Social Archaeology and the theatres of memory

Archaeology is a study of ways in which we express ourselves through the things that we make and use, collect, discard and take for granted; all archaeology is social archaeology. And, because the past is always part of the present, social archaeology is closely concerned with the construction of memory. This has been particularly true in representations of South Africa’s past during a time of exceptional transformation. Within a short span of time, the celebration of an enduring white domination has been superseded by the recollection of a dismantled apartheid. Material culture — the tangible traces of memory — plays a central part in this theatre of memory.