How History Takes Place: Sacralized Landscapes in the Croatian-Bosnian Border Region

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork (2004-2005), this article conceptualizes a topography of the Dalmatian-Bosnian border region as a memorial and sacralized landscape. Focusing on how inhabitants on the Croatian side of the border perceive their surroundings in terms of genealogies and territory, I trace the construction of geographical and historical landscapes in a context of ritual commemoration of massacre victims, examining ways in which local people's memory is literally inscribed in the landscape, in particular in relation to massacre sites and mass graves—from different epochs and conflicts—that had previously been concealed under Tito's regime. Investigating long-neglected spatial aspects of the political in the region, my contention is that landscapes constitute mnemonic agents and sites of historic revisions.