Abstract

This chapter explores the nature of recent ruins, highlighting some of the features which distinguish them from the classical ruin. Particular emphasis is laid on the ruin as a process rather than a static object, attending to the hybrid agencies involved at ruin sites. A large part of the chapter is given to examining the temporality and memory of ruins. The notion that the recent ruin is an untimely one is explored, both in the sense of ruination occurring too early, but also happening too fast. Such premature ruins can be linked to the particular nature of late/post/supermodernity where memory is often all too short. Moreover recent ruins, in unfettered states of decay and unaffected by the quarantine practices of heritage management, also offer an important source of investigation for memory work, to which archaeology is particularly well-suited. Such raw materialities stand as vital counter-memorials to the more explicit and often sanitized forms of commemoration.