Ghosts of Place

CULTURAL POLITICS 133 REPRINTS AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHERS. PHOTOCOPYING PERMITTED BY LICENSE ONLY© BERG 2007 PRINTED IN THE UK CULTURAL POLITICS VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 PP 133–136 BOOK REVIEW GHOSTS OF PLACE MIKE GANE Combat Archaeology: Material Culture and Modern Conflict, by John Schofield, London: Duckworth, 2005, 144 pages,£11.99, PB 0-7156-3403-8 This is a book about “the archaeology of recent conflict” written by someone involved in English Heritage as “Head of Military Programmes.” Written with reference to a wide range of theoretical and philosophical reflection as well as archaeology, the author has “current projects” at Greenham Common, Nevada, Berlin, and Valletta in Malta. Schofield draws on Virilio in particular to sketch out a theory of how recent conflicts differ from traditional ones. He wants in particular to be able to distinguish between types of war, and he suggests (p. 23) that there are three main periods: prehistory (siege warfare dominated by weapons of obstruction), medieval (“movement” warfare dominated by weapons of destruction), and modern warfare (total war dominated by “weapons of communication”). This is very broad-brush, and it seems bizarre to call “medieval” all wars up to the mid-nineteenth century. But it is defensible in the sense that the Battle of Bosworth (1485), say, could be argued to be of the same MIKE GANE IS PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AT LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY, UK. HE HAS RECENTLY COEDITED , WITH NICHOLAS GANE, THREE-VOLUME EDITIONS OF THE WORKS OF ROLAND BARTHES (2004), AND OF UMBERTO ECO (2005) FOR SAGE PUBLICATIONS. HIS BOOK ON AUGUSTE COMTE WAS PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE IN 2006. > CULTURAL POLITICS 134 BOOK REVIEW type as Waterloo, or Stalingrad, or even “Vietnam” (where there is a notable war heritage industry). “Modern” war would then pose a particular problem for archaeology and heritage enterprise since there is no “battlefield.” But even the legacy of the Cold War leaves its traces in, for example, the 800,000 steel and concrete bunkers constructed in the period 1967–86 in Albania that are now used principally as sheepfolds or kennels (p. 110). Unfortunately the problems outlined here disappear very quickly in the rest of the book, which becomes very conventional: when it comes to interpretation the availability of materials is of two kinds – personal oral accounts and official documents. Both place limits: one goes back a maximum of seventy or eighty years; the other excludes materials covered by the Official Secrets Act and the thirtyyear rule. Schofield concludes that there is another periodization as a result: the most recent might be considered “prehistoric” because of restrictions to documents (1970s–), the prior period might be considered “modern” because there is access to primary sources (1930s–70s), and a “historic” period before that where there are documents, but few if any oral histories (except those on record). From this point of view, the Cold War period is prehistorical. The book itemizes the material culture of conflict. It runs through the themes of war landscapes, buildings, monuments, memorials, vehicles, artifacts, oral and written evidence, visual evidence, and artistic expression. Schofield concludes that what draws these together is a uniquely “archaeological” point of view. The fourth chapter surveys briefly all the agencies involved in managing this heritage, and how agencies compose criteria lists for decision making. Examples are those developed to apply to places like USAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, built in the 1970s for F-111 aircraft, another is Greenham Common. The book at this point tends to become a straight run-through of items that authorities have or should look at when determining what to do with a site. Schofield is concerned to include “artistic interventions” that also maintain or enhance “awareness” of an event. Perhaps the most interesting ideas of the book are hidden away in Chapter 3 on memory and meaning. Here Schofield examines situations where the material forms really count in political terms. For example, in Cambodia what the “archaeology” reveals about the crimes of the Khmer Rouge can still have an impact, as can the work on unmarked graves in Argentina for example (p. 104). In Poland the existence of the network of state farms forms a similar...