Of Gods and Ancestors 17 I they be archaeological finds or historically preserved evidence of observations, seem to provide a direct connection to the past that can serve as the basis for generating specific ideas about past events, these remnants no longer belong to the past because they are being considered in the present.26 Starting from the notion that any act of perception and cognition is in itself the result of a construct, statements and concepts about the past must be understood as part of the present right from the outset. Rather than the past per se, what they actually reflect is the results of a number of cognitive and social processes in the present concerning questions relating to the past. It must thus follow that, rather than one truth, the potential truth of many histories must be acknowledged. This means that the writing of history is only able to make more or less plausible statements about the past. Within the rational and methodological framework of the historical sciences, the degree of plausibility is determined primarily by the density and proximity of sources, which, when critically analysed, are granted a “right of veto” to rule out invalid concepts of history. This “veto right of the sources” is a concept in the theory of history that assigns the source-critical interpretation of historical remains the role of making historically untrue statements recognisable as such. For one thing, the veto right of the sources limits the number of potential partisan interpretations of history to those that cannot be proved untrue or incorrect through source criticism. For another, it runs counter to a naïve objectivism that holds that historical facts can be understood and presented over time without taking account of the perspectivity of the respective historian in their time.27 This thus makes it impossible to relive the past, and claiming to present authentic historical reconstructions even harbours the risk that “military actions and wars are trivialised and heroised since the reenactment cannot depict the hardships, cruelties, fears, fatal wounds and deaths that are part and parcel of military conflict”.28 In the field of pre- and proto-historic archaeology in particular, these underlying methodological problems are exacerbated by the general lack of both written testimonies and other written sources. It should therefore be obvious that, even if we presuppose the existence of ideal conditions for passing down the material remnants of a specific (past) age, it is still not possible to resolve the dilemma, which is that we in the present do not know how these objects fitted into the culture of the past day to day and thus have no idea about the basic activities performed and routines followed by its people.29 Logically, this must apply all the more to those areas of life that are not necessarily expressed in material terms, such as the thoughts, feelings and beliefs of the people belonging to these cultures. It is precisely the idea of depicting a past era in an authentic fashion and the desire to put this into practice that prompts performances to go beyond merely presenting archaeological or historical sources in order to achieve narrative coherence. As the gaps that exist are filled in the process with narratives and personal convictions whose origins lie in other temporal and cultural contexts, this creates the appearance of totality, which in turn is deemed equal to the “historical truth”.30 Dense representations of this kind can thus easily become the conscious or unconscious expression of one’s own ideological or religious beliefs. This applies in particular to those areas of the reenactment scene that deal with the representation of Celts, Slavs, Vikings and the Germanic peoples,31 where people’s identification with the respective culture often goes well beyond presenting scientific findings in theatrical form. Instead, they attempt to link their own ethnic identity with the culture being portrayed by engineering a connection to their forefathers. It is from this imagined direct ancestry that they quite naturally derive as a matter of course their legitimate entitlement to make valid statements – that are understood as “authentic” – about these past societies. For example, as Heiko Gerull from the reenactment group Ulfhednar, which is related to the abovementioned project Gervina, explained with regard to the Germanic peoples: “I think and feel like my ancestors.”32 Unlike when choosing and producing replicas of historical equipment or clothing, for which the reenactors tend to follow the illustrations and technical details from academic publications as closely as possible, often demonstrating an astonishing amount of knowledge in the process, they largely ignore the academic debate surrounding the cultural history and origin of these archaeological cultures. Instead of falling in line with current research, which argues in favour of a much more complex and nuanced understanding, they stick to academically outdated, oversimplified and romanticising images of ancient societies and the religions that they followed.33 Onto this they project their ideas of an apparently “natural” and “unadulterated” way of life with
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