Unruly Heritage: An Archaeology of the Anthropocene

Heritage is a concept that for most people has a positive meaning, commonly associated with old and valued things to be cared for. But what about all those legacies that are not desired? Such as the vestiges of war, industrial wastelands, devastated nature, or beaches filled with sea-borne debris? Why do we think of heritage primarily as good and pleasant legacies? Unruly Heritage targeted this bias and over six years investigated possible outcomes of extending heritage to also include our unwanted legacies. What consequences may this have for our understanding of the past, and for the significance and value we ascribe to it? Unruly Heritage was based on several case-studies focusing on seaborne debris, modern ruins, and war heritage. In her research, Þóra Pétursdóttir studied sea-borne waste in the North Atlantic area, and with an explicit focus on understanding what happens with things when they escape our intentions and programs for them. Framed in this way, beach litter is not just a timely reminder about the unforeseen consequences of our (over) consumption, but equally of our modern alienation from the “afterlives” of things – what they become, and what they are up to, after our use of them has ended. Beach litter was also a thematic studied by Geneviève Godin, who completed her doctoral research in 2023 with a thesis on what she calls an "archaeology of failure". Waste in this conception are things that have "failed" or lost their value, that which we therefore try to get rid of or forget, but which still continues to haunt us also at places where their absence is expected. By combining archaeological approaches, perspectives from the horror genre in film and literature, and queer theory, she uses the concepts of monster and zombie to describe and explore these unruly masses of discarded things and our complex entanglement with them. In another field of research, Stein Farstadvoll has been investigating WW2 heritage, and especially barbed wire, in Pasvik, Arctic Norway. Here natural reserves are also landscapes of war, posing new challenges to the dichotomy between heritage and waste. Are the reserves to be cleansed of their vestiges of war, or are these remains a crucial part of their cultural heritage? The war ruins also accentuated the conflict between material legacies that are unwanted and at the same represent an important alternative to historical sources for knowledge about the war and what it implied materially and physically to people. Kindred dilemmas underlay Torgeir Rinke Bangstad's research on "toxic heritage", dealing with the unforeseen consequences of past use of pesticides in museum conservation of buildings and objects. The extent and effects of this use remains vastly understudied, and his research has added another pertinent dimension to the expression and understanding of unruly heritage. Together with his Russian colleague, Svetlana Vinogradova, Bjørnar Olsen has studied Soviet Heritage in the Russian north, especially as manifested in the small coastal town of Teriberka, east of Murmansk. Here nearly all buildings and other infrastructure date to the communist era, making it appear as an anachronism – a Soviet place in a post-Soviet time. An important result of the research is how such material persistency works against and delays historical shifts and periodization, and thus problematizes the common understanding of the past as completed and gone. Another result is how this sticky past impact negatively on peoples’ everyday lives and prospects for the future, but also bring forth nostalgic memories of a brighter past. The materiality of the Soviet past was also an important part of Anatolijs Venocevs doctoral research. In his thesis defended in 2023, he looks closer at the archaeology of extractive mining industries at Kola (Russia), in Labrador (Canada) and Sør-Varanger (Norway). Apart from extensive environmental damages, and “mono towns” characterized by dependency of mining, crucial to all three areas is also the impact of a past out of joint with present needs and where various states of operativeness (continued, expected to continue, and terminated) has become the rule. Emphasizing the entanglement with the past, he suggests that heritage discourses should move away from dichotomies between the useful and the ruined, the operating and the abandoned, and rather make room for alternative understandings of how the present in various ways grows out from the foundations of the past. Unruly Heritage has received much publicity and attention, not least through the large exhibition ARV (Heritage). Based on our research and produced in cooperation with price-winning Sámi artist Joar Nango, a main idea was to display ocean waste as if it was valued museum objects. The exhibition was opened at in Tromsø in 2018 and has later been shown in Berlin (2019), Sortland and Hammerfest (2020), Alta (2021), and Bodø (2022-23).

VIRKNINGER AV PROSJEKTET: Det har bidratt til endret forståelse av kulturarv og vist nødvendigheten av å anlegge bredere og mer økologisk tilpassete perspektiv som også inkluderer ubehagelige og truende arv Det har bidratt til å utfordre historiske forståelser av kronologiske forløp der fortida legges kontinuerlig legges bak oss. Som alternativ har det vist en fortid som er operativ og aktiv, ikke minst slik den framtrer gjennom den raskt omseggripende antropocene arven. Det har bidratt til å gi ny kunnskap om tingenes etterliv, hva som skjer med dem når de unnslipper våre intensjoner og program for dem. Det har også dannet grunnlag for nye og innflytelsesrike teoretiseringer av det materielle. Det har bidratt til å bygge et internasjonalt ledende forskningsmiljø i samtidsarkeologi og kulturarvstudier ved UiT Norges arktiske universitet EFFEKTENE AV PROSJEKTET Det har bidratt til begynnende endret praksis innenfor miljø- og kulturminneforvaltningen i forhold til graden av aktiv intervenering i forbindelse med vern. Det har bidrar til å skape større vilje innenfor miljø- og kulturminneforvaltningen til å se betydningen av ubehagelig og «stygg» kulturarv, og til å nedtone absolutte distinksjoner mellom søppel og kulturarv. Det har bidratt til en aktiv styrking av forskningsfeltet gjennom opprettelsen av en fast stilling i samtidsarkeologi ved UiT -Norges arktiske universitet

According to UNESCO's definition, heritage is "our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations". While exemplary inclusive, it is hardly made out of concern for the fact that our legacy is becoming increasingly mixed and messy: melting glaciers, archipelagoes of sea-borne debris, ruining metropolises, industrial wastelands, sunken nuclear submarines, toxic residues in seals and polar bears. Actually, our legacy has become so conspicuously manifest that it has been claimed diagnostic of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. While this palpable legacy has triggered debate within the heritage field, it has yet not led to any profound rethinking of heritage itself. Conceptualized only as a threat to heritage, not as heritage, the traditional understanding of heritage as an exclusive reserve of valued things and traditions safely persists. Thus regardless of the haunting omnipresent legacy we inevitably live with, "our" heritage continues to be cleansed of "bad" matter, obnoxious and abject things. Unruly Heritage takes another position. It claims that the current "clash" between prevailing conceptions of heritage as something confined, wished for and thus worth saving, and an unruly past ignoring such work of purification, urges a reconsideration of strategies and rationales for how to "deal with" heritage. Based on extensive field studies of modern ruin landscapes and sea-borne costal debris, the aim is to develop alternative, less anthropocentric and more ecologically adept heritage understandings. Hence, what this project undertakes to explore is possible outcomes of exposing heritage also to the masses of neglected and unwanted matters we pass on and live with. How does it force us to rethink memory, what ethical questions arise, and how can a notion of care be applied to these hybrid assemblages?