Trench The dawn of
Art
As the 100th year anniversary
of the outbreak of WWI
approaches, Nick Saunders
looks at the legacy of the
Great War’s Trench Art,
and the birth of Modern
Conflict Archaeology
M
odern Conflict
ALL PHOTOS: N Saunders, unless stated
Archaeology is a subject
that owes its existence
to the men of WWI.
For, it was their Trench
Art that provided the catalyst for this new
discipline. Trench Art represents objects
made by soldiers and civilians using,
mainly, war materiel, and created during
and after the conflict.
In 1998, with generous support from
the British Academy, I began a six-year
research project into such art belonging to
the First World War. Hitherto, these items
had been the domain of war memorabilia
collectors and dealers, and there was no
scientific appreciation of this material,
no academic literature, and very little
40 CurrentWorldArchaeology
Modern Conflict
Archaeology
museum interest. They seemed to be
invisible in plain view, and had remained
that way for the best part of a century.
It soon became clear that these often
strange creations were three dimensional
testimonies of the war experience, and
thus an untapped resource for exploring
and analysing what total war meant for
ordinary people not only during hostilities
but also afterwards. Trench Art made
during the war had one set of meanings
for soldiers, prisoners of war, internees,
and refugees, while those (in fact the
majority) made after 1918 were memory
objects – souvenirs and mementos for the
bereaved pilgrims and tourists who visited
the battlefields during the inter-war years.
There is a dazzling array of such items
– made from wood, bone, stone, textiles,
coins, bullets and cartridges, and, most
iconic of all, the spent casings of artillery
shells. Artillery barrages were the defining
and most deadly weapon on First World
War battlefields: millions of empty casings
lay everywhere across the Western and
Eastern Fronts, and were thus readily
available as raw material for creating
artworks. Some examples are masterpieces,
made and adorned with art nouveau
designs by professional metalsmiths,
while others are crude attempts, scratched
with place-names and dates.
All, however, reveal stories of their
makers, of their purpose as trophies
or souvenirs, and sometimes of the
unbearable sense of loss when bought by
Issue 62

left High-altitude battle-zone on Mount Batognica,
Slovenia. At 2,164m, this site has been partly
memorialised by an artillery shell and a collection of
First World War military debris.
inspired in one way or another by this
re-evaluation of Trench Art, drawing an
artistic link between 1914-1918 and the
present. Trench Art has now become a key
element in defining a new approach to the
archaeology of modern conflict.
The Italian Front
(1915-1918)
The concept of Modern Conflict
Archaeology is ideally illustrated by an
exciting project currently under way on
the so-called the Italian Front along the
Soca/Isonzo Valley, on the border of what
is today Slovenia and Italy.
The valley is both physical
place and symbolic landscape – a
powerful embodiment of Europe’s
20th-century military, political,
and cultural transformation in
microcosm. Between May 1915 and
October 1917, an extraordinary
First World War conflict landscape
was created, at the cost of around
1.5 million casualties (dead,
wounded, and imprisoned). The
resulting archaeological record
is a well-preserved palimpsest of
modern warfare and its complex
enduring legacies, with trench
systems, dugouts, mule trails,
fortified positions, abandoned war
widows and taken home to be placed on a
mantelpiece next to a photograph of the
father or son who never returned. These
objects have, sealed within their various
forms, the life stories and experiences of
those affected by the war and provide a
powerful anthropological dimension to
the material culture of that conflict.
Moreover, such items move easily (if
confusingly) between different worlds of
experience – the social, the artistic, the
military, the civilian, the technological,
and ultimately the archaeological. Several
international exhibitions have been
right French soldiers decorating spent artillery shell
casings during the First World War.
Inset French 75mm artillery shell casing made into
trench-art ‘flower vase’
www.world-archaeology.com
conflict archaeology
cemeteries, and high-altitude battle-zones
spectacularly sited on the summits of
mountains such as Rombon and Batognica
(see left).
In wider focus, Benito Mussolini’s
experience of fighting on the Isonzo
inspired his post-war political ambitions
by mobilising what he called the
‘trenchocracy’ – his former comrades
in arms who had fought in the trenches
during the war. One consequence of this
– which added a new layer to the conflict
landscape – was his 1930s re-shaping of
the valley’s landscape through clearing
wartime military cemeteries and moving
the remains to visually impressive ossuary-
memorials such as Redipuglia and Kobarid.
This, in effect, was a remobilising of
Italy’s war dead to support Mussolini’s
creation of a Fascist state. In addition, as
the Second World War approached,
the Italian dictator built part of
his Vallo Alpino defensive line
between 1936 and 1943 – thereby
embedding a Second World War
landscape in that of the First
World War.
The project has completed
several years of reconnaissance
in this stunningly beautiful
but challenging landscape in
co-operation with archaeologists
from Ljubljana University. It has
surveyed and excavated several
small sites in the area around
Tolmin, examined dozens of
wartime cemeteries on the
CurrentWorldA rchaeology 41
image: In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres
Carso above Trieste in the south of the
region, inspected several mountain-top
battlefields, and carried out preliminary
investigations of private collections of war
memorabilia throughout the northern
part of the valley. The complex layering of
the landscape represents many aspects of
the valley’s history over the past century.
These include many First World War
battle-zone areas, the mortuary landscape
Modern Conflict vs the Battlefield
Modern Conflict Archaeology is often
confused with Battlefield Archaeology. It is,
however, a distinct discipline that deals only
with recent wars: conflicts of the 20th and
21st centuries (large and small, national and
international), and their enduring physical,
symbolic, and cultural legacies. Also, crucially,
it is not restricted to battlefields. Instead, it is
as concerned with the aftermath – socially,
culturally, and materially – as much as with the
conflict itself. Thus, investigating the ‘social
life’ or ‘cultural biography’ of conflict-related
objects and landscapes are integral parts of this
new approach.
The narrow focus of Battlefield Archaeology,
on the other hand, concentrates mainly on
‘digging battlefields’ – as a handmaiden to
military history, rather than as an archaeological
enterprise in its own right. By the 1970s and
42 CurrentWorldArchaeology
left ‘The Scarlet Major’ by sculptor Stephen buildings – along the militarised southern
Hurst, appears in a retrospective of the artist’s work Jordanian section of the Hejaz Railway.
inspired by research into trench art. The railroad was a major focus of
hostilities in 1916-1918 between the
of dozens of military cemeteries, the Ottoman Turks and the Arab forces of Sherif
commemorative landscape of Mussolini’s Hussein and T.E. Lawrence, in what became
Italy, the battle sites and memorials of known as the Great Arab Revolt – itself
Partisan activities during the Second embedded within the First World War. The
World War, and today’s reconfiguring of success of the highly mobile Arab and
all these layers into touristic and heritage British forces against the largely static
trails and locations. Ottoman army is famously enshrined
in Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom,
The Great Arab Revolt regarded as the template for modern
The Italian Front study was inspired by guerrilla warfare.
the achievements of an earlier project The fieldwork initially focused on
that has been reported in the pages of investigating a range of fortified station
CWA (see #27 & #34); the Great sites, including Ma'an, Wadi Rutm, Aqabat
Arab Revolt Project in Hejaz, and Tel Shahm. But it was quickly
southern Jordan was the realised that there was a vast conflict
first large-scale project explicitly landscape militarised by the Ottomans
designed along the lines of modern
conflict archaeology. It is currently in its
eighth season of a 10-year schedule
(2006-2016), with a remit that
includes survey and excavation
of conflict landscapes –
trenches, fortifications, tented
encampments, and standing
right Trench art beadwork snake by a First
World War Turkish prisoner of war.
1980s, Battlefield Archaeology had become
a catch-all term applied to, and adopted by,
anyone who investigated any battlefield from
prehistoric to Roman to Medieval - though
mostly the 17th-19th centuries. Little, if any,
consideration was given to the context of such
battle events, to their connections to individuals
and society during conflict and afterwards, or to
their often visceral emotional aftermaths.
By the late 1990s, the situation had come to a
head as such simplistic approaches were applied
to the confusing and often morally difficult
physical remains of First World War sites. At
this point, Battlefield Archaeology revealed
itself as an anachronism compared to modern
left Muslim metalsmith in Sarajevo making
trench art from an artillery casing whose shell was
originally fired into the city during the Bosnian War
1992-1995
Issue 62
 conflict archaeology

Almost a
century after
WWI, ended the
archaeological
legacy is being
newly assessed.

and which was unknown except to the

local Bedouin. Landscape investigations
have been supplemented by research in
document and photo archives, oral history
among local Bedouin groups, aerial
reconnaissance, and selective excavation.
Almost a century after the First
World War ended, the archaeological
legacy of a conflict involving Arabs,
Turks, and the British, is being newly
assessed by an international team
adopting a multidisciplinary approach.
The richness of this project’s findings,
and its importance for archaeology,
anthropology, and military and cultural
history is such that two major books are
being written on the results.
Continuing conflict
Both the Italian Front and the Great
Arab Revolt projects were specifically
designed to explore the potential of an
explicitly modern conflict archaeology
approach. However, others are also now
incorporating a modern scientific and
multidisciplinary agenda: the ‘Plugstreet
Project’, directed by Richard Osgood
above Italian artillery positions in a giant cavern
system on Mte. San Michele del Carso, in the lower
Isonzo/Soca Valley, Italy.
and Martin Brown, began exploring
the First World War archaeology of
the area near Messines in Belgium in
2007. Archaeologists, anthropologists,
technical experts, and the artist and
trench historian Peter Chasseaud are all

scientific archaeology. Modern conflict archaeology emerged partly as a

reaction to this state of affairs, and partly to the rich potential of applying
anthropological ideas to First World War material culture. Its vitality and
energy, combined with an almost limitless range of research possibilities
from the recent past, sets it apart from traditional kinds of archaeology,
and light years away from the narrow interests of battlefield archaeology.
For the 20th and 21st centuries at least, wars had been characterised
by industrialised intensity, increasing involvement of civilians, as well
as notions of ethnicity, identity, and memory. Many of these conflicts
were then, and others still are, within living memory, and so demand an
increased level of sensitivity in their investigation. Many conflict locations
have become (or are becoming) ‘sites of memory’, politically contested
and economically important places of cultural heritage and, increasingly,
of tourism. This multitude of issues makes modern conflict sites highly
sensitised multilayered landscapes that require a robust, multidisciplinary
approach – far beyond the ability of a single-event-oriented Battlefield
Archaeology to deliver.

right Surveying an Austro-Hungarian First World War battlefield cemetery in

the upper Soca Valley, Slovenia.

www.world-archaeology.com CurrentWorldA rchaeology 43

 above The monumental Fascist-inspired architecture of Redipuglia dedicated in 1938 by Mussolini to the
memory of 100,000 Italian war dead. the Channel Islands takes a fresh look at
above right Camouflaged gun emplacement - part of Mussolini’s Vallo Alpino (‘Alpine Wall’) defences these traumatic events, and she identifies
built mainly during the 1930s and embedded within the earlier First World War conflict landscape. Note the
a wealth of new materials – both three
naturalistic shaping given to the concrete roofing.
dimensional and textual – to define a
part of the team investigating the trenches particular ‘archaeology of occupation’.
and mine craters associated with the Carr goes beyond even this ambitious goal
Battle of Messines on 7 June 1917. It was
here, in 2008, that an Australian soldier,
Private Alan to investigate more broadly the objects
and human experiences of being prisoners
complete with a souvenir German spiked James Mather was of war and internees on a global scale.
pickelhaube helmet, was discovered. He Apart from creating new ideas and
was identified by DNA as Private Alan identified by DNA methods for Modern Conflict Archaeology
James Mather, and was reburied in a fieldwork projects, other initiatives have
and reburied in a
below Ottoman Turkish trench system protecting
the Hejaz Railway station at Ma’an in southern
military cemetery below Richard Osgood (left) and Martin Brown
(right) overlooking the initial stages of the Plugstreet
Jordan during the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-1918.
on 22 July 2010. Project in Belgium in 2007.

military cemetery on 22 July 2010.

For the Second World War, the
research of Gabriel Moshenska, of
University College London, and Gilly
Carr, of Cambridge University, has also
adopted aspects of the Modern Conflict
Archaeology agenda. Moshenska’s work on
community participation in investigating
air raid shelters, the shrapnel collecting
habits of schoolchildren, and the cultural
PHOTO: Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project

dimensions of the gas mask further extends

the reach of the new sub-discipline. He
explores the transformations of British
society during the war as seen through the
archaeologist’s eye, and sets out for the first
time a multidisciplinary framework for the
archaeology of the Second World War.
Carr’s investigation of the material
culture of the occupation experience on

44 CurrentWorldArchaeology Issue 62

sought to establish this new sub-discipline
within the worlds of museums,
conferences, and university teaching. In
2001, the Imperial War Museum began
a series of multidisciplinary conferences
on various aspects of 20th and 21st
century conflict and which have resulted
in several academic books – with several
more expected. In 2009, the department
of Archaeology and Anthropology at
Bristol University launched an MA in 20th
Century Conflict Archaeology which
is taught by an international panel of
experts and which, probably because of its
uniqueness, has recruited students from
all over the world who are eager to break
away from the more traditional subjects of
military history and war studies. Interest
in these kinds of investigations is set to
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conflict archaeology
left The ruins of the Hejaz Railway station at Wadi
Rutm.
below The intact remains of an Ottoman Turkish
hilltop fortification overlooking the desert at
Mudawarra near the Jordanian border with Saudi
Arabia. It was attacked by T E Lawrence and the
Imperial Camel Corps in August 1918 as part of the
successful bid to take Mudawarra railway station.
increase as the 2014 centenary of the First physical consequences of 20th-century
World War approaches. industrialised conflict – the force which
Archaeology is concerned with the has shaped, and continues to shape, the
long afterlife of places and things, which modern world.
change their form and meaning as
they collide with new social, cultural, below Deportee art and artefacts on display at the
Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery.
political, economic, and ideological
realities. There is no single ‘true’ view of
the past that we can discover if only we
throw enough money and technology
at an investigation. The interpretation
and ownership of the past is as contested
PHOTO: G Carr
today as the conflict zones themselves
were during their respective wars. And
nowhere is this more apparent than in the
source Dr Nicholas Saunders, University of Bristol, His book is called: Beyond the Dead Horizon: Studies
in Modern Conflict Archaeology, (ed.) 2012. Oxford: Oxbow.
CurrentWorldA rchaeology 45