A palimpsest comes from the ancient Greek palimpsesetos, literally meaning “scraped clean and used again.” Archeologist Paul Basu used the notion to express how the constructed past is a projection of our present mindset: “practical and discursive memories from different periods become intermeshed such that one period is remembered through the lens of another.”
The History Channel's latest ads dabble in similar ideas: different times in same spaces are superposed suggesting we forget but need to remember, as well as marking how the black and white past is a creation of the colourful present.
Basu, P. 2007. ‘Palimpsest Memoryscapes:
Materializing and Mediating War and Peace
in Sierra Leone’ in F. De Jong; M. Rowlands
(eds), Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imagina-
tions in West Africa, Walnut Creek, CA:
Left Coast Press p. 234.
