Virtual Summit Submission

Syracuse University
Anthropology and International Relations

Biography

Ella Roerden is pursuing a double major in Anthropology and International Relations. She is especially interested in preservation of historically relevant sites as they relate to historical memory, and the stories that can be told by varying states of preservation or lack thereof. Her interests lie in both the archaeological record and in archival material. She has studied abroad in Florence, Santiago, and now Wroclaw, and has participated in an archaeological field school in New York state. After graduating, she plans to obtain a Master’s degree in anthropology, and would like to pursue a career in the broader anthropological world.

Project

Poland is home to over five hundred castles, all created in different regions and periods. I selected five late-medieval castles, across different regions of Poland, to visit and study. I investigate the levels to which they each have been preserved over time; the degrees of preservation of each castle help to tell their stories. The museumification of castles, and the way those museums operate, tell stories in different ways, sharing different aspects of the castles’ histories. The extent to which a castle is or isn’t preserved, and the way it’s presented as a museum, determine whose stories from that castle get told. In each castle, I look at the museum’s information, and at details of the castle itself to uncover who inhabited it when, its purpose(s), what may have occurred to cause disrepair or destruction, past and present restoration and reconstruction projects, and funding details. This line of research could have broader implications on the whole field of museumification and preservation as a means of storytelling. If a given state of preservation tells a fuller narrative than another, that could become the archetype for successful historical-site museums going forward.