Breaking Images: Damage and Mutilation of Ancient Figurines

By Oxbow Books

Archaeological remains are ‘fragmented by definition’: apart from exceptional cases, the study of the human past takes into account mainly traces, ruins, discards, and debris of past civilizations. It is rare that things have been preserved as they were originally made and conceived in the past. However, not all the ancient fragmentary objects were the ‘leftovers’ from the past. A noticeable portion of them was part and parcel of the ancient materiality already in the form of a fragment or damaged item. In 2000, John Chapman, with his volume Fragmentation in Archaeology, attracted the attention of scholars on the need to reconsider broken artifacts as the result of the deliberate anthropic process of physical fragmentation. The phenomenon of fragmentation can be thus explored with more outcomes for a category of objects that played an important role inside the society: the figurines. Due to their portability and size, figurines are particularly entangled and engaged in social, spatial, temporal, and material relations, and – more than other artifacts – can easily accommodate acts of embodiment and dismemberment. The act of creation symmetrically also involves the act of destruction, which in turn is another act of creation, since from the fragmentation comes a new entity with a different ontology. Breaking contains the paradigms of life: creation and reparation, destruction and regeneration.

The scope of this volume is to search for traces of any voluntary and intentional fragmentation of ancient artifacts, creating, improving, and sharpening the methods and principles for a scientific investigation that goes beyond single author impression or sensitivity. The comparative lens adopted in this volume can allow the reader to explore different fields taken from ancient societies of how we can address, assess, detect, and even discuss the action of breaking and mutilation of ancient figurines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781789259155

Book preview

Preface

Comparative research represents a flourishing trend in historical studies. Yet its practical implementation in ancient studies still constitutes a major challenge. In general, comparative ancient history usually consists in the juxtaposition of case studies issued from different areas of the world, each one embedded in its disciplinary traditions, practices, and distinctive topics (Egyptology, Assyriology, Classical Studies, Sinology, and so on). This problem is reinforced by the lack of structured common agendas, of shared sets of concepts, which hamper the effective dialogue between different social disciplines. For instance, history, archaeology, economy, sociology, human geography, psychology, cultural studies, or anthropology hardly attempt to engage in really collaborative projects on a particular society, subject, or period of the ancient world. Similar obstacles become too visible between the diverse branches of a single area study. The unfortunate consequence is that ancient history is thus divided into regional and chronological compartments often referred to as ‘worlds’, such as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Aegean, Levantine, Mesoamerican, Indian, or Chinese. Such compartmental divisions emphasise borders, differences, and periodisation, a sort of retrospective projection into the past of geopolitical divisions and cultural traditions (‘Orientalism’) that only crystallised in modern times. Inevitably, this approach stresses uniqueness and isolation and favors hyper-specialised research too, thus narrowing the possibility of inter-dialogue with the Other, seen as remote and qualitative different.

It is for this reason that the series Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS) intends to produce a fertile ground on which original, more structured approaches to the comparative study of ancient societies may flourish and favour dialogue. It is essential that the extraordinary wealth of data from ancient societies must be integrated into current general discussions in social sciences. This could not only help renew and enlarge perspectives on sensitive topics, inspire dialogue, and provide a broader pool of human experiences for discussion. It might also make emerge structural features, practices, and social logics common to diverse societies but hidden under cultural and conceptual specificities. Research in social sciences cannot but benefit from such collaboration. Hence, the series aims to promote comparative and transversal research between unusual but carefully chosen case studies, be they geographical, thematic, or conceptual. Finally, the series intends to introduce inspiring theoretical approaches and innovative methods in ancient studies borrowed from other social sciences.

Then, why selecting a topic concerning the fragmentation? Especially only 20 years after John Chapman opened the question with its book, Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of South Eastern Europe, Routledge 2000? Since then several articles, commentary, books, and discussions have been produced around the topic, and still now various scholars are exploring it in a very fertile manner (cf. J. Guernsey, Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica: From Figurines to Sculpture. Cambridge, New York 2020). The main issue is that each single author analyses the fragmentation and any other type of mutilation or damage of ancient artefacts from the perspective of its own field of study, adopting limited methods, principles, and study cases taken from its own specialty. A single field, however rich in materials and methods will inevitably lead to some dead ends, because contexts and materials offered by the archaeology do not allow movement in multiple directions. As noted in Chapter 1 (cf. Miniaci, this volume), in absence of any explicit trace of an intentional anthropic action, the fracture and damage observed on artefacts are per se silent and do not easily reveal their history. Therefore, scholars need multiple tools and directions to explore voluntary fragmentation. Only a comparative approach can open new doors and cross-cultural comparisons can provide new methods, evidence, and solutions.

The scope – non stated – of this volume is to search for traces of any voluntary and intentional fragmentation of ancient artefacts, creating, improving, and sharpening the methods and principles for a scientific investigation that goes beyond single author impression or sensitivity. Fragmentation exists in archaeology and cannot be removed; however, within the fragmentation it is important to recognise that it can be produced by accident and the passing of time, or can be intentional, given by the human behaviour and intention. Therefore, the comparative lens adopted in this volume can allow the reader to explore different fields taken from ancient societies how we can address, assess, detect, and even discuss the voluntary action of fragmentation. The final aim of this volume is to open a path building a solid comparative guide of fragmentation in ancient societies. This will be the base for stimulating more systematic and organic investigation.

Juan Carlos Moreno García & Gianluca Miniaci

At the dawn of a break: The agency of the damage

Chapter 1

In the footsteps of Auguste Rodin: Fragmentation is not an end

Gianluca Miniaci

Starting from the notions of Auguste Rodin in the art world, the article aims at tackling the problem of fragmentation of figurines from a theoretical point of view. The article discusses the modes of damage, dividing them between accidental, intentional and semi-intentional. In the analysis of figurine breakage, the factors of time, archaeological context, and social dimension must also be taken into consideration. The final part of the article tackles the ‘negative’ notions connected with the idea of destruction of an object, especially a figurine. While usually mutilation and damage are interpreted as signs of destruction, decay, death, annihilation, or dysfunctionality, the fragments can be instead considered part of a transformative, generative, and even communicative and associative process.

Archaeological remains are ‘fragmented by definition’: apart from exceptional cases, the study of the human past takes into account mainly traces, ruins, discards, and debris (or better to call them trash and rubbish, see also Rathje and Murphy 2001) of past civilisations (Binford 1964, 425). It is rare that things have been preserved so much untouched and complete as they were originally made and conceived in the past. However, not all the ancient fragmentary objects were the ‘leftovers’ from the past, a noticeable portion of them was part and parcel of the ancient materiality already in the form of a fragment or damaged item (Boldrick, in this volume: ‘acts of damage and destruction contribute to the material forms of medieval religious sculptures’). In 2000, John Chapman with his volume Fragmentation in Archaeology attracted the attention of scholars on the need to reconsider broken artefacts also as the result of the deliberate anthropic process of physical fragmentation (Chapman 2000; see also Chapman and Gaydarska, in this volume for further bibliographical references). Nonetheless, the phenomenon of fragmentation as presented by Chapman has been long debated (Bailey 2001; 2005; esp. 2017) and, in absence of explicit evidence, scholars preferred to attribute the fragmentation of an artefact to natural and accidental causes (see comments of Starnini, in this volume). Systematic and rigorous analyses of artefact breakages and damages in archaeology continue to remain rather rare (as lamented in Arntz, in this volume).

The modes of damage, mutilation, and breakage of artefacts follow three macro categories:

1. accidental;

2. intentional;

3. semi-intentional.

The accidental breakage modes (1) are given to mechanical natural phenomena such as ground movements, passage of time, weight of the sediment, stones, sand, wind, etc. The intentional mode of breakage (2) is produced by an anthropic voluntary action that includes a premeditated act to damage or break an object for a determined purpose. The semi-intentional breakage modes (3) can be attributed to an anthropic action which results as much as possible involuntary, such as reshuffling, ravaging, careless discard or handling, etc. The semi-involuntary aspects also involve the circulation of the artefacts among people and in time (cf. Hughes 2018, 51), which creates accidental damage such as being dropped, lack of care in handling, unexpected movements, etc: especially when these fragments or wrecked artefacts were not immediately discarded, the semi-involuntary aspects transit towards human intentionality, because they indicate a process involving a certain degree of human agency. Unfortunately, the three modes often follow the same lines and produce analogous results, creating serious difficulty in targeting and separating one from the other (Forte, in this volume).

In archaeological practice, the difficulty of distinguishing between the three modes is increased by the overflowing abundance of fragmentary finds and by the obvious absence of visual testimony (for this reason anthropology has been often used as a comparative counterpart). In the absence of any explicit trace of an intentional anthropic action (cf. the occurrence of post-fragmentation decoration, Gaydarska et al. 2007, 183), the fracture and damage observed on artefacts are per se silent and do not easily reveal their history. Some more explored practices, such as damnatio memoriae (Connor 2019), reuse and recycling (Reiterman 2016; Duckworth and Wilson 2020), or iconoclasm (Simpson 2010; Boldrick 2020) cannot alone be inclusive of all the records.

Hence no precise methods and practices of investigation have been developed in order to detect the nature of the damage and fragmentation on the objects. Even laboratory techniques have not been widely applied to this type of research and, eventually, they did not provide any help in defining clear strategy and definite protocols for assessing the modes of damage and breakage of ancient artefacts (Forte; Richards and Whitford; and Vassallo, in this volume, for the archaeometry and laboratory analysis applied to fragmentation; Wandowicz, in this volume, for an experimental investigation). The absence of a detailed method for determining whether the breakage/damage was intentional or accidental has created a general tendency to dismiss most of the fragmentated material as casual (Bailey 2005, 111–2) and divert the attention of the research from detecting possible traces of deliberate actions.

Nonetheless, the identification of the mode of damage and breakage assumes absolute importance in archaeological and historical (especially from a social history point of view) reconstruction: when the fragmentation – or reuse of one of its fragments – is intentional is part of a communicative act (Guernsey 2020, 95). A whole object has its own meaning, use, and role, when broken, it passes under a transformative process, from the ‘whole’ to ‘incomplete’ (Biehl 2006, 201), concurrently providing a rewriting of the artefact’s identity and the resulting fragment(s) (Tasić 2011, 5). Therefore, the original purpose – and final scope – of this volume is to target those artefacts or categories that bear damage clearly caused by voluntary human activity with the aim to alter them by removing, modifying, scratching, or damaging some of their original elements and structure (see section The Materiality of the Damage: Searching for the Intentionality; see especially Brémont, in this volume, who highlighted different types of voluntary breaks: breaking-to-damage, breaking-to-harm, and breaking-to-divide). There are also damages and breaks which occur in a semi-intentional way, mainly due to a combination of anthropic actions and natural mechanical forces.

Two factors play a fundamental role in addressing the research towards the voluntary destruction and damage of artefacts in ancient society: 1) the time, i.e. when a damage/break occurred in the time-life of the artefact, and 2) the archaeological context. Both have not been adequately considered by scholars in their research (Arntz and Schallin, in this volume) and only a few studies are devoted to the post-depositional fractures (Richards and Whitford, in this volume).

Time is an essential factor and – for this research purpose – can be divided among the three main segments: a) PAST – an action/event occurred during the use-time of an artefact; b) PRESENT – at the time of deposition/discard of an artefact; c) FUTURE – in post-depositional times. When the damage is occurring in an intentional mode, the different time segments individuate also different purposes and scopes. For instance, the breaking of a human skull during funerary rites known as kapāla kriya in the Hinduism traditions certainly differ from the cranial fractures occurring during the ‘lifetime’ of the skull (Chanda, in this volume).

Also context is an essential factor and has been often ignored – or not scrutinised enough – among the scholars (Schallin, in this volume, and Brémont, in this volume). The prime division is between a) intact and b) disturbed contexts, followed by a distinction, for the intact context, between: a1) primary and a2) secondary contexts (critique in Wandowicz, in this volume). In disturbed or in intact secondary contexts the mobility of artefacts and their fragments presents more unpredictable tendency, while a primary closed context presents a narrower circuit of possibilities (see Miniaci 2022 and Miniaci, in this volume). The primary and intact context preserves the ancient moment of deposition, however ephemeral, of the object, carrying maximum potential for exploring the patterns of fragmentation and damage. The moment of deposition of an object in a single space-time represents the temporary freezing of all the individual stories imbued into the object itself (see ‘Pompeii Premise’ warnings, Schiffer 1985; Sommer 2012), allowing scholars to individuate more easily the different layers accumulated in it. In addition, the divisions of contexts (settlement, domestic, royal, cult, funerary, etc.) has been discontinuously and inconsistently applied to the research on fragmentation, often creating a flat or distorted interpretation of the data sets. Two macro categories are functional for the purpose of identifying modes of fragmentation/damage: a) explicitly ritual and b) non-ritual contexts. As highlighted by Brémont, Miniaci, and Schallin (in this volume), the fragmentation applied to explicitly ritual contexts (i.e. secure cult/funerary) provide a degree of information that in other types of contexts (when the ritual part is not so explicitly marked) can be more blurry or subject to speculations. For instance, the artefacts broken in connection with funeral feasting and burials in some Aegean contexts immediately reveal intentionality (see Åström 1987; Hamilakis 1998, 122). Rather interestingly, Schallin (in this volume) noted that Mycenaean fragmented terracotta fragments were more likely to be found in cult contexts than in funerary contexts, where the percentage of complete figurines increase. In an almost reverse perspective, the domestic (?) context of Lahun in late Middle Bronze Age Egypt preserved an unexpected number of complete clay figurines (Forte, in this volume), when measured against the faience figurines deposited in the funerary contexts of the same period which show more frequent and systematic fragmentation of body parts (Miniaci, in this volume).

A third important element in the analysis of voluntarily broken artefacts can be given by the social settings in which the fragmentation is recorded, because intentional damage can be produced by social behaviours and rites which may differ according to the subjects performing the action rather than solely on the type of objects (cf. Meskell 2008). For instance, Arntz (in this volume) has noted that the fragmentation of figurines at Çatalhöyük was more related to the sphere of the household, involving at the same degree anthropomorphic, abbreviated and zoomorphic miniatures. Also for Egyptian figurines of the Middle Bronze Age, the mutilation seems to pertain to a certain social dimension (middle class funerary contexts) which is not replicated in the lower class domestic contexts of Lahun (see Forte vs Miniaci, in this volume).

The phenomenon of fragmentation can be explored with more outcomes for a category of objects that played an important role inside the society: the figurines (see esp. Ucko 1968; Bailey 2005; 2017; Foxhall 2015; Insoll 2017; Meskell 2017).¹ Figurines more than other artefacts can easily accommodate – even contemporary – acts of embodiment and dismemberment (Chapman and Gaydarska, in this volume). Due to their portability and size, figurines are particularly entangled and engaged in social, spatial, temporal, and material relations (Basu 2017, 2). Figurines’ portability makes them extremely permeable elements, being closely involved in human interactions (see Miniaci forthcoming). By consequence, figurines can also be seen as a ‘social narrative’ in object form, a vehicle to express concepts, ideas, feelings, emotions, and visions (Bailey in Hamilton 2008, 295; Boutcher 2013). Produced and used in determined historical frameworks, conceived and used inside determined societies, and fostered by them, miniatures inevitably encapsulate pieces of human stories and customs of a society (Nanoglou 2005). Therefore, it is in such a permeability of the figurines that deliberate damage or fragmentation related to ritualistic purposes (such as exchange, appropriation, empowering, ritual deposition, etc.) can be more easily detected. For instance, some figurines were already conceptualised as dividual in order to be disassembled (see examples from the Ulúa Valley, Lopiparo and Joyce, in this volume; see also comments in Forte and Starnini, in this volume).

Usually, the breakage or the damage of a figurine – or an artefact in general – evokes ‘negative’ sentiments, since it involves destruction, disempowering, uselessness, inability to perform, often connected with the notions of refuse, discard, abandonment, decay, pillaging, or reshuffling (cf. critique in Hill 1995; Chapman 2000b). The damage or the breakage of a figurine means a real ‘pollution’ of its original scope (see Chanda, in this volume), moving the notion towards partial or total loss of meaning, interruption of the original significance, and suspension of the primary power (Burström 2013; examples in Schier 2006; Petrović and Spašić 2009). Not infrequently fragmentation and mutilation are perceived as a ‘killing’, even if ritual. The execration figurines in ancient Egypt (Posener 1958; Ritner 1993, 112–19) or the voodoo dolls in contemporary imagination (critique in Frankfurter 2020) can represent some of the most well-known examples of this concept. The negative notion related with the mutilation and breakage inevitably opposes the idea of complete as synonymous with originality, functionality, and usability. But breaking is not necessarily a negative process, disembodiment is a transformative and associative process, to an equal level of the creation (see also Lopiparo and Joyce, in this volume).

By the end of the 19th century AD, Auguste Rodin had produced an important turn in the world of art – mirrored also in society at a more general level: the fragmentary object may encapsulate positive and artistic meanings. Our cognitive processes should abandon the visualisation of works of art in their entirety and completeness and start understanding the expression and identity contained in fragmentary figures (Viéville 2008). At Rodin’s time a sculpture was only to be ‘regarded’ once finished and if its subject were identifiable (hence the spasmodic need to restore incomplete and fragmentary statues found from the ancient time, see critique in Boldrick, in this volume). In an early stage of his career, Rodin – inspired by the Michelangelo’s idea of the non finito – began to explore the damaged, fragmentary and incomplete representation of the human body: in 1864 he produced the Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose, refused by the Salon jury in 1865, in 1878 he produced the Torso of the Walking Man, followed by the most renowned sculpture The Walking Man (1889–90; Fig. 1.1) inspired by the fragments from the works for his statue Saint John the Baptist. The interest of Rodin in ancient statues which survived in a fragmentary state started in his youth, after visits to museums or his trips in Italy (Garnier 2008, 68). By the 1880s Rodin had started including statue fragments in his exhibitions, such as torsos or arms, producing thus an aesthetic revolution which was further expanded and developed in the next years of his career. With dismantling and reassembling existing sculptures in endless combinations, Rodin gave to the fragment its own independence and transformed it into a work of art in its own right, showing the vital and expressive force of the partial figures (Viéville 2008, 165; cf. Pollard 2004).

Fig. 1.1. The Walking Man (L’homme qui marche), Auguste Rodin, MMA 40.12.4 © 00 Creative Commons.

Rodin’s armless statues: nothing essential is missing. Standing before them, one has the sense of a profound wholeness, a completeness that allows for no addition. The notion that they are somehow unfinished does not result from simple observation, but rather from tedious consideration, from the petty pedantry dictating that arms belong to a body, and thus that a body without arms can never be whole (Rilke 2004, 89)

The act of creation symmetrically also involves the act of destruction, which in turn is another act of creation, since from the fragmentation comes a new entity with a different ontology. Destruction contains the paradigms of life: creating and repairing, destruction and regeneration (Chanda, in this volume; this metaphor is also applied to war and epidemy, as usually life is rebuilt with major impetus over the ruins of the war, cf. Livi Bacci 2020).

Thus, fragmentation is not the end of life of an object but a ‘key part of the process through which social identities were constructed and maintained’ (Guernsey 2020, 87). The fragmentation of objects per se does not always necessarily represent a sign of destruction, decay, death, annihilation, or dysfunctionality (Nanoglou 2015, 49–50), but – as shown by Rodin – it represents a transformative, generative, and even communicative and associative act (Biehl 1996; Lopiparo and Hendon 2009). Children playing on the beach in summertime can be a representative case: they involve all their energy in order to build sand castles, which are destined to be destroyed with the same energy. Why do they feel the need of destroying what they have just built? The moment of destruction is the moment of membership, play, understanding, processing, and creating. Fragmenting and damaging objects is not only a physical process but also a mental one, since it demands something in return from their makers (= the creation of new ontologies in the fragmenting process) but also from the observers, because the missing parts create a void that requires mental processing of reconstruction (Bailey 2007; Burström 2013, 313; see also Boldrick and the negative space, in this volume).

Breaking and damaging was – and still is – part of a negotiation process to establish material, ritual, and social relationships (see Boldrick 2015). One or more individuals wanting to mark their relationship or mutual transaction (of any type, from affective to ritual or economic; and with any type of entity, from human to deceased or a divinity; cf. Grinsell 1961; 1973; Fossey 1985) may have sealed this by the breaking of a particular object into parts. It is current practice to share a broken heart pendant between two lovers; signs of friendship involve the breaking of a twig. Such a process is also known as ‘enchainment’ (Talalay 1987, 45–6; Chapman 1996; 2000a, 12–14; 2010; Chapman and Gaydarska 2007; Guernsey 2020, 104–6; critique in Brittain and Harris 2010), since the creation and maintenance of personal relationships is also performed over and through the engagement on objects: figurines even more than other objects can be active part to the enchainment process: some ancient figurines were produced to be purposely broken, perhaps to be fragmented specifically at the time of their deposition (cf. Miniaci forthcoming; see also Lopiparo and Joyce, Miniaci, Starnini, in this volume; for the performative role of figurines, see Jones 2005; 2012).

The act of mutilation and breaking a figurine may mean activation, empowering, and releasing any forces contained within the whole figurine. For instance, the ritual ‘killing’ of a figurine, such as for the miniatures at La Victoria in Mesoamerica (Coe 1961, 91–2), can be conceived as a symbolic act to be performed over an artefact in order to activate or prevent its power. Breaking may mean a disruption of the seamless association between the part and the whole (Bailey 2007, 113; cf. Kiernan 2015), and the dismemberment invites redefinition outside of any commonly accepted understanding of the object (Bailey 2007, 113). For instance, the cut-out paper figures in Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua involved the breaking of a divine whole into manageable segments, in order to restore the harmony and balance between humans and the divine powers (Sandstrom and Sandstrom 1986, 277–8). Folk beliefs that various tribes related to the Finns explained the ritual breaking of the grave goods as a liberating action in order to allow the objects to follow the deceased into the hereafter (Karvonen 1998, 5). Also in modern ethnographic cases, the reasons for the ritual killing or dismemberment of the artefact could be connected with hindering any malevolence of supernaturally endowed entities upon reuse or creation (Corbey 2003).

In conclusion, fragmentation and damage are not the end of a figurine – or any other artefacts and monuments – but they can be intended also as a new beginning, the start of a new life with a new ontology, new ritual and social relations.

Notes

1 In this paper, the terms ‘miniature’ and ‘figurine’ are used in an interchangeable way, one as a synonym of the other, cf. Fridrichsen 1986, 749; Bailey 2005; Lesure 2011.

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Chapter 2

The meaning of deliberate figurine fragmentation: Insights from the Old and New Worlds

John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska

In this chapter on figurine studies in the prehistoric Old World and New World, we have four aims: (1) presenting a brief history of studies of figurine fragmentation; (2) strengthening the argumentation for intentional figurine fragmentation; (3) a cross-cultural comparison of figurine breakage in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of the East Balkans and the Preclassic period in Mesoamerica; and (4) a consideration of figurine agency.

We introduce fragmentation studies and present a short history of studies of figurine fragmentation, including material from our two books, the critiques of this approach to figurines and our replies to these critiques. We present the amended ‘Fragmentation Premise’, which incorporates the fragmentation of places and people. We turn to criticisms of intentional figurine fragmentation made in recent years, repositioning old arguments while developing new arguments based upon recent research. We then focus on Julia Guernsey’s outstanding (2020) monograph on Human figuration and fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica, which confirms many of the fragmentation patterns and the social implications of the practice that we have identified in the East Balkan Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Finally, we turn to the theme of figurine agency and provide several examples of usually complete figurines in action which can be used to develop an interpretation of non-partible personhood in the East Balkan Neolithic and Chalcolithic.

Introduction

In 2015, Gavin Lucas differentiated two metaphors widely used in reference to the archaeological record: the ‘fragment’ – an incomplete record – and the ‘relic’ – the record as betokening survival and continuity. Lucas (2015, 314) continues: ‘the idea of the archaeological record as incomplete or fragmentary runs through archaeological discourse since the inception of the discipline’. For Lucas, fragments have acted as a stimulus for thinking about the missing parts as much as the former whole. Lucas proposes that the power of the fragment lies in underlining or evoking an absence or loss (viz., the entropic theory of time), thus initiating a discourse on the relationship between the fragment and the whole. The problem of fragments is that they lacked a temporal dimension, which is why Lucas considers ‘relics’ as ultimately more significant in the history of our discipline. Lucas’ contribution emphasises the key aspect of fragmentation research – its central concern with relationships: it is par excellence a relational approach to the past, based upon materiality and multiple agencies shared