be said that all these things and landscapes are historically constituted and at the same time they constitute the material present. They are elements of the material assemblage of the contemporary

Figure 10. Thing memories: an assemblage of different things found during survey of the northern part of the camp (© Dawid Kobiałka).


world. This should be understood as one of the fundamental premises of archaeological engagement with the material remains of the bygone and recent pasts. Within in it also lies a theoretical strength and uniqueness of an archaeological perspective that was followed in this study.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jolanta Fierek, a mayor of Czersk, for permission to use the postcards and the photographs of the camp that are in the archives of the town hall of Czersk.

This work is part of Dawid Kobiałka’s research financed by the National Science Centre, Poland on the basis of decision no. DEC-2016/20/S/HS3/00001.

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