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The archaeology of the recent or contemporary past has grown fast during the last decade. This development has been concurrent with a broader popular, artistic and scholarly interest in modern ruins in general.
Ruin Memories explores how the ruins of modernity are conceived and assigned cultural value in contemporary academic and public d
List of contents
1. Ruins - concepts, theories and attitudes 2. Modern ruins and heritage 3. Material memory 4. Aesthetics, art, attraction 5. Abandonment 6. Archaeologies of the recent past
About the author
Bjørnar Olsen is Professor of Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Tromsø, Norway. His research interests include Sámi culture, contemporary archaeology, material culture, and thing theory. His latest books are
In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects (2010),
Persistent Memories: Pyramiden - a Soviet mining town in the High Arctic (2010, with E. Andreassen and H. Bjerck), and
Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012,with M. Shanks, T. Webmoor and C. Witmore).He is director of the Ruin Memories project.
Þóra Pétursdóttir defended her doctoral thesis in archaeology, with the title
Concrete Matters: towards an archaeology of things, at the University of Tromsø, Norway, in November 2013. Her main research interests lie in archaeological theory and practice, thing theory and archaeology of the recent past and present.
Summary
The archaeology of the recent or contemporary past has grown fast during the last decade. This development has been concurrent with a broader popular, artistic and scholarly interest in modern ruins in general. Ruin Memories explores how the ruins of modernity are conceived and assigned cultural value in contemporary academic and public d
