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WWII in Western Massachusetts: Contemporary Archaeology of a Plane Crash

January 9, 2021 · SHA · Conference Presentation

The Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Conference was convened virtually on January 6-9, 2021. I chaired a session on the Archaeology of Conflict, and gave this talk titled “World War II in Western Massachusetts: Contemporary Archaeology of a Plane Crash.”

Description: Mount Holyoke, a mountain in Western Massachusetts, is the site of ten World War II casualties. Without excavating, I interrogate how the physical remains of a 1944 plane crash exist in the present and actively shape the lived experiences of residents and visitors. The mountain is a mnemotopos, a place of memory and materialization of the past which still exists in the present. I sketch recollections and understanding of the plane crash, weaving together strands of evidence from ethnography and material remains. These alternative and tangled stories reveal how people in the present relate to a non-absent past and a landscape of war on the mountain. I also discuss ways in which a memorial to the disaster threatens to become a lieux de mémoire with an institutionalized, collective memory, and how individuals and families resist this process through their engagement with the site.

I was runner-up for the SHA’s Jamie Chad Brandon Student Paper Prize. A version of the paper was later published by the society’s journal, Historical Archaeology.