Mats Burström

Biography

B. 1962. Professor of Archaeology, Stockholm University (SU). PhD from SU in 1991 with the dissertation Arkeologisk samhällsavgränsning combining large-scale spatial and quantitative analyses with an interpretative approach. His research then developed in the direction of focusing the multitude of meanings that material remains from the past have been ascribed in different contexts. Lately he has been instrumental in establishing the archaeology of the contemporary past as a field of research in Scandinavia. Publications within this field include the textbook Samtidsarkeologi. Introduktion till ett forskningsfält (2007) and several case studies dealing with sites such as a car cemetery, a World War 2 refugee camp, and a Soviet nuclear missile site in Cuba from the 1962 crisis.

Ongoing research

In the context of the program Section I he will explore the emergence of the temporal framework of archaeological knowledge, with a particular emphasis on the category of the “recent”. It is only during the first part of the 19th century that man obtains a “pre-history”, a historical space going back further than written documents. Archaeology is established as the discipline with the task of chronologically sorting remains from this early past, gradually integrating material from periods with written sources. The discovery that material and written sources often contradict each other has led to an increasing interest in analyzing more contemporary remains with archaeological methods. The project argues that it is no longer meaningful to delimit the field of archaeology in temporal-historical terms. This new way of conceiving the field of archaeology destabilizes the standard chronological divisions, and brings in a trans-historical dimension, that looks at materiality and meaning from new perspectives. The category of the “recent” will be used here to reflect critically on the often obsessive relation to chronology in archaeology and in the historical sciences in general, and also to question the “chronological cleansing” that takes place at archaeological sites. Burström will be part-time funded by the program and his research will be co-funded by Stockholm University.

Selected bibliography

– 2007. Samtidsarkeologi. Introduktion till ett forskningsfält. Studentlitteratur. Lund.

– 2009. Garbage or heritage. The existential dimension of a car cemetery. In: Contemporary Archaeologies – Excavating Now. (Eds) Holtorf, C. & Piccini, A. Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. Frankfurt.

– 2009. Looking into the recent past. Extending and exploring the field of archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol. 15-16.

– 2009. (with 8 co-authors) Memory of a world crisis. The archaeology of a former Soviet nuclear missile site in Cuba. Journal of Social Archaeology, 2009, issue 3.

– 2009. Selective remembrance. Memories of a Second World War refugee camp in Sweden. Norwegian Archaeological Review, Vol. 42/2.