ABSTRACT
One cannot study the continuities and ruptures between conflict and peace in the North of Ireland without considering the often-overlooked role of material culture. This chapter is driven by two overarching principles derived from contemporary archaeology: first, to be explicit about the role of what Laurent Olivier has called ‘material memory’ in consciously and unconsciously directing our understandings of the past and allowing it to ‘live on’. Second, is to trace the ‘absent present’, that is, materials that are no longer in situ but whose traces are somehow retrievable. The chapter emphasises the interplay of absence and presence, including how it can reveal contradictions ‘between things and words’. Through focusing on the concepts and methods of contemporary archaeology, the central argument of this chapter is that material approaches reveal conflict and peace as being constantly in flux and they contradict claims that the past is somehow resolved or over.
