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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Contemporary Archaeology In Transit: The Artifacts Of A 1991 Van, Adrian Myers
Contemporary Archaeology In Transit: The Artifacts Of A 1991 Van, Adrian Myers
Adrian Myers
This article uses an assemblage of recently abandoned material culture as a medium for exploring the world in which we all live. First it is suggested that if we are to study contemporary material culture, then our methodology must be collaborative, multivocal, and innovative. Next, an assemblage of materials recovered from a 1991 Ford Transit van, used by archaeologists in the field for 8 years, is investigated as a case study. The vehicle is epistemologically dismantled, and it is demonstrated that the car part should be treated as a diagnostic artifact. A close investigation of the recovered small finds uncovers …
Portable Material Culture And Death Factory Auschwitz, Adrian Myers
Portable Material Culture And Death Factory Auschwitz, Adrian Myers
Adrian Myers
Like any other factory, the death factory of Auschwitz consumed primary materials and produced secondary products. Unique to Auschwitz, though, is that the primary material consumed was human life; not just the life of the breathing human body, but also the material possessions associated with that life. The detritus of this most efficient genocide – clothing, jewellery, food, corpses – was appropriated and put to new uses by the SS and the prisoners. Others have recognised the various postwar material cultural outcomes of the camp: the writing, the film, the theatre, the art, the tourism. This article, however, demonstrates that …