"Thrown like chaff in the wind": Excavation, memory and the negotiation of loss in the scottish highlands

Abstract

Memory has become an important area of research in historical archaeology over the last decade with an increasing focus on retrieving the narratives of subaltern groups and painful memories of conflict, displacement and loss. Drawing on ethnographic research, I explore how archaeological excavation provides an arena for sharing, negotiating and contesting difficult forms of memory associated with the Highland Clearances. I argue that the Clearances involve a kind of "postmemory" revolving around a series of iconic motifs and that this provides a framework for interpretation and action in the present. Coherence is produced not through the "excavation" of silenced narratives, but through social processes of performance, negotiation and "composure," as people engage in a dialogue with past, present and future.