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.

CONTENTS:

Contents
 
Introduction
Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts
PHILIP L. KOHL, MARA KOZELSKY, AND NACHMAN BEN-YEHUDA
 
 
Part One: Russia and Eastern Europe
 
1 Russian Response
Archaeology, Russian Nationalism, and the “Arctic Homeland”
VICTOR A. SHNIRELMAN
 
2 The Challenges of Church Archaeology in Post-Soviet Crimea
MARA KOZELSKY
 
3 The Writing of Caucasian Albania
Facts and Falsifications
MURTAZALI S. GADJIEV
 
4 Archaeology and Nationalism in The History of the Romanians
GHEORGHE ALEXANDRU NICULESCU
 
 
Part Two: The Near East
 
5 The Rise of the Hittite Sun
A Deconstruction of Western Civilization from the Margin
WENDY SHAW
 
6 The Sense of Belonging
The Politics of Archaeology in Modern Iraq
MAGNUS T. BERNHARDSSON
 
7 The Name Game
The Persian Gulf, Archaeologists, and the Politics of Arab-Iranian Relations
KAMYAR ABDI
 
 
Part Three: Israel/Palestine
 
8 Excavating Masada
The Politics-Archaeology Connection at Work
NACHMAN BEN-YEHUDA
 
9 Recovering Authenticity
West-Bank Settlers and the Second Stage of National Archaeology
MICHAEL FEIGE
 
10 Appropriating the Past
Heritage, Tourism, and Archaeology in Israel
UZI BARAM
 
11 An Archaeology of Palestine
Mourning a Dream
GHADA ZIADEH-SEELY
 
 
Part Four: South and Southeast Asia
 
12 The Aryan Homeland Debate in India
SHEREEN RATNAGAR
 
13 The Impact of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Archaeology of Thailand
RASMI SHOOCONGDEJ
 
Contributors
Index