Battlefield archeology
The battlefield archeology is a part of archeology busy, which larger researching the legacy of theaters of armed conflict. The term has only been used in the German-speaking area since the late 1990s, probably for the first time in connection with the battlefield near Kalkriese, which today is mostly identified with the Varus Battle .
object
A “ battlefield ” is usually understood to mean the scene of a major military operation in which larger units were involved. Usually one refers to armed conflicts in historical times, which are documented in written sources.
Battlefield archeology extends the term “battlefield” in several ways. First, it is also used in prehistoric battlefields, e.g. B. from the Bronze Age used. Then not only include battlefields in the narrower sense of the word, but also generally the sites of major conflicts between militarily organized groups. Battlefield archeology is primarily concerned with the actual battlefield, but also with the traces of accompanying phenomena such as fortifications , storage areas, supply lines , hospitals , graves, prison camps , bunkers and the like. It can thus be viewed as a sub-area of the research area known in English as Conflict Archeology .
Since the term only found its way into German usage around the year 2000 (probably based on the English Battlefield Archeology ), the boundaries to other archaeological research areas are still fluid.
Methods and goals
Standard archeological methods are used to research indirect traces of the fighting, such as fortifications and graves . The actual "battle" is usually a short and, for archaeological conditions, large-scale event that has left only widely scattered traces. Very often it is projectiles, but also lost weapons and other equipment. Therefore, finds at or near the surface of the earth are of great importance. The most important tool when researching the battlefield is the metal detector .
The identification of the finds and the mapping of the sites allow conclusions to be drawn about the course of the battle. In this way, there is an additional possibility of evaluating written sources, whose representation of the battle can be confirmed, supplemented or possibly even corrected. It is also possible to draw conclusions about the everyday life of the "craft of war", which is rarely considered in the historical representation.
history
The exploration of theaters of war is much older than the concept of battlefield archeology. An early forerunner is e.g. B. the excavation of the fortifications of the Battle of Alesia (52 BC) near the French Alise-Sainte-Reine in the 1860s. Between 1905 and 1928 several mass graves with over 1000 dead from the Battle of Visby (1361) were excavated on Gotland .
The actual beginning of battlefield archeology in the modern sense is the exploration of the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) in the United States from 1984. Many hitherto unknown details of the course of the fighting could be reconstructed from the finds. In Europe, the research direction initially established itself mainly in Great Britain, where numerous battlefields of the Middle Ages and early modern times were examined.
In Germany, the extensive investigations of the Roman-Germanic battlefield near Kalkriese can be seen as the beginning of battlefield archeology. Even Theodor Mommsen there had suspected the scene of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest because of numerous coins found. The research at Kalkriese began in 1987 with the discovery of coins by the British amateur archaeologist Tony Clunn and continues to this day.
Examples
- Battlefield in the Tollensetal , where the remains of more than 200 people, many horses and weapons from the Bronze Age (around 1300 BC) were found from 1996 .
- The probable site of the Varus Battle (Battle in the Teutoburg Forest, 9 AD) near Kalkriese , the exploration of which began in 1987.
- Harzhorn event as the scene of a battle between Roman troops and Teutons in the first half of the 3rd century in the Harz foreland , which has been investigated since 2008.
- Battle of Towton , a battle of the English Wars of the Roses in 1461 between Yorkists and Lancastrians with excavations from the 1990s.
- The Battle of Lützen , in which the King of Sweden Gustav Adolf died in the Thirty Years' War in 1632 . Parts of the battlefield were examined in 2006/2007. The investigations continued until 2011. About 1,100,000 m² have been examined with metal detectors, 12,000 finds were made, 3,500 are from the time of the battle; In 2011, a mass battle grave was systematically searched for and found, this was recovered as part of a block recovery and is now being investigated.
- A mass grave from the Battle of Wittstock (Thirty Years War, 1636) was excavated in 2007.
- Another mass grave from the Battle of Alerheim (Thirty Years War, 1645) was documented in 2008.
- During the excavation of height 80 as a German position of the First World War in Flanders, around 130 dead were found on 1.1 hectares.
- Battle of Lutter from 1626 with investigations of the battlefield between 2011 and 2017. Several hundred lead bullets and other finds were recovered, the mapping of which provided new information on the battlefield.
literature
- Thomas Brock, Arne Homann: battlefield archeology. On the trail of the war. ( Archeology in Germany . Special issue 2/2011). Theiss, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-806-22529-7 .
- Review by Heinrich Speich in: Cosmopolis. April 14, 2012.
- Harald Meller (ed.): Battlefield archeology. Battlefield Archeology. State Museum for Prehistory, Halle (Saale) 2009, ISBN 978-3-939414-41-4 , (proceedings of the 1st Central German Archaeological Conference 2008; abstracts as PDF ).
- Maik Reichel , Inger Schuberth (Ed.): Living and dying on the battlefield of Lützen. Contribution to a scientific colloquium of the Swedish Lützen Foundation Gothenburg in cooperation with the city of Lützen from November 5th to 8th, 2009. Friends of Lützen, home and museum, Lützen 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-035373-4 .
- Archeology in Germany. Edition 1/2009. (Six articles on the main topic of battlefield archeology ).
- Arne Homann: Battlefield Archeology of Central Europe: With a Focus on Early Modern Battlefields. In: Natascha Mehler (Ed.): Historical Archeology in Central Europe. Society for Historical Archeology, 2013, pp. 203-230 ( online ).
- André Schürger: The Battle of Lützen: an examination of 17th century military material culture. Dissertation, University of Glasgow 2015 ( online ).
- Harald Meller , Michael Schefzik (Ed.): War. An archaeological search for traces. Accompanying volume for the special exhibition in the State Museum for Prehistory Halle (Saale), November 6, 2015 to May 22, 2016. Konrad Theiss, Darmstadt 2015, ISBN 978-3-8062-3172-4 .
Web links
- 6th Fields of Conflict Conference, Osnabrück and Kalkriese, April 2011 on the website of the University of Osnabrück
- Website of the Center for Battlefield Archeology at the University of Glasgow
- Battlefield archeology on the website of the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt (seven interviews with experts as video)
- New findings in battlefield research - How war was invented , article by Hubert Filser in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 21, 2012