ABSTRACT
As I demonstrate in this paper, recognising the vital role of absence in processes of signification will eventually unsettle the idea that the archaeological record must be complete and our memories of the past whole in order to be historically meaningful. This allows us to reconsider some foundational assumptions regarding historicity (sensu Trouillot 1995) and the temporality of the archive, thus conveying how memory gets reworked over time (cf. Moshenska 2006). However, I also recognise that there are limits to memory and narrative, and in the last section of the paper I address issues of power in the construction of historical narratives and personal recollections, which cannot be severed from ethical and political problems entangled with our archaeological praxis in the field.
2. Forced labour at Tempelhof airfield Tempelhof airfield is publicly known as the ‘gate to freedom’ due to its role during the Berlin airlift in 1948 and 1949. The excavation project, however, focuses its attention on a much darker chapter of German history. On 1 May 1933, the Nazis celebrated a newly declared national holiday, the ‘Day of National Work’.2 Tempelhof airport was used for a massive propagandistic event with hundreds of thousands of participants (Assatzk 2012; Coppi 2012). The following day, in a cynical twist of its supposedly pro-worker ideology, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers Party) banned all unions, arresting union members and functionaries. On 10 May 1933, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF; German Labour Front) was founded as a surrogate union, with the aim of organising German workers as well as assuring their ‘social hygiene’ and the aesthetic appearance of the workplace (Aly, Chroust, and Pross 1994). In this function, the organisation provided the tableware for workplace canteens, which had to carry the uniform label ‘Amt Scho¨nheit der Arbeit’ (Bureau Beauty of Labour) (Zentek 2009). A number of fragments of this tableware were found during our excavations (Figure 2), suggesting that these dishes belonged to the factory
