2011 Event a Great Success

2011-12-21T20:11:00.001Z

The 2011 Modern Conflict Archaeology conference held at Bristol University was a great success with over 50 delegates. Thanks to all those who presented at the conference and all the delagates who attended.

We plan to hold a similar event in 2012.

Modern Conflict Archaeology

www.winterburn.info

2011-09-16T09:59:00.004+01:00

Modern Conflict Archaeology Conference. October 22nd. 2011

Start 09:30

Introduction

Material Culture, early 20th century.
1.) Picturing War: A recently-discovered diary from the First World War. Matt Leonard, University of Bristol.

2.) Kaiser Bill, Asterix and The Mad Brute - the Pickelhaube as cultural symbol. Martin Brown, University of Bristol.

3.) Desert Fort – Archaeology of the French Foreign Legion. Capt R P Jeynes, University of Bristol.

Break

Recent fieldwork on WW2 ; post WW2 sites/tourism-induced site modification.

4.) Dragon’s Teeth: The Archaeology of Second World War Anti-invasion Defences in Wales. Jon Berry, University of Birmingham.

5) 'Enverism Nostalgia' or Albanian Cultural Heritage Icon: conflicting perceptions of Tirana’s pyramid.
Emily Glass, University of Bristol.

6.) Spooky spectres or sacred symbolism: conflicting interpretations of the Hell-Fire Caves. Aisling Tierney, University of Bristol.

LUNCH 12:30 – 13:30

Afternoon – Heritage that Hurts/Trauma/Occupation.

7) The Spanish-Cuban-American War (1895-98): the potential for archaeology in an almost forgotten 'modern' conflict. Alberto P. Martí, University of Leicester.

8) On Conflict, Cacti and Material Culture: an Archaeological Anthropology of the Chaco War and its Aftermath. Esther Breithoff, University of Bristol.

9) Franco’s bunkers and Hitler’s dreams in Canary Islands: The heritage nobody wants to inherit. Artemi Alejandro-Medina, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Break

WW2 to present – effects of built heritage/architecture and trauma.

10) Approaching Ottoman Heritage in Greece. Elizabeth Cohen, University of Cambridge.

11) Tales from the Broken City: redefining the meaning of home during the bombing of British cities. James Greenhalgh, Manchester University.

12) The Post-Conflict Response of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) to the built heritage of the Japanese Occupation. HyunKyung Lee, University of Cambridge.

Discussion, Jim Dixon, Senior Archaeologist, Museum of London.

Finish 17:00

(Updated on October 21st.)

List of Speakers and Papers

2011-06-14T07:44:00.007+01:00

Franco’s bunkers and Hitler’s dreams in Canary Islands: The heritage nobody wants to inherit.

Artemi Alejandro-Medina. University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

During the Second World War Franco’s regime (1936-1975) was supporting Nazi Germany. For the Germans, Gran Canaria was the ideal place for a U-Boats operations base. The negotiations between the two countries started and Franco hurried into fortifying the islands. A new navy base was built and also a secret underground torpedoes warehouse. The British, concerned by the strategic side of the place, decided on an invasion plan of the islands. The fear for an Allies landing did not disappear until the late 40s. The economic, technical and human effort deployed was colossal in an exhausted Spain after the Spanish Civil War. The Germans role is still unknown.

This paper deals with the Francoist heritage in Canary Islands and how it was related with the World War II. Why it is an abandoned and uncomfortable heritage and how it has revived dark ghosts of the past. Socially, it will give us a picture of how the trauma persists today.

This case is the result of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the conflict, covering; Industrial Heritage, landscape, historical and economic research and future initiatives in Environmental management, Community Archaeology groups and a museum for the memory and meaning.

Ageing Artefacts and Memory: Problems In Contemporary Combat Aircraft Archaeology

Terence Christian. University of Glasgow.

With a production total of nearly one million units, aircraft represent the largest composite artefact classification of the Second World War. Even with such vast production numbers, less than five-percent of operational aircraft remain. Indeed, the majority of the extant five-percent only exists in a wrecked state amongst the forests and fields worldwide. Due to both the wreck sites’ proximity to areas of human habitation and their global distribution, the past 70 years have seen thousands – if not millions – of hillwalkers encounter, handle and re-deposit aircraft wreck site artefacts. It is argued that the increased attention given to WWII wreck sites through popular media, coupled with the ease of artefact identification in the Internet age, endangers wreck sites’ contextual integrity.

By using historic photographs; Ministry of Defense crash dossiers; and modern archaeological surveying and soil chemistry analysis to examine Scottish WWII aircraft wreck sites, this paper addresses the long held belief that such archaeological sites are unmodified time capsules. In demonstrating large-scale human alteration of artefact distribution prior to geological encasement, this paper investigates the ecological impact of developing archaeological sites and examines the deletion of culture-specific technology in the post-modern age. Selections of a new aircraft archaeology-specific methodology will be presented as a means to both compensate for tourism induced site modification and to direct future resource management.

The Spanish-Cuban-American War (1895-98): the potential for archaeology in an almost forgotten 'modern' conflict.

Alberto P. Martí. University of Leicester.

The war for Cuban independence, which began as the latest attempt in a series of insurgency movements against the Spanish rule, led to a major international conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898. In the end, after less than four months of open hostilities, Spain accepted the loss of the majority of its remaining overseas colonies in the Caribbean, South-eastern Asia and the Pacific.

The so-called 'Disaster of the 98' became the starting point for a U.S. foreign policy that has shaped the military and political history of the 20th century.

Surprisingly, it has not been until quite recently that archaeologists have slowly started to explore this crucial conflict through its spaces and material remains. The potential for this approach looks really promising, as it might offer new insights into modern phenomena such as the precocious use of (re)concentration camps or the expression of contested memories related to 'humanitarian' interventions. In this paper I will review the state-of-the-art and identify some possible directions for the future archaeological research in this area.

Spooky spectres or sacred symbolism: conflicting interpretations of the Hell-Fire Caves.

Aisling Tierney. University of Bristol.

The Hell-Fire Caves at West Wycombe are the source of much modern-day speculation. Built under the direction of Sir Francis Dashwood in the mid 18^th century, their original purpose is clouded in mystery. From the 1950s, a descendent of Dashwood opened the cave system as a tourist attraction and began altering its features for both safety and amusement.

Today, the caves are the site of a bustling family tourist trade, complete with a café and kitchy merchandise. The owners regale the visitor with tales of hauntings and the paranormal. Children are invited to join the School of Witchcraft for courtyard games, face painting, and spooky fancy dress competitions.

It is not only tourists who visit the site, however. The cave complex has become an important spiritual mecca for many followers of modern occult and alternative religions. Their interpretations range from readings of secret symbols to associations with Satanism

This paper will analyse the conflicting interpretations presented by the caves’ owners and that of one particular spiritual group. A further contrasting assessment, from an archaeological perspective, will be presented in order to show how the physicality of the cave complex has been reinterpreted to suit the needs of each group.

Kaiser Bill, Asterix and The Mad Brute - the Pickelhaube as cultural symbol

Martin Brown. University of Bristol.

From British Sign Language to Asterix via the mantelpieces of Great War veterans the Pickelhaube helmet has become inextricably associated with Prussian militarism and the German Army of the Great War. While the helmet became the signifier of a barbaric enemy for the allied propagandists, it remained part of the German military panoply, even after its utility ceased on the battlefield. Today the helmet retains its value as widely recognised trope of an imagined Germanitas but it has also been subverted in popular culture, everywhere from outer space to the top shelf, via the heads of family pets. Nevertheless, the pickelhaube remains a potent military symbol, still seen on the parade ground as an symbol of power and prowess.

This paper will examine the mutability of the pickelhaube as symbol and examine the contested and sometimes comic nature of the artefact, exploring the value placed on it during the conflict and in more recent times.

Picturing War: A recently-discovered diary from the First World War.

Matt Leonard. University of Bristol.

Stranded midway between the mass destruction of industrialised war and the personal struggle for survival are the uniquely mediating objects of conflict that are the pocketbooks, sketchbooks, and diaries kept by those who fought in the trenches. These intimate objects communicate to us, often in everyday language, the mental and physical landscapes in which the soldiers lived, fought, were wounded, and sometimes died. This paper investigates the diary written by William Albert Muggeridge, who served in France and the Middle East as a Rifleman. During this time, he kept a pocketbook, and filled it with drawings and pictures representing the worlds he encountered. This object survives today, despite the fact that all other records of his military service have long since disappeared. Muggeridge’s illustrated diary communicates his identity and memory, as a pen-and-ink memorial to the man, and the fallen.

The Post-Conflict Response of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) to the built heritage of the Japanese Occupation

HyunKyung Lee. Cambridge University.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the built heritage and the formation of national identity through architecture dating to the period of the Japanese Occupation in South Korea. I will focus on the post-conflict response of South Korea to the built heritage of the Japanese Occupation, and will also look at the conflicts between Korean tradition and Japanese modernisation that are apparent by the changes in the built heritage. Moreover, I will investigate the changes of perception and treatment of the built heritage by South Koreans throughout different political presidencies starting from the Liberation (1945) to the present. Four case studies will be examined to see the current use and the style of the commemorative events influenced by South Koreans in the present.

Even though the impact of trauma on built heritage has been theorized by, among others, Bevan (2006), and Foote (1997), these relate only to European and American contexts. Due to significant changes in the treatment of heritage sites during different periods of presidency, these models cannot adequately describe the Korean situation. As a result, I will propose a model that describes the impact of occupation on built heritage, which is tailored to the Korean situation.

Tales from the Broken City: redefining the meaning of home during the bombing of British cities.

James Greenhalgh. University of Manchester.

The house as home has been conceptualised as the haven of safety and controlled space in the urban environment. Situated in a familiar neighbourhood, its importance as a defensible delineated area- crucial in the process of locating ourselves in space, creating place and as a psychological touchstone where we retreat from the world- has been stressed by many writers. However, as cities were reframed as landscapes of fear during the bombing campaigns of the Second World War, the intersection of the meanings of home with destruction and death also brought into focus the relationships of individuals with the home and city. As historians and archaeologists this interplay between the physical and conceptual is essential to our understanding of the past. Consequently, this paper deals with the manner in which ideas of home were altered by the effects of bombing and looks at the process by which this occurred. Crucial to this is the idea of the home in mid-twentieth century Britain and I argue that whilst the Blitz was an act of physical destruction, which brought with it concerns about shelter, possessions and physical harm, bombing also transgressed conceptual boundaries of the home, altering the relationship of the individuals to their homes.

On Conflict, Cacti and Material Culture: an Archaeological Anthropology of the Chaco War and its Aftermath

Esther Breithoff. University of Bristol.

The Gran Chaco is a vast and underpopulated lowland semi-arid lowland plain in South America. From 1932-1935, it also was the setting for the bloodiest and one of the most obscure wars in 20^th of the twentieth century South America. The Chaco War was a tragedy for the indigenous peoples of the area, and beyond, as they were the proxies of the Hispanic elites who created and prosecuted the conflict. Academic research, however, has primarily focused on the military history of the war, largely neglecting the indigenous experience of this armed conflict. The Mennonites form another group which has largely been neglected in the history of the Chaco War. They are an evangelical free church which originated in the Low Countries of northern Europe during the sixteenth-century Reformation era. Persecution and restriction of religious freedom continuously forced them to emigrate, and in 1927 the first group of Mennonites arrived in Paraguay with the hope of starting a new life in the Chaco wilderness, where they established both relationships with the soldiers and the indigenous people. The Mennonite introduction of agriculture and western Christian values, and the arrival of industrialised warfare with the Bolivian and Paraguayan armies, imposed themselves onto a predominantly hunter-gatherer landscape, resulting in a fusion of three completely different worlds amidst the Chaco’s thorny shrubs and arid plains. This paper is an attempt to identify new landscapes and objects generated by the destructive force of modern warfare, to locate their archaeological remains, and to analyze their altered meanings in the context of material culture anthropology.

Desert Fort – Archaeology of the French Foreign Legion

Richard Jeynes.

The French colonial operations in Morocco during the early twentieth century were relatively unknown by many in France, or anywhere else in the world. The Great War overshadowed the whole operation whilst the use of foreign troops in the twenties and thirties kept campaigns from this period out of public attention.

The campaigns were hard fought and the fighting between the French occupation forces and the Berber tribes was particularly fierce. Many forts and smaller outposts were constructed by the French in an attempt to dominate large areas of terrain. Most were eventually abandoned and destroyed by the French army or overrun and destroyed by the Berber. A few forts that did survive were either taken into use by the Moroccan army, converted into hotels and cafes or used as “quarries” for building material by local farmers. As such there remains very little evidence in the archaeological record of these important structures.

The proposed presentation will report on the results of a recent expedition ( March 2011) to locate and study the remains of one fort, and associated outposts, located in SE Morocco

Dragon’s Teeth: The Archaeology of Second World War Anti-invasion Defences in Wales

Jon Berry. University of Birmingham.

The preparation of defences against a possible German invasion profoundly affected the landscape of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. A wide range of defensive structures were built and the majority subsequently demolished. As part of ongoing research into the anti-invasion defences of Wales, this paper addresses the establishment of the chronology, location, type and extent of the defences constructed at a national scale, with a view to identifying useful areas to be used as case studies. Confronted by a virtual absence of published information, the researcher has applied a methodology that combines traditional archaeological approaches with historical documentary sources, including archived aerial photography and military war diaries. This paper will focus on progress achieved. Research to date has focused on the undertaking of an archaeological desk-based assessment to gain information about the known or potential archaeological military defence resource within Wales. The appropriateness of utilising an archaeological approach to research the recent past will be examined. The merits of employing a cross-disciplinary and complementary approach will be discussed. A landscape scale of analysis rather than a site-specific approach is advocated. An overview of deep archival research at The National Archives will be presented.

Approaching Ottoman Heritage in Greece

Elizabeth Cohen. University of Cambridge

The Ottoman occupation of Greece (c.15^th – 19^thcentury) left tangible impressions on the built landscape in the form ofmosques, imarets, barracks, cemeteries, etc. Although Greek legislationprotects all its cultural heritage (Law 3028/2002), not all periods and groupsare equally represented.

Ottoman heritage, for example, is largely absent orneglected (Llewellyn-Smith, 2004; Bintliff, 2007) while for Philliou it ispresent but not perceived (Philliou, 2008). That there has been no thoroughregistration of Ottoman monuments (Katenaki, 2005) causes a preservation issuethat can only be remedied when all post-Byzantine monuments are recorded.Whilst much has changed in the last 30 years, archaeological revision of thisarea is still limited and much Ottoman heritage still remains destroyed, underprotected or under conserved (Bintliff, 2007).

I want to understand how a selective version of Greece’spast has emerged in the heritage record, with a focus on how the Ottomanheritage virtually disappeared from the cultural landscape and why and in whatways it is re-emerging. But in order to grapple this task, I need to ascertainjust what sort of heritage this is. Is it a shared heritage or a postcolonialheritage? Both? Or neither? Using the White Tower in Thessaloniki as a casestudy, I will attempt to determine just whose contested heritage this is andwhy it matters.