Dissolving Subjects in Medieval Reliquaries and Twentieth-Century Mass Graves
Miriam Edlich-Muth
Abstract The remains of the dead can impinge upon public consciousness in different ways, ranging from shock ‘uncovering’ human unexpected places to social effects that unfold around remain unseen but are known be present. In 2009, following a lengthy legal battle, an official court decree ordered excavation private land located on grounds former concentration camp Jamlitz, Brandenburg. decision was based extensive evidence this site mass grave containing Hungarian, Polish, and German Jews who had been murdered during Holocaust. dispute, which burial rights as-yet-undiscovered come head with wishes landowner, became focus intense debate. This cross-period paper compares assumptions values underlying dispute late medieval responses encounters many relics reliquaries were circulating at time. doing so, it invites reflection how individual self-perception identities shaped threatened by engaging shifting subjective contexts inform their meaning.
Bioarchaeology and social theory