Just a Band Crossing the Road

On Biography, Memory and the Changing Meaning of Places

Abstract

This paper deals broadly with biographical approaches to the archaeology of objects and places, and discusses the parts played by memory and remembrance in creating, maintaining and changing meaning in connection with places. The concepts of place and place attachment are briefly reviewed, and the various ways in which places achieve meaning are discussed. In particular, changes in the meaning of place as a result of specific events are explored. This is exemplified by a modern place where drastic changes in meaning occurred as a result of individual events and their remembrance. The identities of places are discussed, and the possibility of multiple places to be temporarily overlapping yet sharing the same physical space is explored. These aspects of meaning of place are then applied to a prehistoric setting, where the occurrence of megaliths on the eastern periphery of the TRB culture, on the island of Öland, is discussed.