WITH terrorism emerging as a major form of 21st-century conflict, the investigation of past wars is moving beyond the realm of military history. And as this new interdisciplinary approach grows, building on a long tradition of historical interest in battles and weapons, modern archaeology is busy getting to grips with the material culture and landscapes of war.
We can get a sense of how rich and inclusive this new kind of archaeology can be in two books, Fields of Battle edited by Peter Doyle and Matthew Bennett, and Fields of Conflict, edited by Philip Freeman and Tony Pollard. They take us on a journey from urban warfare in the ancient Greek town of Olynthus in 348 BC to the defences of the Alamo in 1836, and from the landscapes of the American Civil War to the reconnaissance of British aircraft and airfields during the two world wars. They range over the role of geology in war, military engineering in the Channel Islands, a comparative view of British, French and German mapping in Belgium during the First World War, and the effects of desert landscape in North Africa between 1940 and 1943. Especially significant for the future is a draft of the Vimy Charter for Conservation of Historic Battlefield Terrain.
A more anthropological focus shows up in the appropriately titled Mat茅riel Culture, edited by John Schofield, William Gray Johnson and Colleen M. Beck. Here, the authors scrutinise every kind and size of object. Whether dealing with the Berlin Wall, the remains of a nuclear testing ground, the life history of a medal from the Second World War or the management of South Africa鈥檚 Robben Island, the sometimes heart-rending but always critical issues are presented with impeccable scholarship. From Argentina鈥檚 鈥渄isappeared鈥� to the remains of the Northern Ireland conflict, this book challenges our perceptions of what cultural heritage should be, and of the role and responsibilities of archaeology.
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The ways in which this new approach draws on every aspect of scientific archaeology are amply shown by editors R. Layton, P. G. Stone and J. Thomas in Destruction and Conservation of Cultural Property.
Conflict threatens the world鈥檚 archaeological heritage and is explored here with a variety of case studies, among them the renovation of Hue in Vietnam, the protection and reconstruction of the monuments of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, and the thorny issue of Hindus building a temple on the site of a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya, India. Between them, these publications allow students and interested observers to see a new kind of archaeology emerging. A popular glimpse of this is also found in Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver鈥檚 Two Men in a Trench, based on a BBC TV series.
And if you鈥檙e a student, three books are particularly interesting. Stephen Shennan鈥檚 Genes, Memes and Human History is an excellent account of an evolutionary ecological approach to archaeology. The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, is a fascinating look into the urban archaeology that surrounds us, edited by Alan Mayne and Tim Murray.