Społeczne wytwarzanie przeszłości. Archeologia materii reaktywowanej

Abstrakt

The following article will attempt to demonstrate the validity of the claim that any study of “the past” (which in the perspective adopted herein is actually seen as a study of the materiality of the present) ought to incorporate the drive towards exhibiting the trajectory of the material and conceptual permeation of the “past” into the present. The material carriers of meanings off er some rather unique help in our eff orts to “absorb the proposals of the world”. The strategy adopted here has been
attributed the working designation of archaeology of “second degree”, archaeology of reactivated matter, or anthropology of the secondary (or secondary assignation of meanings (matter)), which allows us to demonstrate the following: it is because of our intention (and due to our cognitive aptitude, including the technological capacity to express the “materialisation of persistence” and the “material memory”),
that our historical heritage is being organised in an act of preparation for this very intention. It is due to our intention that we can observe the “true objectification” of a certain group of items (once the produced item’s existence is permanently secured, its involvement never ceases and it is bound to be revoked, remaining in the scope of the human world) and the exclusion of others. Theoretically, archaeology can contribute to a better understanding of our contemporary) intentions and relations — both interpersonal, and those with the “past” as well as the surrounding “matter”. The governing assumption in this context is that the all-encompassing material carriers of characteristics, meanings, sense and information do not belong to the past, but rather to the present.