Materiel Culture: international perspectives on recent military remains
Convenors
John Schofield (English Heritage), William Gray Johnson and Colleen Beck (Desert Research Institute, Nevada)
In time war will become a characterising feature of our calamitous century, and it is significant that, as we approach the millennium, the manifestations of conflict (its materiel culture) are being seen as historic and embraced as cultural heritage. But war, especially of the recent past, presents particular problems in terms of assessment, recording and management. Secrecy often surrounds the function, even the location and existence, of military installations, making discovery, recording and the appreciation of ‘networks’ of offence and defence difficult. Importance, and what may be worthy of protection, is often hard to judge, given that our understanding of the resource is generally poor, and that events may be too fresh in the memory to objectively assess their significance. And management has the dual difficulties of conserving specialised structures designed not to last, and accommodating the emotional charge they very often carry.
The archaeology of recent military remains is global in every sense. The remains are widespread, diverse and often monumental; they may relate to different aspects and episodes of the same war, or they can represent separate (though related) conflicts; the materielity is often comparable, and sometimes identical, the world over presenting similar conservation dilemmas in different places. This session intends to review these physical manifestations of our century’s global conflicts, embracing the two World Wars and the Cold War, as well as other military and civil conflicts, exploring the various approaches to their assessment and management. Speakers will represent a wide geo-political range. Specific questions we wish all contributors to address include:
what is the nature and character of these ‘monuments of war’?
how significant, culturally, are they?
should we be looking to preserve certain structures ‘for the benefit of future generations’? If so, which ones?
given their recency, can value judgements be truly objective and, in terms of sustainability theory, will any attempts at preservation have the community support required for them to be successful?
For those engaged in field archaeology and heritage management, the inclusion of materiel culture is a comparatively new departure, as was industrial archaeology not so many years ago. Our intention is that this session will place recent military remains firmly on the heritage agenda, and will provide the opportunity for first principles to be addressed, particularly in valuing the resource and exploring priorities for its future management.
papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Anderton Social space and social control: movement and management within WW2 military sites in Britain s040ndr1
Beck Archaeology of scientific experiments at a nuclear testing ground s040bck1
Beech The differing development paths of World War II Concentration Camp sites and the possibility of an application of a Principle of Equifinality
Carman Paradox in places: Twentieth Century battlefield sites in long term perspective
Christiansen Forgotten and refound military remains of the central pacific: examples from the Marshall Islands s040chr1
Gray Johnson Cold war Architecture: a reactionary response to the threat of nuclear war
Jarman TROUBLING REMNANTS: Dealing with the remains of conflict in Northern Ireland
Kauppi The Salpa Line- a monumant of the futer: the traces of war in the Finnish cultural landscape
Saunders Born to Kill, made to endure: The ironic culture of shells in the Great War and beyond
Schofield 16 weeks: the evaluation and management of recent military sites in England
Whorton Evaluating managing cold war era historic properties: the cultural significance of US Air force defence radar systems