This paper presents the documentary-research project Graves and Tombs as a case study of performative archaeology, approaching archaeological investigation not as the production of finalized knowledge about the past, but as a situated, contemporary practice in which meanings are actively constructed. Excavation and post-excavation analysis are treated as temporally unfolding and materially grounded events, made visible through documentary film and process-based storytelling.
The project follows archaeological, historical, and anthropological research into high-status medieval burials and the subsequent ceremonial reburial of human remains. Rather than presenting results retrospectively, the research process is exposed in real time through situated narrative and in situ activation of sites. Excavation areas, crypt interiors, and laboratory settings function as temporal and material stages where methodological procedures, interpretive uncertainty, expert disagreement, ethical tensions, and even failure become visible as integral parts of knowledge production. Scientific protocols and analytical tools operate as communicative elements structuring how archaeological knowledge is produced and understood.
The interpretive framework is further developed through widely known historical narratives associated with Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg and Henry of Lipé, used as shared reference points for examining disrupted memory, fragmentary evidence, limits of interpretation, and the ethics of working with human remains. Burial sites whose historical memory has been interrupted become reactivated as lieux de mémoire through acts of identification and ritual deposition, where research turns into event and place becomes a renewed memory node.
Methodologically, the project combines performative archaeology, memory studies, digital imaging technologies, and moving-image representation with a participatory communication model described as “underground science,” in which public screenings and debates function as epistemic infrastructures rather than mere outreach. The paper argues that such performative and media-based approaches reframe archaeology as an embodied, reflexive, and socially shared practice of knowledge-making.

First Author: Ctibor Ostrý

Co-Authors: Michal Vágner, Petr Vachůt, Zdeněk Skokan

Keywords:
performative archaeology
Graves and Tombs
sites of memory (lieux de mémoire)
ritual practices
situated knowledge
documentary film as performative medium