Digging the Trenches

Author: Andrew Robertshaw
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 178303369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
This comprehensive, illustrated survey of the latest in battlefield archaeology reveals “intimate insight into the realities of life” during WWI (Current Archaeology). Modern methods of archaeological, historical, and forensic research have transformed our understanding of the Great War. In Digging the Trenches, battlefield archaeologists Andrew Robertshaw and David Kenyon introduce the reader to this exciting new field and explore many of the remarkable projects that have been undertaken. Robertshaw and Kenyon show how archaeology can be used to reveal the positions of trenches, dugouts and other battlefield features, as well as what life on the Western Front was really like. They also show how individual soldiers are coming into focus as forensic investigation is so highly developed that individuals can be identified and their fates discovered. “An excellent introduction to the subject…Digging the Trenches is essential reading.”—Gary Sheffield, Military Illustrated “What a splendid book this is.”—Neil Faulkner, Current Archaeology

The Western Front

Author: Stephen Miles
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473833760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
The Western Front has become, once again, and after 100 years, an important and increasingly popular tourist destination. The Centenary is already encouraging large numbers of visitors to engage with this highly poignant landscape of war and to commemorate the sacrifice and loss of a previous generation. Interest is also being sharpened in the Ôplaces of warÕ as battle-sites, trench-systems, bunkers and mine craters gain a clearer identity as war heritage. For the first time this book brings together the three strands of heritage, landscape and tourism to provide a fresh understanding of the multi-layered nature of the Western Front. The book approaches the area as a rich dynamic landscape which can be viewed in a startling variety of ways: historically, materially, culturally, and perceptually. To illustrate these two dominant interpretations of the regionÕs landscape Ð commemorative and heritage Ð are highlighted and their relationship to tourism explored. Tourism is a lens through which these layers can be peeled away, and each understood and interacted with according to the individualÕs own knowledge, motivation, and degree of emotional engagement. Tourism is not regarded here as a passive phenomenon, but as an active agent that can determine, dictate and inscribe this evocative landscape. The Western Front: Heritage, Landscape and Tourism is a timely addition to our increasing interest in the First World War and the places where it was fought. It will be indispensable to those who seek a deeper understanding of the conflict from previously undervalued perspectives.

Beneath the Killing Fields

Author: Matthew Leonard
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 147388411X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
Beneath the Killing Fields of the Western Front still lies a hidden landscape of industrialised conflict virtually untouched since 1918. This subterranean world is an ambiguous environment filled with material culture that that objectifies the scope and depth of human interaction with the diverse conflict landscapes of modern war. Covering the military reasoning for taking the war underground, as well as exploring the way that human beings interacted with these extraordinary alien environments, this book provides a more all-encompassing overview of the Western Front. The underground war was intrinsic to trench warfare and involved far more than simply trying to destroy the enemys trenches from below. It also served as a home to thousands of men, protecting them from the metallic landscapes of the surface. With the aid of cutting edge fieldwork conducted by the author in these subterranean locales, this book combines military history, archaeology and anthropology together with primary data and unique imagery of British, French, German and American underground defences in order to explore the realities of subterranean warfare on the Western Front, and the effects on the human body and mind that living and fighting underground inevitably entailed.

Killing Time

Author: Nicholas J Saunders
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752476181
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
The Great War of 1914-1918 now stands at the furthest edge of living memory. And yet, hardly a month passes without some dramatic and sometimes tragic discovery being made along the old killing fields of the Western Front. Graves of British soldiers buried during battle – still lying in rows seemingly arm in arm or found crouching at the entrance to a dugout; whole 'underground cities' of trenches, dugouts and shelters have been preserved in the mud; field hospitals carved out of the chalk country of the Somme marked with graffiti; unexploded bombs and gas canisters – all of these are the poignant and sometimes deadly legacies of a war we can never forget. Killing Time digs beneath the surface of war to uncover the living reality left behind. Nicholas J. Saunders brings together a wealth of discoveries to offer fresh insights into the human and often barbaric aspect of warfare. He uses discoveries in the trenches, family photographs, diaries and souvenirs to give the dead a voice. You cannot fail to be fascinated and moved by what he unearths.

The Arte Militaire

Author: Warwick Louth
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1804516430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
Military manuals have been used as a source through a range of historical studies, but only recently has their potential to Conflict Archaeology truly been recognized. Military manuals allowed the progression of the Military Revolution from the informed amateur towards the scientific, mathematical choreography for massed troops at the height of the Military Revolution, and their use as a viable historical resource often taken at face value - negating their worth. Using correlated GIS, landscape archaeology, metal detecting, military knowledge and experimental archaeology, we might understand more fully the limitations and strengths drill books provide us. Like a dance, military theory provides a certain number of ways individuals may progress through a landscape. Using examples taken from recent investigations at sites such as Edgehill, Lutzen and Lostwithiel, this paper shall examine to what extent individual drill can be identified in the archaeological record. This publication hopes to prove to what level and extent this can be applied to predictive modeling of artifact collections on battlefields - thus providing depth to the archaeological study of fields of conflict. Like investigations on the Little Bighorn battlefield, through use of wear analysis of the material remains of conflict, we can effectively tell the nuances of individual drill, practice and movement of people across a landscape; their drill actively mirroring subtleties in our understanding of interpretation. Taking the works of such writers and artists as Bariffe, de Gheyn and Ward, the author attempts to actively break down how individual and group drill will leave material remains and the archaeological means these might be taken down, but equally, this work also attempts to investigate and breach the subject of whether such manuals can also be used to dictate the survivability of 17th century fortifications - often within urban landscapes devoid of their civil war origins, as can be seen at Alton and Basing House. Theoretical in its nature and utilizing and combining elements of research not previously collaborated, The Arte Militaire is unique in not merely showing how military manuals were used, but rather how they can still be seen within the historical landscape.

Landscapes of the Western Front

Author: Ross Wilson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136500065
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
This book examines the British soldiers on the Western Front and how they responded to the war landscape they encountered behind the lines and at the front. Using a multidisciplinary perspective, this study investigates the relationship between soldiers and the spaces and materials of the warzone, analyzing how soldiers constructed a ‘sense of place’ in the hostile, unpredictable environment. Drawing upon recent developments within First World War Studies and the anthropological examination of the fields of conflict, an ethnohistorical perspective of the soldiers is built which details the various ways soldiers responded to the physical and material world of the Western Front. This study is also grounded in the wider debates on how the First World War is remembered within Britain and offers an alternative perspective on the individuals who fought in the world’s first global conflagration nearly a century ago.

The Poppy

Author: Nicholas J. Saunders
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780741855
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
In the aftermath of the horrific trench warfare of the First World War, the poppy – sprouting across the killing fields of France and Belgium, then immortalised in John McCrae’s moving poem – became a worldwide icon. Yet the poppy has a longer history, as the tell-tale sign of human cultivation of the land, of the ravages of war and of the desire to escape the earthly realm through inspired Romantic opium dreams or the grim reality of morphine drips. This is a story spanning three thousand years, from the ancient Egyptian fights over prized medicinal potions to the addicted veterans returning home from the American Civil War, from the British political machinations during the Opium Wars with China to the struggle to end Afghanistan’s tribal narcotics trade. Through it all, there stands the transformative poppy. Nicholas J. Saunders brings us the definitive history of this ever-enduring but humble flower of the fields, a story that is at turns tragic, eye-opening and, most essentially, life-affirming – a gift to us all.

1918

Author: Barrie Pitt
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473834767
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
This vividly detailed history examines the battles and politics in the final year of WWI—includes trench diagrams, photographs, and maps of battles. Three years into the Great War, Europe found itself in a stalemate on the Western Front. The Russian Front had collapsed and the United States had abandoned neutrality, joining the Allied cause. These developments set the stage for the climactic events of 1918, the year that would finally see an end to the war. In 1918: The Last Act, acclaimed military historian Barrie Pitt “analyses with great lucidity the broad outlines of German and Allied Strategy” (The Sunday Telegraph). With an expert eye, Pitt looks into the policies of the warring powers, the men who led them, and the resulting battles along the Western Front. From the German onslaught of March 21, 1918, to the struggles in Champagne and the Second Battle of the Marne, to the turning point in August and the final, hard-won victory, 1918 The Last Act traces “the blunders at the top and the filth and stench and misery of the trenches” in order to deliver “a compelling narrative” of World War I (Daily Mail).

The Archaeology of the Second World War

Author: Gabriel Moshenska
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473822300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
The Second World War transformed British society. Men, women and children inhabited the war in every area of their lives, from their clothing and food to schools, workplaces and wartime service. This transformation affected the landscapes, towns and cities as factories turned to war work, beaches were prepared as battlefields and agricultural land became airfields and army camps. Some of these changes were violent: houses were blasted into bombsites, burning aircraft tumbled out of the sky and the seas around Britain became a graveyard for sunken ships. Many physical signs of the war have survived a vast array of sites and artefacts that archaeologists can explore - and Gabriel Moshenskas new book is an essential introduction to them. He shows how archaeology can bring the ruins, relics and historic sites of the war to life, especially when it is combined with interviews and archival research in order to build up a clear picture of Britain and its people during the conflict. His work provides for the first time a broad and inclusive overview of the main themes of Second World War archaeology and a guide to many of the different types of sites in Britain. It will open up the subject for readers who have a general interest in the war and it will be necessary reading and reference for those who are already fascinated by wartime archaeology - they will find something new and unexpected within the wide range of sites featured in the book.

After Modernity

Author: Rodney Harrison
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191613886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
This book summarizes archaeological approaches to the contemporary past, and suggests a new agenda for the archaeology of late modern societies. The principal focus is the archaeology of developed, de-industrialized societies during the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. This period encompasses the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the 'internet age', a period which sits firmly within what we would recognize to be a period of 'lived and living memory'. Rodney Harrison and John Schofield explore how archaeology can inform the study of this time period and the study of our own society through detailed case studies and an in-depth summary of the existing literature. Their book draws together cross-disciplinary perspectives on contemporary material culture studies, and develops a new agenda for the study of the materiality of late modern societies.