Exploring the impact of participative place-based community archaeology in rural Europe: Community archaeology in rural environments meeting societal challenges

This paper reviews the aims, context, approach and early outcomes of a new transnational participative archaeology project focussed on rural village communities. ‘Community Archaeology in Rural Environments Meeting Societal Challenges’ (CARE-MSoC) includes three European countries where participative community archaeology is new- the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland. CARE-MSoC aims to explore the feasibility, value and impact of excavation by rural residents within their home communities by using a method which can be deployed anywhere and which in the UK has been shown to advance knowledge of the past while also delivering a wide range of social and heritage benefits: multiple test pit excavation within inhabited villages. Data presented here from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland show the activity to be popular and effective here in benefitting people while also attracting, sustaining and growing local interest in heritage participation in all three countries

Cowboys and Bohemians: Recreation, Resistance, and the Tramping Movement in West Bohemia

In this paper we examine a prominent but little studied aspect of everyday life in Central Europe, the Czech tramping movement. We aim to show how workers and students from Czech industrial towns and cities created and sustained imaginary rural spaces and flamboyant alternative personas. In some cases these shared fantasy worlds were understood to be a simple leisure pursuit. In other instances tramping activity was a form of resistance and provided a means of escape from the monotony of everyday life, and political repression by the Communist authorities.</jats:p

Archaeologies of Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and Repression: Dark Modernities

This book offers new insights into the mechanisms of state control, systematic repression and mass violence focused on ethnic, political, class, and religious minorities in the recent past. The geographical and temporal scope of the volume breaks new ground as international scholars foreground how contemporary archaeology can be used to enhance the documentation and interpretation of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to advance theoretical approaches to atrocities, and to broaden public understandings of how such regimes use violence and repression to hold on to power