Reaching out or reaching in? Making Conflict Archaeology relevant
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-10-25

In launching the Journal of Conflict Archaeology in 2005, Tony Pollard and Iain Banks called for the closer integration of conflict archaeology with mainstream archaeologies. In 2007, we made a claim for the archaeology of battlefields as a pacifist endeavour, and more recently (in 2013) John Carman argued for the potential greater relevance of Conflict Archaeology to contribute to wider debates on war and violence, beyond archaeology alone. Those ambitions have perhaps still to be met because Conflict Archaeology is still relegated to specialist conferences and conference sessions. So what is the best way forward for Conflict Archaeology to achieve its maximum impact? One is to reach out to other areas of archaeology beyond those related directly to conflict by identifying those aspects of conflict archaeology that can be drawn upon by others to the benefit of their own interests – theoretically, methodologically, or in terms of understandings of aspects of the past. Another is to invite others to contribute to the development of conflict archaeology by identifying those aspects of other branches of archaeology (and indeed other fields) that will be of benefit in the work of understanding human conflict and violence and the locales where it takes place. Either would be of value in allowing the cross-fertilisation of ideas across disciplinary boundaries. A third way forward would be the most radical – neither to reach out to others nor to invite others to reach in. Instead, we abandon a focus on conflict to the exclusion of other aspects of the past and instead put our methodological and interpretive skills at the service of archaeology more generally. This is neither a reaching out not a reaching in but a deliberate exercise in re-joining. But it also requires that others abandon their own claims to exclusivity too.

Author: Dr Carman, John - Ironbridge International Institute for (Presenting author)