ABSTRACT
Museums’ attempts to reinvent themselves as socially engaged places of memory are hindered by an embedded desire to catalogue, conserve, and display objects. Archaeology’s two strengths, materiality and context, can productively expose significant ruptures in master narratives through archaeologies of archive that ask how objects come to be collected and displayed (or not) and at what cost. This wider understanding of the archive as multitemporal and multisensorial can show how decay and history intersect with personhood, place, and politics, demonstrating the Beauty of letting go. Though unanimity is a fiction, a number of Venda have expressed their satisfaction that a museum qualifies as such a safe place to keep the drum ancestor. Elision and violence are familiar parts of archaeology and museum’s lexicon. Gong rock sites are located in seemingly endless landscapes where sound travels from its source unconstrained. Such sites potentially offer a powerfully multi-sensorial site museum.
