Durch die Archäologie der Moderne zur modernen Archäologie

Abstract

In recent decades, more and more relics from the period between 1500 and 1900 have been documented, and it is very important that Archaeology now turns also to the darkest chapter of German history, the Holocaust. At the same time, in the  Germanspeaking countries these epochs have not been integrated intellectually and institutionally. It won’t suffice to extend Pre- and Protohistory and Medieval Archaeology into the present simply by adding modernity. Traditional chronological, geographical, and ideological categories contribute to the fragmentation and restriction of all active in archaeology. Such an understanding of the sciences is excluding a large part of the population from participation in and contribution to research. Thematic brackets of special and new research fields like Landscape Archaeology, Heritage Management, Citizen Science, and Public Archaeology allow archaeology to prove its potential as a trans-discipline between the natural sciences and the humanities as well as a mediator in heterogenous societies. Recently, Anglo-American archaeologists and anthropologists have challenged Western concepts of space, time, and values – and through this also fundamental structures of our societies. On our way to modern archaeology, we must not only overcome patriarchal-hierarchical and colonial-Eurocentric attitudes as well as unilateral ideological perspectives but also communicate more clearly. The aim is to create a network of all in a continuous spacetime to better understand everybody and everything.