The chapters of this volume are mostly written based on the papers presented at the workshop Uses of the Past in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in Modern and Contemporary Period (Bucharest, June 21, 2018). The event has been jointly organized by the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy, the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The wider framework of cooperation between the three institutions is taking the form of the bilateral inter-academic exchange projects Ethnicity, People and Environment on the Danube, implemented by the Institute for South-East European Studies and the Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Ethnic Groups and National Minorities in Central- and South-Eastern Europe (17th–21st c.), implemented by the Institute for South-East European Studies and the Institute for Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The cooperation between the three institutes goes a while back in time. After each international workshop collective volumes of papers presented in international workshops, like the one that took place in June 2018 in Bucharest, were published. While the themes of the previous events and publications dealt with classic aspects of ethnology and social anthropology1, this year’s publication comes with a novel comparative approach for the east and south-east European region, that is, the ethnological recovery and presentation of the tangible and intangible past of the respective societies.