Elin Andreassen, Hein B. Bjerck and Bjørnar Olsen: Persistent memories. Pyramiden – a Soviet mining town in the High Arctic. Trondheim, Tapir Academic Press (2010).

In 1998 the Russian Arctic Coal Company decided to end its more than 50 years of continuous activity in Pyramiden in the High Arctic archipelago of Norwegian Svalbard. A remarkably abrupt abandonment left behind a mining town devoid of humans but still filled with all stuff constituting a modern industrial settlement. Today the well-equipped Pyramiden survives as a conspicuous Soviet-era ghost town in pristine Arctic nature. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2006, this book explores what things left behind can tell us about how people lived and coped in this marginal town. It is also concerned with Pyramiden’s post-human biography and the way the site provokes more general reflections on things, heritage and memory. Challenging the traditional scholarly hierarchy of text over images, this book stands out by using art photography as a means to address these issues and to mediate the contemporary archaeology of Pyramiden.

At the northern periphery of war: An archaeology of Second World War sites in northern Finnmark, Norway. The intensity of the impact of the Second World War on the landscape of Finnmark, the most northern county of Norway, is unique in Europe. When it became clear in autumn 1944 that the advance of the Russian [...]

Mats Burström joins the Ruin Memories project. Mats is professor in archaeology at Stockholm University, Sweden. He has written a number of papers and books on contemporary archaeology. He will be working on two research projects: “Artefactual Memories. Family Belongings Hidden in the Ground in Estonia during World War II;” “Bückeberg: The Life History of the Site [...]

August 10-15, 2010 more information at their site.

Modern ruins event at the Observatory, Brooklyn: http://observatoryroom.org/2010/03/07/modern-ruins/.

NY Times article on photography of ruined Detroit: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/ruin-with-a-view/.

Þóra Pétursdóttir joins the Ruin Memories team. Thora’s Ph.D. project will be a case study entitled “Industrial ruins and prisitine landscapes: An archaeological approach to the Modernization of Iceland.” Read more about the case study under here.

The first workshop in this projected was held in Santiago de Compostela, December 12-13, 2009. The workshop was hosted by Felipe Criado Boado and Alfredo González-Ruibal at the Heritage Laboratory, Spanish National Research Agency (LaPa-CSIC). In addition to the members of the project team scholars and students associated with the Heritage Laboratory took part in [...]

The Ruin Memories Project site is launched. This site will showcase the work being done by project members.