Whatever happened to ‘influence’? The anxieties of memory

Abstract

Archaeologists have ‘discovered’ memory, drawing on historical and anthropological insights into commemoration and interrogating the contexts of archaeological exploration in ways that sometimes produce evidence of specific understandings of the past by ancient populations. Analogy is sometimes suggestive, as, notably, when archaeology's own historical emergence provides interesting parallels with ancient antiquarianism. Difficulties arise, however, from the heavily psychological cast of much work on memory, which displaces the older archaeological interest in ‘influence’ without always preserving the accompanying focus on patterns of cultural imitation and absorption. The best work on prehistory appears to focus on patterns of co-occurrence but, in the absence of textual evidence, methods often lack rigour and ideologically sensitive reflexivity; especially problematic are the frequent attributions of intentionality. Claims that memory (or its obliteration) was itself the focus of acts recorded in the archaeological record thus underscore both the temptations and the limits of the current concern with this topic.