In this lucid, sweeping monograph, Galaty (Univ. of Michigan) argues that collective memories are a necessary component of human cultural behavior, and, moreover, that they are the most crucial element of state formation and nation building.

Choice Reviews

What is most significant about Galaty’s ambitious and highly readable book is that he takes a comparative and long-term diachronic approach to collective memory practices. . . . Memory and Nation Building is. . . a compelling book and an excellent example of how the archaeological study of memory has matured over time. It will be of interest to scholars involved in the study of memory, the relationship between memory practices and the longue durée, and comparative approaches to history.

American Journal of Archaeology

Galaty (2018), moves the study of collective memory beyond a simplistic association between monuments and legitimacy, following Jonker (1995) and J. Assman (2011) to develop a model that explains how would-be leaders transformed individual memory (particularly from funerary contexts) into collective memory.

Annual Review Of Anthropology

Galaty’s aims are laudable, and I respect the breadth of the scholarship on display here. . . . Galaty is sincere about deploying the craft of archaeology to make sense of the violence and upheaval in our times. Colleagues of a processual bent who value large-scale comparative studies and who study the rise of states, nationalism and memory may well find much to interest them here.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Galaty closes his compelling volume with a defence of the importance of archaeology and its relevance to the modern political climate by reminding the reader that archaeology “is not a peripheral academic pursuit; rather, it is absolutely necessary if we are to make sense of world history, which is largely viewed, by most people, through the prism of memory” (p. 157).

Antiquity

Memory and Nation Building is a hugely ambitious and ultimately convincing narrative of the tight bonds between memory, social formation, and ultimately of state building. Few authors have attempted to connect deep prehistory to the present in a single region of the world, much less three. Beautifully written, deeply researched, and often surprising, scholars in many fields will find Galaty's new theorization of memory convincing and useful.

Wayne Lee, Dowd Distinguished Professor of History, University of North Carolina