Material Memories: Archaeology, Heritage and Human Rights Violations in South America

During the second part of the twentieth century, nations across South were subjected to military regimes that exercised physical and psychological torture, censorship, forced "disappearances" and murder. Those actions left heavy social and cultural scars that scholars are only now beginning to comprehend. Material Memories addresses the complex and highly sensitive human-object entanglements that occur in the aftermath of authoritarian regimes, and their role in processes of reconciliation. A critical study of past human rights abuses, whose material, social and political realities have been tightly woven into the fabric of the present and keep shaping the future, requires a robust and multifaceted theoretical and methodological framework. Using the Museo de las Memorias - a former secret detention centre turned museum - in Paraguay as a case study and cutting across archaeology, critical heritage studies, history, anthropology, and memory studies, this project proposes a multi-disciplinary engagement with the material legacies of violence as a future-making practice that can actively drive reconciliation processes and the development of more peaceful and inclusive societies in Paraguay, South America and the wider world.

Material Memories will generate new knowledge regarding the tangible and intangible heritage of human rights abuses. Reconceptualising "negative heritage" as a set of practices with future-building capacities will allow us to understand heritage-making as an active process in which the past is embedded within the present and can foster reconciliation processes in and for the future. In addition to academic impacts discussed in the Academic Beneficiaries section, the project has a range of pathways to impact and knowledge exchanges addressed to non-academic communities.

1. Project partner: I will facilitate co-designed knowledge exchange activities and an international symposium with EAAF and other participating groups. I will study and help to enhance the efforts of these groups in their work practices through exploring the opportunities for innovation, increased resilience and sustainability generated in applying forensic archaeology and heritage methods and different ways of conceptualising tangible and intangible human rights violations and valuing the future from one domain in another. Individuals who are not directly involved in these events will benefit from the project's Twitter activity and 'news' items on both the Material Memories' and EAAF's public facing website, which will disseminate the results of our work widely with academics, the public and EAAF's associated professional networks.

2. Forensic archaeologists, heritage practitioners and museum staff. My ethnographically-led, participatory research will promote broad awareness of shared interests and concerns across the heritage sector. In addition to the means discussed above, I will ensure that the results of my research and co-produced knowledge exchanges are targeted to these audiences through the international networks of my project partner, and ensure they are disseminated broadly through the exhibition; news items on the website; the production of an open access publication in a form which will lend itself to a broad readership; an academic monograph; and through contributions to major international peer-reviewed journals.

3. General publics. The research programme will provide new models for ways of working which have the potential to transform the relationship between archaeologists, heritage practitioners and their publics, and provide opportunities for the development of more collaborative models of curating and conserving the contested legacies of violence to work towards a more democratic future. Public audiences will be targeted directly through the exhibition, the edited volume, Twitter and the project website.