Unearthed Remnants, Place Meanings, and the Archaeological Imagination

Abstract

This paper explores the processes through which archaeological remains from the distant past have been transformed from unfamiliar objects to affective mediums for narrating competing histories of places. It does so by focusing on a series of recently unearthed building remnants uncovered on several construction sites in urban Hong Kong. These materials, which consist of foundation stones and other architectural remains dating from the Song Dynasty to the early British colonial period, have spurred significant public interest in their historical and cultural significance and debates over their conservation. While there is a growing body of critical scholarship on the politics of heritage and the rise of a local conservation movement in postcolonial Hong Kong, less attention has been paid to the ways in which specific material assets of heritage sites acquire their senses of historicity after their initial discovery. In keeping with the theme of this panel in attending to the “agency of heritage things” in generating affective experiences within specific spatial frames, this paper seeks to understand the physical attributes of the building remnants in question and their propensity in producing new sentiments of and relations with the past. By tracing the ways in which these long buried materials were documented, interpreted, conserved and represented as well as the ongoing debates over their heritage values between various groups of social actors, this paper illustrates the crucial role played by material artefacts in reanimating different layers of histories and the construction of competing place meanings and attachments.