The Palmyra Arch: Places, memories and ideologies
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-02-17

In April 2016 the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) first set up a replica arch of Palmyra’s destroyed Triumphal Arch in Trafalgar Square, London. In this paper I will present responses to this replica arch that were gathered in my ‘Postcard to Palmyra’ project (independent to the IDA), focussing on those who commented on the appropriateness of the location chosen, in terms of its history and ideology. In addition, I will explore some of the issues that might be raised by the potential setting up of replicas such as these on the original site in the future. I will attempt to tease out the various strands of remembering and forgetting that are implicated in these reconstructions. Key questions that will be posed, then, include: how did place affect the replica arch in Trafalgar Square? How might a replica affect the sense of place and of ‘pastness’ in Palmyra in the future? In what ways are the processes of remembering and forgetting enhanced or disrupted by these actions? 

Zena Kamash (Royal Holloway)