Paper short abstract:

Through a self-reflexive interpretation of what digging out, storing, showing around and circulating remnants of war mean for members of a local ethnic minority group, I wish to offer an understanding of the contested histories and vernacular memories of past armed conflicts.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on a bullet, that was given to me as a present during the ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in a smaller region of Transylvania, Romania, within the communities of the local Hungarian minority. The research centred around the stories of soldiering, military service and the memory of past armed conflicts. Ethnographers are possibly hardwired to take any act of kindness, friendship or gifting as an act of initiation into the studied group. From my topic it kind of followed that receiving such an object, that was brought back from the past to the present through the portal of agricultural work, was such an occasion. Besides the feeling of becoming part of the group of local men who circulated such objects between themselves, I also had a historical experience in its Ankersmitean sense, a moment in which the stories that I had listened to for months suddenly materialized in my hands. Through this subjective field experience I wish to reflect on what the private possession of such remnants of war mean in a local context in which histories are contested, public commemorations are biased and the memories become distant, yet some of the consequences of the war shape the everyday reality of the locals.