Historical archaeology of conflict and violence

This New Book Chronicle was written during March 2026, with war being reported all over the news, so I turned to look at past wars and conflicts and how we research them through historical archaeology, in the faint hope of making some sense of it all.The four books chosen are diverse in their approaches and methods.The archaeology of the American Revolution (2025) highlights groups of people that are not always recognised, or are marginalised, in the historical records but are revealed instead through integrating archaeological research.People are also at the centre of the collection of French case studies on the Archaeo-anthropology of conflicts in France: from the earlier Middle Ages to the Second World War (2025).Here, the human remains and their contexts are evidence for the living conditions in times of conflict.The Archaeology of internment camps in 20th century Brandenburg: crime, camps, and commemoration ( 2025) is an important account on life under systems of control and terror and how archaeological approaches can highlight subject areas that are rarely mentioned in contemporaneous sources.The fourth book War essays (2025) is not strictly historical archaeology but records the events of the 2003 war in Iraq and the following occupation by US forces through the personal lens of Mesopotamian archaeologist Zainab Bahrani who investigates destruction of cultural heritage.All books emphasise that society has a strong responsibility towards the remembrance and commemoration of the people involved and affected by conflicts and for preserving the memory of the events.Archaeology can help to reveal the less-often documented parties involved.The past is our legacy, the cultural heritage its evidence.Some sites and objects become lieux de mémoire ('sites of memory' after the concepts of French historian Pierre Nora) and are bestowed by the society with historical value; a deliberate act to connect a community's collective memory and history to the present at a time when genuine 'living' memory is disappearing.I admit that the books were in part hard to read, not due to writing style but to their grim accounts of the sites and finds of violence and terror.All authors display a balanced, objective tone underpinned by scientific reasoning, but it does not need much imagination to consider the fates of the real people behind the evidence.This is especially the case for examples in the twentieth century, which is still in 'living memory' and we are only one or two generations away from the people described in three of the books.This makes it more personal for many people and, for example, the desire for the repatriation of the dead soldiers and the naming of victims understandable.My grandfather fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and until the end of the war on the German side, and made it home alive, after the front fell.