This article examines the role of archaeology in contemporary society. It works from the premise that archaeology is a form of socio-political action and explores some of the ways in which archaeologies of the recent past can have therapeutic or cathartic effects. Three case studies are presented. The first two focus on the recovery of war dead and the memorialization of conflict landscapes at Fromelles, in northern France, and Peleliu, in Micronesia. The third explores the materiality of unauthorised migration in the US-Mexico borderlands of southern Arizona. The central argument presented in this article is that in an age of global uncertainty, where support for the humanities is in decline and respect for academic knowledge is diminishing, archaeologists should re-position their work to more clearly focus on contemporary social issues. If archaeology is to survive as a discipline it must be seen as being socially relevant research, with the capacity to contribute to contemporary public discourses.

The paper presents the case of post-industrial space of the New Weaving Mill in Kilinskiego Street in Lódz, which was a part of Karol Scheibler’s empire. We use it to illustrate the tensions between actors of the city life and the related right to the city including the right to heritage. At the same time, we indicate the significance of involving different actors in the process of creating narratives (also those contributing to the extension of the research field) of it. In our discussion, we mostly perceive this space as everyday space – space of work that was marked with an unusual event: the visit of John Paul II in 1987. Thus, we consider the practices and strategies for commemorating/forgetting in the context of urban practices connected with the construction of heritage and the right to it.

This paper discusses the concept of difficult/dark heritage from a theoretical perspective known as the biography of things. First, I analyse Polish archaeological research on difficult/dark heritage. Second, I describe in greater detail the biography of things as a tool for studying relationships between people, things and places. The last part of the paper is a case study presenting the biographies of three objects found in the grounds of a prisoner-of-war camp in Czersk. I aim to prove the following theses: 1) archaeologies of the recent past cannot be understood simply as the archaeology of martyrdom; 2) material culture from the recent past allows us to create different kinds of narratives connected with dark heritage.

In this paper, the Author presents the semantic and methodological scope and characteristics of a new field the archaeology of the contemporary past. In his opinion the essence of the archaeology of the contemporary past is best conveyed by the term archaeology of us, which refers to the relationships between individuals or communities and their own material heritage. Due to the community and local dimension of archaeology of the contemporary past, an important source in this field is oral tradition, which is obtained and analysed during ethnographic interviews. The author refers to his own experience, gained during many years of research in the Polish Jurassic Highland, and indicates the importance and research effectiveness of incorporating the methodology of ethnographic research into the perspective of archaeology of the contemporary past.

This paper considers the issue of the application of teledection methods in the archaeology of the contemporary past with reference to the concept of retrotopia proposed by Zygmunt Bauman. It is based on one of the components of retrotopia, namely the approach to heritage adopted by Lowenthal (1997). From this perspective, relics of the twentieth-century German settlement in Witkowski Mlyn (Western Pomerania) are analysed. In order to identify and document them, ALS data was used and then supplemented with verification field research. As a result, extensive relics of the twentieth-century landscape were documented, including relics of homesteads, orchards and a cemetery. The research presented show that teledection methods cannot prevent retrotopia, but they are new tools for filling in the gaps in knowledge of the contemporary past. Thus, they can lead to a dialogue which, according to Z. Bauman, is the best response to retrotopia.

The study attempts to systematize the leading transformations observed nowadays in denominational cemeteries located in Poland. The time frame of the analyses was limited to the period from the end of the Second World War to the present. Four basic types of transformations have been distinguished and divided into two main directions of changes reported over time, namely: harmonious temporal expression (stagnation/decline, continuation) and disharmonious temporal expression (desacralisation, resacralisation and commemoration). Each type of transformation is discussed separately based on selected examples. However, it needs to be emphasised that the proposed division is not disjunctive as considering the multitude of factors that determine changes in the material structures of cemeteries, processes sometimes run parallel to each other or overlap in time.

Windmills are extremely interesting examples of architectural and technological monuments. For years, the objects located in Poland were neglected and their degradation was very rapid. There were many factors that contributed to this situation including unprofitable production, the ageing of staff, lack of successors, and insufficient financial resources of provincial conservators for the co-funding of conservation and restoration projects. Over the past few years, the number of initiatives, patterned on foreign practices, have been growing. Their aim is to preserve and popularise windmills. In many cases, windmills are converted into hotels or apartments.

Zgierz, a town located in the central part of the Lódz Province, has a unique urban complex in the form of a craftsmen’s town built from scratch in the first half of the 19th century. This was a result of a settlement operation carried out in Congress Poland to boost the economy of the newly created state. The settlers were mostly cloth makers of Polish and German descent, primarily from the territory of the Prussian Partition. Regular arrangement, with symmetrical streets and a market square in the middle, on a high river bank, went hand in hand with aesthetic and functional late classical architecture, which is why this centre can be called a Biedermeier town. Even though durable materials were preferred, most houses that have survived are made of wood, and yet decorative elements can still be seen on many of them. Today, the houses, divided into numerous flats and inhabited by qualifying occupiers, are used contrary to their original purpose and inappropriately for their status. So far, two attempts to revitalise the area in question have been made. In consequence, the Town of Weavers Culture Park was established, seven of the houses were renovated, and fragments of two streets were restored to their former appearance. The paper presents the past and present situation of the historic development of the New Town considering its social context, and attempts to summarise the revitalisation activities performed to date.

Marcinowa Wola is a typical locality in Masuria (northern Poland), where a nearly total exchange of citizens took place after WW2. Polish and Ukrainian people coming here after the war had to deal with the sense of strangeness connected with the German presence in the near past. One of the ways of overcoming that impression was appropriation of their surroundings – an act of adapting the cultural landscape to their needs. A very vivid example of this process is the cemetery from the Great War located in Marcinowa Wola. The perception of this place among the local inhabitants changed dramatically over the years. Although it is located in the centre of the village, the cemetery was out of the social life during the first years after the war. As it was not treated as a sacred place any more, it was eroding and overgrowing for years. Everything changed in the 1970s, when the next generation became adolescent. Young people started to use the cemetery as their meeting place and in this way they adapted it to a new, completely different role. However, when the youth grew up, the place was once again forgotten for some time, and only recently did the inhabitants see its value as a cemetery, however, not in sacred but historical terms. It can be assumed that it was assimilated as an element of their own heritage, which means that the process of appropriation has been completed.

The subject of the paper is dissonant heritage exemplified by former German villages in Central Poland. The agrarian reform (1944) transformed the local social and cultural landscape by removing its German inhabitants. Today, former German farmsteads are occupied by families of the reform beneficiaries – Polish peasants. The paper is personal as it is based on the postmemory of the author, who used archival sources (including vital records and peasants’ letters of application for the post-German land) and information from his grandmother, who remembers her German neighbours, in an attempt to ‘revive’ the multi-cultural past and those who used to be a part of this landscape. The author outlines the concept of ethnoarchaeological research into the dissonant heritage being a by-product of the agrarian reform (1944) in Poland.

The paper discusses an interdisciplinary research project (2014–2016) concerning the industrial heritage of Lódz, as exemplified by the former Monopol Wódczany, which is today converted for the purposes of new, cultural and service functions. The aim of ethnographic and archaeological activities was to collect oral histories and artefacts, which not only documented the history of the factory, but also presented the professional biographies of its workers, meaning people whose lives had been intertwined with the activity of the company. Thanks to such a research assumption, the researchers were able to reconstruct the industrial past of the place based on memories, artefacts collected, and archive surveys. The Author describes the idea behind the project, its methodology and results, using the notions of industrial heritage and urban narratives as the analytical context.

The aim of the article is to show selected ways of presenting Stone Age archaeological sites in the landscape. The forms of prehistoric archaeological sites monumentalisation in South Korea served as an example here. Displaying Stone Age sites in the landscape is popular in Korea, especially where no remains of former human activity visible in the landscape have been preserved. Establishing reserves, museums and monuments nearby an explored archaeological site is very important for the majority of stakeholders in South Korea. Patriotic factor plays an important role here as for the society in general getting to know the oldest history of the Korean Peninsula is very important, due to the people’s attachment to their tradition and culture. The sites described in this article are among the best-known by the researchers and the general public in South Korea. The Sorori site, showing first attempts at rice domestication, was discovered thanks to site prospection carried out before the construction of an industrial complex. The Suyanggae site is the biggest Palaeolithic flint workshop located in the Korean Peninsula, discovered during the rescue excavations connected with construction of a dam on the South Han River. The Jeongok site – one of the most important sites in Eastern Asia due to the discovery of the first Acheulian-type handaxe outside the borders of the Movius line – was accidentally discovered by an American pilot from the nearby military base. All three sites of prehistoric human activity are very important for the world of science as well as for entities responsible for the protection of cultural heritage, being a model for ways of managing museums, reserves, and culture parks established at excavation sites. What is more, in the article a short presentation of developing rescue archaeology is provided, related to rapid industrialization of South Korea.

In the article, I attempt to estimate the number of inhabitants of Neo-Babylonian households based on archaeological data based on the example of Babylon (Neo-Babylonian period: 1100/1000–539 BCE). In order to discover how the household or an individual room was used, we must reconstruct the way that a household functioned. However, since no households can be found in archaeological research, it is necessary to turn to ethnographic sources. The article has been divided into three parts. The first part contains key information on households in the Neo-Babylonian period, indicated on the basis of ethnographic sources and compared with archaeological remains. In the second part of the article, I analyse various mathematical formulas used to calculate the number of residents on the basis of archaeological data. The third part comprises a discussion presenting my own mathematical formulas regarding the collected data.

The paper presents the results of the survey carried out by the authors of this paper, the subject of which was experimental archaeology. We asked a group of artisans that deal with historical reconstruction a set of questions about the difficulties they encounter during their reconstruction work. What is their biggest problem? Where do the craftsmen derive information about the ancient technology from? How are their products received by recipients? The chronological framework of the reconstruction industry was narrowed down to one historical period (the time of the Przeworsk culture, that is the Pre-Roman Iron Age, the Roman Iron Age and Migration Period). This clearly showed some connections between a small group of craftsmen using ancient methods in their work and the academic world, and how important it is to acquire historical and archaeological knowledge and to find ethnographic inspirations in order to solve the problems of craft techniques. The survey covered artisans practising various crafts, from metalwork to pottery, which added a broader perspective to the issues studied.