Abstract

Understanding the unique status of uncommemorated trauma sites requires questioning the practice of referring to such sites solely as "mass graves." Indeed, it is the fact that the people once thrown into the pits have never been buried that generates today's ambivalent memory of the past associated with a given place. The unburied—in grassroots perception—threaten social homeostasis. I compare the findings of anthropologists regarding burial practices with the knowledge provided today by forensic/conflict archaeologists and ethnographers, indicating the special status of sites containing unritualized bodies of victims. This more nuanced approach, differentiating "mass graves" from "burial pits" will allow for more complex readings of contemporary interactions with a site, exhibited by local "implicated" bystander communities. Eastern European Holocaust landscapes especially, may thus be open to renewed scrutiny.