Ex Novo: Journal of Archaeology – serie

Who owns the past? Archaeological heritage between destruction and idealization. This volume, part of the wider Ex Novo series, hosts papers exploring the various ways in which the past is remembered, recovered, created and used. In particular, contributions discuss the role of archaeology in present-day conflict areas and its function as peacekeeping tool or as trigger point for military action.

It has been abundantly demonstrated that theories and paradigms in the humanities are influenced by historical, economic and socio-cultural conditions, which have profoundly influenced archaeology’s representation of migration. This was mostly conceived as the study of the movement of large and homogenous population groups, whose identity was often represented as ethnically characterized. The present-day shift of attention from collective to individual agency and the countless facets of migration goes hand in hand with new socio-political and cultural scenarios such as the extraordinary migratory flows into Europe, shifting boundaries, alternative forms of citizenship and identity, and the emergence of emotive reactionism. The third volume of Ex Novo gathers multidisciplinary contributions addressing mobility to understand patterns of change and continuity in past worlds; reconsider the movement of people, objects, and ideas alongside mobile epistemologies, such as intellectual, scholarly or educative traditions, rituals, practices, religions and theologies; and provide insights into the multifaceted relationship between mobile practices and their shared meanings and how they are represented socially and politically.

This timely collection of peer-reviewed papers and short essays seek to bridge the longstanding gap between natural and cultural heritage when it comes to landscape management. To this end, the editors foster a combined approach to both domains by promoting stronger internal cooperation and the systematic engagement of new forms of integrated heritage with the external world.The volume contributes to the debate on the new role of heritage in an ever-changing framework for land use, infrastructural investment and sustainable development at national and international levels. All contributions are based on the papers presented in two sessions at the EAA annual meeting in Maastricht 2017.

The fifth volume of Ex Novo has the pleasure to host Flaminia Bartolini as guest editor for the special issue titled Heritage in the Making: Dealing with Legacies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This collection of peer-reviewed papers stems in part from the successful workshop held at McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge in December 2018 under the aegis of the DAAD-Cambridge Hub. The event gathered several international heritage experts and professionals from both Germany and Italy to explore the complexities of handling Heritage related to Fascism and National Socialism.The selection of papers contribute much to the debate on the shifting conditions of the reception of dictatorial regimes, and more specifically the fate of fascist material legacies from the aftermath of WWII to the present day. The second part of this volume includes an additional contribution by Aydin Abar which keeps in with the broad theme of political reappropriation of the past lying at the core of Bartolini’s collection of papers but strays away from their geographical focus by extending the analysis to the exploitation of Achaemenian material legacies in reinforcing nationalist narratives in nineteenth and twentieth century Iran.

The sixth issue of Ex Novo explores how ‘peripheral’ regions currently approach both the practice and theory of public archaeology placing particular emphasis on Eastern and Southern Europe and extending the analysis to usually underrepresented regions of the Mediterranean.