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What is -- or makes a place -- a 'historic battlefield'? From one perspective the answer is simple -- it is a place where large numbers of people came together in an organised manner to fight one another at some point in the past. Yet from another perspective it is far more difficult to say. Why any such location is a place of battle rather than any other kind of event, and why it is especially historic, is hard to identify. This book sets out an answer to the question of what a historic battlefield is in the modern imagination, drawing upon examples from prehistory to the 20th century. Treating battles as events in the past and battlefields as places in the present, this book exposes the complexity of the concept of a historic battlefield and how it forms part of a Western understanding of the world. Taking its lead from new developments in battlefield study, especially archaeological approaches, it establishes a means by which these new approaches can contribute to a more radical thinking about war and conflict, especially to Critical Military and Critical Security studies. The book goes beyond the study of battles as separate and unique events to consider what they mean to us and why we need them to have particular characteristics. It will be of interest to archaeologists, historians, and students of modern war in all its forms.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Space
- 2: Event
- 3: Context
- 4: Time
- 5: Ownership
- 6: Discourses
- 7: Experiences
- 8: Conclusion: An Ontology of the Historic Battlefield
About the author
John Carman is Senior Lecturer in Heritage Valuation at the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage, University of Birmingham. Among many other publications, he is co-author with Patricia Carman of Bloody Meadows: Investigating Landscapes of Battle (2006), sole author of Archaeologies of Conflict (2013), editor of Material Harm: Archaeological Approaches to Warfare and Violence (1997) and co-editor of Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives (1999).
Patricia Carman is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Birmingham. A historian, archaeologist, and qualified teacher, she is co-author with John Carman of Bloody Meadows: Investigating Landscapes of Battle (2006) and other publications.
Summary
What is -- or makes a place -- a 'historic battlefield'? Treating battles as events in the past and battlefields as places in the present, and drawing on examples from prehistory to the 20th century, this book exposes the complexity of the concept of a historic battlefield and how it forms part of a Western understanding of the world.
