Why is the analysis of sites of conflict important ?

The most simple and possibly the most important reason for the study of the archaeology of conflict is that only by searching for evidence of such an event can a close approximation be obtained of exactly what took place on a particular site. This is confirmed by Dyer (1985), who suggests that “battlefields provide a unique opportunity to study the material by-products of human conflict”.

This analysis needs to be carried out systematically and consistently, and in order to do this methodically, the artefactual residue of both factions need to be analysed leaving aside the propaganda and the over-glorification of the narrative. In this respect Gould’s statement is helpful when he suggests that “artefacts are signatures of particular kinds of behaviour and that consequently behaviour can be identified if the signatures’ relationships are studied” (Gould 1983, 105).

How this archaeological evidence is studied and more importantly, how it is interpreted, is of the greatest importance. It can and should be distinguished from the historical literary evidence, which is usually based on personal accounts of the event and is not always necessarily reliable.

Few, if any of those at a scene of conflict, can give an accurate account of the entire event, as sites of conflict are by their very nature traumatic and confusing places. They also often cover large areas of ground. The observer might not even have known how large the conflict was, or how many casualties were taken on another part of the field.

The larger picture of the conflict therefore depends upon a general overview and this was usually supplied by one of the leaders of one faction. Apart from the bias inherent in such a view, it also relies upon an interpretation of the event, rather than an objective account.

In order to gain a more accurate understanding of the event, such as its scale or the number of dead, an account should ideally be obtained from something or someone who would not provide, or profit from, a distorted version of it – someone who would provide a neutral viewpoint.

Although on a practical level this could be done by analysing the residue – the concentrations of artefacts left on the ground after the conflict – on a personal level, this is an almost impossible task, as the notion of conflict is often distorted by an inability to distance oneself from most of its forms.

Possibly the most graphic description of the results of combat, and a personal perspective on how one might prevent future conflicts, was provided by Technical Sergeant Donald Haguall of the 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration Unit in the second World War.

Although disturbingly graphic, this descriptive account is given by someone who dealt with the results of conflict on a day-to-day basis. It is therefore a first-hand account of what it is like to observe the contemporary remains of a field of conflict.

“Sure, there were lots of bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy. Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade, even. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm.

The ones that stink the worst are the guys who got internal wounds and are dead about three weeks with the blood staying inside and rotting, and when you move the body the blood comes out of the nose and mouth. Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don’t all get blue, some of them get black.”

But they all stunk. There’s only one stink and that’s it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth.

You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn’t have any more wars.” (Purnell undated, 2688)

In order to prevent the over-glorification of wars and conflict, it is therefore important, as Sergeant Haguall advises, to get as close as possible to the residue of a conflict.

Rather than ignoring the physical remains of conflict, as has been the case for too long, they should be studied in order to find out more about the darker, uncomfortably unpleasant side of human nature. Reading about a ‘glorious’ battle in a history book is one thing; seeing the evidence of the same battle on the skeletal material in a mass war grave is something quite different.

The use of conflicts for propaganda and misinformation

The relevance of the remains of battle can be an emotive subject. They have often been used in an attempt to persuade people to take part in further conflicts.

The St. Crispins Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V (Act 4, Scene 3; Wilson 1983) for example, is a fictitious version of an address used to rally the troops in Henry’s army prior to the Battle of Agincourt (1415). In the speech, it was suggested that after the conflict with the French, the soldiers could proudly show off those scars that they had received during the battle.

The moral-boosting effects of this speech are so effective that the speech or derivatives of it are still used today by troop leaders before going into combat. Of course, they omit to mention that many of them would eventually also have to be confronted by the horrors of war as described by Sergeant Donald Haguall above. The selective use of information that is passed on to the soldiers, as propaganda, is typical during times of war.

An element of caution must therefore be connected with the study of historical sources on the subject of conflict, as the likelihood for its misuse and distortion of the facts for nationalist or propaganda purposes is great. The German National Socialist Workers Party in 1930’s Germany, for example, used the historical version of the German victory over the Romans at the Varus Battle (AD9) to promote their own ideology of Germanic superiority. They were not concerned with the fact that the location of the site was unknown at the time and that the actual evidence of the events at Varus lay undiscovered.

Winston Churchill, on the other hand, used key words from Shakespeare’s Henry V to describe the overwhelming odds faced by the RAF during the Battle of Britain. They were, like Henry’s soldiers, to become “The Few”, echoing the earlier English struggles against overwhelming odds at Agincourt in 1415.

More recently, in the unstable former Yugoslavia of the late 1990’s, the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, was accused of using the medieval defeat of the Serbians at Kosovo Polje (1389, Kosovo Plain; “Field of the Black Birds”; Roberts 2003) to fuel Serbian ethnic hatred and to promote ethnic cleansing. The Serbs “endowed [the battle] with myths of honour and heroism that helped them preserve their dignity and sense of nationhood” (ibid). The anniversary of the battle on June 28, Vidovdan (St. Vitus’s Day) is the Serbian national holiday.

An international court in The Hague is currently trying Milosevic in an attempt to find out if accusations of war crimes inciting ethnic cleansing are true. Material used in this trial will rely not only upon personal testimonies but also upon archaeological evidence obtained by the forensic analysis of individual or mass graves of victims of the conflict.

However, having access to the archaeological evidence will not always produce the desired political results. A mass grave discovered in 1943 at Katyn Wood in Poland was used as propaganda by both the allies and axis factions for their own purposes. This led to a crisis that could have divided the Russian, American and British allies at a crucial moment of the Second World War.

In April 1943 German troops in occupied Russia claimed to have found a mass grave in which the bodies of some 4,500 Polish officers, once prisoners of the Russians, were buried. For the Axis propagandists this was naturally a major opportunity to be exploited, a chance to force a rift in the Allied front. And it succeeded well, for the Russians, confronted with the evidence, reacted with anger, and blamed the slaughter on the Germans. But their awkward handling and presentation of their case only succeeded in embarrassing their allies and increasing everyone’s suspicions. When the war ended, the whole question of responsibility was conveniently shelved. (Jerrard Tickell, undated)

This issue caused a huge rift in the Allied command, as the then Nazi German Government hoped it would. It was not until the late twentieth century that information was forthcoming which proved that Soviet troops had been responsible for the slaughter (Haglund 2002).

The examples above illustrate that propaganda, or a distortion of the truth connected with conflict is often used to sway public opinion and it is therefore a potentially dangerous tool. If this information is not challenged by actual physical evidence, ideally collected by an independent or neutral body, then those wishing to exploit it, as highlighted in the courtroom battle over the issue of Holocaust denial (Gibbons 2000), will attempt to perpetuate the myths or inaccuracies associated with these events.

Battlefields as Memorials

Battlefields, particularly modern examples, are often viewed as types of memorials. The actor and authority on the medieval longbow, Robert Hardy (in Boardman 1996) suggests that …

“A battlefield is’a tomb, holding the bodies of most of those who died there’; a perpetual shrine and memorial which should engage our thought and our reverence”

Many ex-servicemen and their relatives visit the grave sites of their lost relatives and comrades on or close to battlefields around the world.

The war cemeteries are mostly well-tended plots of land in tranquil settings, which befit their status as national memorials. The now famous lines of Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Soldier”, sum up the emotions and memories such sites evoke:

“If I should die, think only this of me;
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England”

(Brooke in Jones 1998, 44)

If, however, the memorial itself is not on the battlefield, the focus can become detached from the site of the conflict. The connection between the battlefield and the memorial could later be lost, as the memorial itself becomes the symbol of the event.

This highlights the need to physically record where the boundaries of conflicts lie, as there are cases, such as the battle of Bosworth Field, Leicestershire, where the exact location of the battlefield is uncertain and therefore its limits are unknown.

On the battlefield of Agincourt, France (1415), the site of the graves is seen as the focus of the battlefield (Plate 3), although there is contradictory evidence to suggest that the battlefield might lie elsewhere (Sutherland, forthcoming 1).

Currently, national bodies, such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, tend and upkeep war cemeteries around the world. The largest Commonwealth war cemetery at Tyne Cot in Belgium contains 11,908 graves (Keegan et al 1985, 161). These are, however, memorials to the conflicts of the recent past.

How long will it take until these battlefield cemeteries, like so many others throughout history, will become derelict and are then ploughed away or developed due to a lack of visitors who would recognise their former importance ?

Although such notions presently appear inconceivable, there are currently areas of land in north-west Europe which are known to contain human remains from the First World War that are treated with little respect.

At the Battlefield Archaeology conference at the National Army Museum in July 2003, a paper highlighted the work undertaken by forensic pathologists who attempted to identify the remains of soldiers from the First World War found during development work (Lewis 2003).

The skeletal remains, some of which were also identifiable, were given formal burial following their analysis.

Another paper at the same conference, however, discussed the fact that personal identification plates, or “dog tags”, from soldiers lost on battlefields were being removed by some metal detectorists from skeletons and sold on the open market.

This statement provoked a general feeling of revulsion from the audience with one delegate (Robertshaw 2003 pers. comm.) suggesting that this act was “like killing them twice”. This is because it makes identification of bodies, subsequently found on the battlefield by forensic anthropologists, all the more difficult.

In fact, the threat of dying anonymously often drove individuals to attempt to have their remains recognised in the event of their death. For example, before identification tags became generally available, some soldiers wrote their names on pieces of paper and attached them to their own uniforms (ibid). Although these paper fragments might not survive archaeologically, the recent advances in the analysis of DNA have led to the repatriation of some of these remains, in some cases closing the book on what happened to loved ones after they died in battle.

These examples illustrate the sentiments surrounding the locations on battlefields of the bodies of known or unknown soldiers. The ultimate reflection of these feelings is exhibited by the numerous and often enormous structures around the world that are known individually as “the tomb of the unknown soldier”. Such memorials recognise the deaths of those who have no known grave. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance to accurately record the locations of where the combatants from a conflict lie.

The strength of feeling regarding war cemeteries, and the popularity of historic battlefields, particularly invoked by the media and the current trend to destroy sites of conflict, suggest that the general public support the study of battlefields through their educational, financial and emotional involvement. Additionally, there is now a British “All Party War Graves and Battlefields Heritage Group” based in the House of Lords, which discusses such issues and how they might be rectified.

Battlefield Tourism

Historic battlefields are often the foci of educational trips and recreational visits. Although this potential has not yet been fully appreciated in Britain, visitor centres around the world attract large numbers of tourists.

The conflict should not be overtly glorified in the museum; on the contrary, the factual evidence of the actual conflict should illustrate the views of both factions as well as the sequence of events. This can be simply expressed in an educational format that is both informative and interesting.

The sites of these visitor attractions also rejuvenate an often rural local economy, and provide individuals of all ages with a greater understanding of a country’s, or a specific region’s formative periods in time.

Visitor numbers of battlefield centres vary greatly across the world, from approximately 30,000 per year at the visitor centre in the village of Azincourt, France, (Delcusse 2002 pers. comm.) to over 2,000,000 annually at the American battlefield at Gettysburg, Virginia (Babits 2004 pers. comm.).

The concept of the battlefield visitor centre taps into the vein of heritage management, which not only exploits historical sites as a means of aiding their understanding and preservation, but also raises the profile of these important events.

Organisations within the tourism and heritage industry also fully exploit the popularity of battlefields by organising battlefield tours to a variety of sites around the world (Guardian, 1999).

A specialist publication, “Battlefields Review” established in May 1999 (van Hasselt, 1999, 1), encouraged the reader to “explore the sites where history was made”. It states that “battlefield touring is now one of the world’s fastest growing leisure activities”.

However, if a battlefield is not a pleasant place to visit – such as a site that has been built over – then it will be difficult for even keen visitors to imagine the scene of the battle and the site will not attract either visitors or the ever-increasing number of historical re-enactors. The site thus loses its historical and educational value.

Re-enactment

Each year major re-enactments, which are often attended by thousands of visitors, are staged at battlefield sites around the world.

An article in “The Archaeologist”, the Institute of Field Archaeologist’s own journal, enthusiastically suggests that

“re-enactment events are a powerful way to bring historic sites to life. They can recreate past lives, characters and events, transporting the visitor back to the court of Henry VIII or the heat of the battle of Hastings. In short they bring us face to face with history – English Heritage currently stages more than 600 events at over 200 sites. The guiding principle is that events should derive inspiration from sites where they are staged.” (Borman 2002, 22).

The above quote highlights the English Heritage criteria of “conservation, integrity and accessibility” (see below) for inclusion of a site of conflict into their Battlefield Register. The large number of visitors attracted to these sites illustrates the current interest in battlefields despite the fact that often little physical remains can be viewed at the site of the conflict.

Caution must always be applied to such events, however, as conflict should never be viewed or understood simply as a form of entertainment. In archaeological terms, a historically accurate re-enactment should never be allowed to take place on a historical site.

The danger lies in the fact that after a replica lead shot, for example, has spent several years buried in the soil it is difficult to differentiate it from an original artefact. The quality of manufacture of replica artefacts is now so good that loosing them on a historical site can distort the genuine archaeological information.

Foci for social activities

At a local level, battlefields can provide a social focus, with many sites having special interest groups that research all aspects of the conflict. The huge number of “man hours” which groups such as the Towton Battlefield Society (http://www.towton.org.uk) put into such research, exhibits an eagerness to understand and identify with these important events.

The diligent checking of records, tracing names and family relationships, and the gathering of physical evidence disturbed through farming or development, is often carried out by such groups.

Battlefields thus provide, what are often small associated villages, with a focus that inspires community spirit and generates valuable historical research, which can be tapped into by others interested in the specific conflict.

View of the National Bodies – The Battlefields Trust

The Battlefields Trust gives a number of reasons for preserving sites of historic conflict. Parts of this section are taken from the Battlefields Trust website (Why preserve Battlefields?). The Trust promotes the importance of these sites by stating that “battles have frequently changed the course of history”. They continue

“To study what happened on the day, to stand where the commanders stood, to appreciate the ebb and flow of the battle, and alternative possibilities, the landscape of the battlefield must be preserved. Battlefields are a vital original source for historians along with documents such as diaries, despatches, accounts and books.

Frequently the documentary sources alone are inadequate – it is only by walking the battlefield itself that historians can piece together what happened, where and why.

But if a battlefield is destroyed by a motorway, a housing development or a gravel pit then historians and future generations to come will not be able to walk that landscape where the course of history was changed and a vital part of our heritage will be lost.” (Battlefield Trust 2002)

This quote highlights the focus on which the Battlefields Trust is based; that of historians dealing with historical information rather than archaeologists dealing with the physical evidence of the events.

In 2002, the Battlefields Trust, a body set up to preserve battlefields as educational and heritage resources, received grants to employ a Battlefield Project Officer for a two year period to create a national battlefield database and internet site (Battlefield Trust 2002;). The funding of such a post highlights the increasing interest within this field of history.