Abstract
This chapter presents a case study of an archaeological site from Bulgaria supposing to contribute to the debate concerning the sociopolitical nature of archaeological thinking and practice in contemporary archaeology and the politics of commoditization. The “eye of anthropology,” which gives priority to cultural phenomena, makes it possible to evaluate the nature of archaeological narratives and discourses as cultural product in the context of the imagined nation. This chapter considers how the elaborated ideological and therefore problematic interpretations of archaeological record in the 1970s and 1980s are marketed in the 1990s until this day. It discusses the development of archaeology as historical discipline in Bulgaria practicing outdated culture-historical paradigm focused exclusively on historical “continuity” of an ethno-nation in the territory of the modern state. The context is outlined by a “longue durée” processes of territorializing the national space by means of ancient and medieval ruins. Using eclectic methodology obsessed with “the archaic,” the academic scholarship in the late socialism associated the “proper” ruins with ancient Thracian “spiritual culture” considered as ethno-national distinctiveness. The case study reveals the activism used by an archaeologist-as-hero who marketed the archaeological site from a position of academic scholarship. Thus the presented case study puts the question of professional and ethical responsibilities of archaeological discipline in Bulgaria standing away from the contemporary debates conducted in a broad international context.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Gustaf Kossinna (1858–1931) is a linguist and researcher of Indo-European culture, and professor of German archaeology. He developed the theory that a regionally determined ethnicity can be defined by the material culture excavated from a site (culture-historical archaeology).
- 2.
Bogdan Filov (1883–1945) is a famous Bulgarian archaeologist, art historian, and politician. He was the Prime Minister (1940–1943) of Nazi allied Bulgaria. Sentenced to death he was executed on the 2nd of February 1945.
- 3.
Gordon Childe (1892–1957) is an influential Australian archaeologist and philologist who was the proponent of the culture-historical approach to archaeology. He adopted the concept of “culture” from G. Kossinna and was influenced by Marxist ideas on societal development. His works are still influential in Bulgaria.
- 4.
Nikolai Ovcharov (1957–) is a Bulgarian archeologist and thracologist, Associate Professor at the Archaeological Institute with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is famous for his work on Perperikon and its tourist representations.
References
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of the Minnesota Press.
Bailey, Douglass. 1998. Bulgarian Archaeology: Ideology, Sociopolitics and the Exotic. In Archaeology under Fire. Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, ed. Lynn Meskell, 87–110. London: Routledge.
Bouzek, Jan, and Denver Graningen. 2015. Geography. In A Companion to Ancient Thrace, ed. Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, and Denver Graninger, 12–20. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Danforth, Loring. 1984. The Ideological Context of the Search of Continuities in Greek Culture. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 2 (1): 53–85.
Daskalov, Roumen, and Alexander Vezenkov, eds. 2015. Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies. Vol. 3. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Eriksen, Thomas. 2010. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Featherstone, Mike. 2007. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Gellner, Ernst, ed. 1980. Soviet and Western Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gupta, Akil, and James Ferguson. 2001. Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era. In Culture, Power, Place. Exploration in Critical Anthropology, 1–29. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hamilakis, Yannis, and Aris Anagnostopoulos. 2009. What is Archaeological Ethnography. Public Archaeology: Archaeological Ethnographies 8 (2–3): 65–87.
Hamilakis, Yannis, and Philip Duke. 2007. Archaeology and Capitalism. Walnut Greek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Härke, Heinrich, ed. 2002 [2000]. Archaeology, Ideology and Society: The German Experience (2nd revised ed.à Peter Lang). Frankfurt/Main: Wien.
Hodder, Ian, and Scott Hutson. 2003. Reading the Past. Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hutchinson, John. 1994. Modern nationalism. London: Fontana Press.
Iliev, Ilia. 1998. The Proper Use of Ancestors. Ethnologia Balkanica 2: 7–18.
Kaiser, Timothy. 1995. Archaeology and Ideology in Southeast Europe. In Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip Kohl and Clare Fawcett, 99–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kohl, Philip. 1998. Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Construction of Nations and the Reconstruction of the Remote Past. Annual Review of Anthropology 27: 223–246.
Kohl, Philip, and Clare Fawcett, eds. 1995. Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kotsakis, Kostas. 1998. The Past is Ours. Images of Greek Macedonia. In Archaeology under Fire. Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, ed. Lynn Meskell. London: Routledge.
Lazova, Tsvete. 2015. Perperikon entre nature et histoire: les dimensiones multiples d’une site archeolgique et le peysage de identite Bulgare. In Etudes Balkaniques: Paysage religious et memoriels en Europe du Sud-Est: visions anciennes, pratique et politiques recentes, 221–247. Paris: Association Pierre Belon.
———. 2016. Antichnost, Archeologia i Natsionalno Vaobrazjavane. Antropologichni perspektivi [Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination. Anthropological Perspectives]. Sofia: New Bulgarian University Press.
Marcus, George, and Michael Fisher. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences, Chicago and London : The University of Chicago Press.
Marinov, Tchavdar. 2015. Ancient Thrace in the Modern Imagination: Ideological Aspects of the Construction of Thracian Studies in Southeast Europe (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria). In Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Vol. 3. Shared Pasts Disputed Legacies, Balkan Studies Library, ed. Roumen Daskalov and Alexander Vezenkov, vol. 16, 10–118. Leiden: Brill.
Meskell, Lynn. 1998. Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Routledge.
Rowan, Yorke, and Uzi Baram, eds. 2004. Marketing Heritage. Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Shnirelman, Victor. 1995. From Internationalism to Nationalism: Forgotten Pages of Soviet Archaeology in the 30s and 40s. In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip Kohl and Clare Fawsett, 120–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silberman, Neil. 1995. Promised Lands and Chosen peoples: the Politics and Poetics of Archaeological Narrative. In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip Kohl and Clare Fawcett, 249–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silberman, Neil. 2008. Chasing the Unicorn? The quest for “essence” in digital heritage – In: Yehuda E. Kalai, Thomas Kvan & Janice Affleck (eds). New Heritage. New Media and Cultural Heritage. London and New York: Routledge, 81–91.
Todorova, Maria. 1992. Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Bulgaria. American Historical Review 4: 1105–1117.
———. 2015. Is There Weak Nationalism and Is It a Useful Category. Nation and Nationalism 21 (4): 681–699.
Trigger, Bruce. 1984. Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist, Man 19 (3): 355–370. New Series.
———. 1995. Romanticism, Nationalism, and Archaeology. In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip Kohl and Clare Fawcett, 263–279. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Velkov, Velizar. 1993. Archaeology in Bulgaria. Antiquity 67 (254): 125–129.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lazova, T. (2018). Consumption of the Past: Constructing Antiquity of an Archaeological Site in Bulgaria and Marketing the Ideological Narrative. In: Krasteva-Blagoeva, E. (eds) Approaching Consumer Culture. International Series on Consumer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00226-8_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00226-8_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00225-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00226-8
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)