“You should speak with … and hurry!” : Some personal reflections on the value of oral history for the history of archaeology

Abstract

In this paper the author reconsiders the importance of oral history for the history of archaeology. By reflecting on his own use of oral history as a source of information for his PhD dissertation on Dutch archaeology and National Socialism, he argues that oral history should not be defined as collecting primary sources, but seen rather as a method that provides information on how the past was and is remembered and valued by members of a given academic community. The collected stories created by the interviewee and the interviewer tell us what individuals, as participants of different communities that have their own frameworks of the past, are able to memorize at the time of the interview. Collected stories should be seen to a large extent as communicated memories; as a result, it is important to find out when these memories were created, by whom and for what social function. By opening up a variety of perspectives on the past, oral history can reveal how these communicated memories are able to strengthen the common bonds within certain communities, in this case by creating a single narrative on the history of archaeology.