A new research project called ‘The Wild Country’ (‘Zdivočelá země’) will focus on the material traces left on the Czech landscape by the Nazi and Communist regimes, the Czech Academy of Sciences said in a press release sent to CTK.
The Academy is coordinating the project alongside the West Bohemian University and the Center for Theoretical Study. The research team combines the humanities, engineering and natural sciences.
Scientists will explore abandoned factories, vanished villages, labour camps, cemeteries and the transformation of settlements and industrial complexes.
“We are trying to contribute to a better confrontation as a society with the external and internal threats that manipulate the recent past,” said the project head Jan Hasil, from the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. “In today’s post-factual era, it is the material sources and their connection to memory that are more resistant to misinterpretation than the usual historical interpretations.”
Researchers will examine the effects of collectivisation, the phenomenon of borders, war cemeteries, industrial sites and airfields from World War II, as well as sites of repression and crimes against humanity. They will also work on the archaeology of memory, work with survivors, and analyse historical documents and audiovisual material.
“The Wild Country project is unique in many ways,” said Pavel Vareka, from West Bohemian University in Plzen. “For the first time in the Czech environment, focused attention is being paid to various aspects of 20th century materiality in relation to historical memory, on an interdisciplinary basis that links the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering.”
The project is co-financed by the EU from the Johannes Amos Comenius Operational Programme. Participants include ethnologists, philosophers, geomatics and mechanical engineers. The result will be dozens of studies, four monographs and a new volume of the archaeological atlas, which will present 50 modern sites in the Czech Republic.
The sites to be investigated will include the Rolava mining plant and prisoner-of-war camp in the Ore Mountains, Stalin’s memorial at Prague-Letna, the concentration camp at Lety near Pisek, and the Red Tower of Death in Vykmanov in western Bohemia.
The project also has an international dimension. The scientific board includes foreign experts and the research teams will operate not only in the Czech Republic, but also in other European countries, in Asia and Africa. The researchers want to explore the transformations of landscapes, wars and memory in a global context.
