An environmental perspective on the ethnography of archaeological practice: the case of exhumations in Death Valley (Chojnice, Poland)

Abstract

Forensic archaeology has become highly influential branch of archaeology in Poland in recent decades. We claim that the significant element of the applied research methodology in case of exhumations should be ethnographic observations and interviews with families of the murdered, witnesses, and local communities, as well as volunteers and members of the archaeological research team. Inspired by environmental anthropology, we propose to expand the term “ethnography of exhumations” or “ethnography of archaeological practice” to amplify the relation between the process of excavations and exhumations and the embodied experience of archeological work in particular environment. The article seeks for nonhuman agencies (such as hydrological conditions and vegetation over mass graves) that shaped the “forensic landscape” of Death Valley in Chojnice, Poland, and defined subsequent stages in archaeological process that led to reveal the cremated remains of several hundred Poles murdered by the Nazis near the town at the end of January 1945.