This paper is a survey of the social presence, the social roles and concepts of the historical past, in a contemporary social context, that of Salamis.

It is a study of the sensory and sensual presence and biography of the material remains of the past. Through their sensory, material qualities, their visibility, their tangible materiality, and their ability to produce and implement space and time through scientific and social practices, they give flesh and bone to the national narrative. They forge ties with the ground, the soil, the earth, the ancestors. That is why in many nations one of the first services that is founded is the Bureau of archaeological research.

Nationalism is the conceptual framework of the nation, a process of imaginative construction of society, a secular religion that worships sacred images (flag) and has its own rituals, its own ceremonies and its own "sacred" texts and hymns (national anthem, national narratives). Of course, the concepts of the imaginaire are made, that doesn’t make them less real, though. Construction does not mean invention. It means production within certain historical conditions. This construction is a select process, a memory production. It recalls specific timeframes and phenomena while forcing others into oblivion. The purpose of this paper is the historical investigation of the process of the production of the mnemonic ritual. Consequently, not only the "authentic" form of historical and material past, that is to say the material artifacts and monuments, will be examined but especially its various reincarnations.

Recalling a variety of experiences from life in Salamis, from the library, the school, the archive, the excavation field, the museum, the cafe, the public space, the cyberspace, basing the research on traditions, urban legends and myths, the variations and the imaginaire, the goal is not to correctly restate or to discover the truth, but the "experimental" preservation of this constructed historical past through a series of photographs that will now be a form of matter – reality, which will have been produced by the people themselves and not dug up by some archaeological service.