Topic > A Look at World War I Archeology - 2985

As archeology developed, several new branches and subdisciplines with specific focuses emerged. In recent decades we have been able to highlight the formation of military and war-related archaeologies such as the archeology of battlefields, the archeology of conflicts, the archeology of airports, forensic archaeology, the archeology of great wars and many other archaeologies that deal with a recent and violent history. If we want to understand the archeology of the First World War, we must know and understand the context in which it was formed. We will get to know broader archaeological fields and move towards more specific typologies, up to the archeology of the First World War. Archeology has traditionally been concerned with early civilizations, antiquity, and the earliest periods of human history, but over time its focus has become closer. and closer to recent time. In recent decades he has arrived at the present where he deals with the interaction between material culture and human behavior, without limitations of space and time (see Rathje 1979, 1981; Buchli, Lucas 2001; Saunders 2010b, 42). The increase in archaeological investigations in the recent past can be traced back to the 1970s. Rathje's Garbage Project / Le Projet du Garbàg played an important role. It began in 1973 at the University of Arizona (Buchli, Lucas 2001, 3). In this archaeological approach to the recent past, the so-called archaeologies of the contemporary past have emerged. The name was introduced by Buchli and Lucas (2001). In this context, some characteristic themes have been highlighted that have had a great impact on the development of archaeologies of the contemporary past. It was about production/consumption, memory/forgetting, disappearance/disclosure, presence… at the center of the paper… ipline (Saunders 2010b, 38). Saunders argues that pre-1914 battlefields were more or less small areas that, after the battle, were returned to the harmless environment. After 1914, peaceful landscapes turned into killing fields that have continued to harm and kill innocent people long since the armies left and the war ended (Saunders 2010b, 38). The reasons are the numerous unexploded ordnance abandoned over large areas. Field archeology has a narrow meaning that refers only to the battlefield, but World War I archeology also studies airfields, hospitals, warehouses, training camps, cemeteries, memorials and all areas that were located inland and were linked to conflict and are part of conflict landscapes even if they were never used in combat actions (Saunders 2010b, 38).