Landscape as archive: death, belonging and memory in the north

This paper performatively presents research that was undertaken at a Bronze Age cist site on the Altyre Estate in Moray by Dr Gina Wall and Archaeologist Dr Alex Hale. A cist is a stone lined grave, and inhumation within cists was a common funerary rite in the Bronze Age. This research resulted in collaborative, co-authored publication entitled Landscapes of Energy and Extraction: Landscape as Archive. The photographs presented in the Relate North exhibition were produced by Wall especially for this publication during field work at the cist site and in the National Museums of Scotland store in Edinburgh. The project explores landscape, death, belonging and memory in northern landscapes, aligning with the conference call in its focus on the ethics of belonging, the rites, and rights, of the deceased. A key question emerging from our research is the need to open dialogue with the museum sector about the reinterment of indigenous human remains at their original sites of excavation, what we have come to understand, through learning from indigenous scholars, as rematriation. Furthermore, the research asks us to consider both the usefulness and the ethics of endless accumulations of knowledge based on extractive and violent practices, both past and present.