Suchergebnisse

Modern warfare is a unique cultural phenomenon. While many conflicts in
history have produced dramatic shifts in human behaviour, the industrialized
nature of modern war possesses a material and psychological intensity that
embodies the extremes of our behaviours, from the total economic mobilization
of a nation state to the unbearable pain of individual loss. Fundamentally,
war is the transformation of matter through the agency of destruction,
and the character of modern technological warfare is such that it simultaneously
creates and destroys more than any previous kind of conflict.

The use of poison gas in Syria has reminded the world of a weapon which has inspired nightmares since it was first used in combat in the First World War. Adapted from the source document.

This paper offers a historical perspective on the current debates about the protection of museums, heritage and archaeological sites during warfare or civil conflict. Mortimer Wheeler's experiences of heritage destruction in North Africa during the Second World War, despite government promises of protection, demonstrate striking parallels with events and debates following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A comparison between these two episodes highlights a common political duplicity and disdain for heritage issues in wartime. This failure of formal mechanisms of heritage protection highlights the vital importance of heritage professionals maintaining international contact networks, even between combatant nations, to monitor and report threats to archaeological sites and museums.

Gas masks are distinctive, iconic, and evocative objects. As a technology, a uniform, a symbol, and a mask, the gas mask defies simple categorization. In this article I use memory narratives to examine the active social lives of children's gas masks in Second World War Britain; their uses, misuses, and disposal. By focusing on the unique sensory aspect of the gas mask, I consider a range of interconnected themes, including the effects of poison gas, the aesthetics of childhood learning, and the connections between memory and the senses. This study builds on recent criticisms of social constructivism and 'asymmetry' in the study of people and material culture; the child's gas mask thus emerges not only as a social and physical mediator between children and the world at war they inhabited, but as an actor shaping the aesthetic experience and memories of that world.RésuméLe masque à gaz est un objet distinctif, iconique, évocateur. Équipement technologique autant qu'uniforme, symbole et masque, il défie les catégorisations simples. L'auteur utilise ici des récits de souvenirs pour étudier la vie sociale active des masques à gaz pour enfants dans la Grande‐Bretagne de la seconde Guerre mondiale, leur utilisation, leurs abus, leur mise au rebut. En se concentrant sur l'aspect sensoriel unique des masques à gaz, l'auteur aborde plusieurs thèmes interconnectés : effets des gaz toxiques, esthétique de l'apprentissage dans l'enfance, liens entre mémoire et sens. Cette étude se fonde sur la critique récente du constructivisme social et de « l'asymétrie » dans l'étude des peuples et des cultures matérielles. Le masque à gaz pour enfant apparaît ainsi non seulement comme un médiateur social et physique entre l'enfant et le monde en guerre dans lequel il vivait, mais comme un acteur donnant forme à une expérience esthétique et aux souvenirs de ce monde.

Life-writing is a vital part of the history of archaeology, and a growing field of scholarship within the discipline. Travels and adventures of the 'great archaeologists' have generated centuries-worth of bestselling books that, in turn, shaped the public perception of archaeology. The lives of archaeologists are entangled with histories of museums and collections, developments in science and scholarship, and narratives of nationalism and colonialism into the present. In recent years life-writing has played an important role in the surge of new research in the history of archaeology, including ground-breaking studies of discipline formation, institutionalisation and social and intellectual networks. Sources such as diaries, wills, film and the growing body of digital records are powerful tools for highlighting the contributions of hitherto marginalised archaeological lives including many pioneering women, hired labourers and other 'hidden hands'.

This book brings together critical perspectives on life-writing in the history of archaeology from leading figures in the field. These include studies of archive formation and use, the concept of 'dig-writing' as a distinctive genre of archaeological creativity and reviews of new sources for already well-known lives. Several chapters reflect on the experience of life-writing, review the historiography of the field and assess the intellectual value and significance of life-writing as a genre. Together, they work to problematise underlying assumptions about this genre, foregrounding methodology, social theory, ethics and other practice-focused frameworks in conscious tension with previous practices.

So sang my friend, colleague, and then-office manager Ron Melander in about 1971, in a song he wrote about me. I quote it here to help establish my bona fides in "public archaeology." I began my career as an amateur archaeologist (some would use less complimentary terms) and am now engaged in ending it similarly. In its course I've worked as an academic and applied professional archaeologist, often -if not always- with a strong tilt toward public involvement, participated in the development of "cultural resource management" (CRM)1, worked and published in that milieu, and incidentally was involved in U.S. archaeological politics at the time when C.R. McGimsey more or less invented the term "public archaeology" (McGimsey 1972). I had qualms about the term then, and I have qualms about it now. I want to explain why.