Abstract
We have turned to things, it is argued in different contexts by social and cultural scholars. The previously neglected stuff of life is back and now deserves to be embraced and included in our histories and democracies. This paper discusses our efforts to include these others and seeks to reflect on how some of our gestures of inclusion may not be as humble and tolerant as we like to argue. With reference to an ongoing archaeological research of a recently abandoned herring station in Iceland’s northwest the paper discusses how the archaeological remembering of this site, and its inclusion in historical narration, can in fact easily result in the active forgetting of things, their fragmented and discontinuous memory and their utter silence.
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Notes
These acts will be replaced with a new and more inclusive law in January 2013, which eventually will lead to the protection of Eyri’s heritage.
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Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to Ewa Domanska and her wonderful class in Multispecies Theory at Stanford University, 2012, where this paper took form. Thanks also go to Gavin Lucas and other members of the Ruin Memories group (www.ruinmemories.org) for fruitful discussions and valuable input during our workshops. Finally, but especially, I thank my supervisor, Bjørnar Olsen, with whom I share these ruin memories, for his always helpful comments and encouragement.