Introduction

It has been argued that the potential of contemporary archaeology lies not so much in understanding our present age as just another archaeological phase, but in rethinking archaeological practice and theory. An archaeology of the contemporary era is the study of these traces—ruins, abandoned places, devastated landscapes, rubbish—which taken together define a particular archaeological assemblage. Archaeology is a discipline that is particularly well situated to define and understand this new era due to the destructive character of super modernity and the fact that archaeology works best when it works with ruination, interruptions and collapse. The expansion of the archaeology of the contemporary past to countries like Iran or Brazil is enriching the field and making it more complex and diverse. Archaeology is regularly confronted with multiple temporalities, as they manifest themselves in the material record. It scrutinises the negative effects of modernity, by looking at the ruination brought about by war, totalitarianism, predatory capitalism, colonialism and mass migration.