Contested Monuments, Contested Spaces, and Contested Narratives

This chapter first reflects upon the preceding chapters, reviewing the questions that have guided their explorations of material commemoration. Among these questions is an examination of what monuments and memorials can do and what they cannot do. This reflection offers insight into the scope of an archaeology of memorialization. Memory politics forms the critical thread connecting the contributions to the volume. Monuments and commemoration events expose contested heritage, driving a public memory discourse about who matters, what happened, who served, and often who won, reifying power and privileged memories. Some monuments make the intolerable seem appropriate and even commendable in a form of historical amnesia informed by historical shame, and others inspire change or depict a vision of a different future. All create places that connect past, present, and future. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the future of commemoration as a productive, even necessary, mode of cultural expression, and an archaeology of memorialization that guides and helps people to take care of the world and each another.