Professional Documents
Culture Documents
world, particularly in the European theater of the Second World War. It comes to historians and
archeologists to take the information gathered in primary texts and documents and the physical
evidence that we find out in the field so we can better understand the variables that the different
players in the conflict were going through or their thought processes during their time. During
the lives of the individuals who fought in this conflict a portion of their time was creating and
Extensive trenches and earthworks as well as fields and rows of concrete and sandbag barriers
dominated the fronts of combat as they seem to emulate the First World Wars layout of the land.
David G. Passmore and his colleagues Stephan Harrison and David C. Tunwell have dived into
this topic in Second World War conflict archeology in the Forests of north-west Europe. The
issue to make is the use of defensive structures in the theater of northern France and placement
of these structures. Using relevant data of the dig sites to locate and map out topographical
information to draw a clear picture of the troop placement along defensive and offensive combat
lines and the concurrent effect of such placements. 1With the correlation of data from this article
and others that will come from my research I should be able to answer my questions of how
archeology is creating a whole picture of past events and if those influence current tactics and
troop movements. Leading into a question of how conflict archeology is defined in this theater of
war and if this definition will be used for other theaters of combat during the Second World War.
1 Passmore, David G.1, Stephan2 Harrison, and David Capps3, david.passmore@utoronto.ca Tunwell. 2014.
"Second World War conflict archaeology in the forests of north-west Europe." Antiquity 88, no. 342: 1275-
1290. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed January 25, 2017
Archeology has many forms and takes on many different angles of interpretation. One of
the key problems of trying to reassemble historic or past events is those very same
interpretations, a pit feature in the ground, or some artifact could be read in a variety of ways. It
is with knowing these very different interpretations that I ask questions about some battle sites in
Acquiring resources for this should not pose too much of an issue as there have been
many, countless even, volumes, books, periodicals, and the list goes on, about WWII. With this
vast amount of information at my disposal there comes to mind the obvious risk. With so many
sources for the topic I am searching for then how can I differentiate good legitimate sources from
possibly historically inaccurate, to, for lack of a better word, bogus sources. With that in mind,
the main source I will be using is the Wright State Libraries online department and the actual
library itself. It is here I hope to find academic, and possibly some popular, sources that can help
me with my research.
Being a paper about the research process I will get into some details of exactly how I find
some of my sources. Using only peer reviewed materials for most of the material I will use, the
libraries portion of Wings, will aid me in this search. After finding several articles about WWII I
have chosen a couple to be used in the first parts of my paper. One such article, oddly enough
who wrote the first cited article, has another about the D-Day invasion of August 19442
Tunwell goes into the article describing how the European theater of the war saw both
combatants and non-combatants during the length of the conflicts. Civilians building the initial
invasions of the acquired German lands.3 Though this comes to little surprise when someone
would think of the entire scale of the war as there would be a vast network of new roads and
railways needed to be built in order to sustain military movements at home and abroad.
It comes to this point in the article where I begin to speculate on the attitude of the author.
Though in archeology most try to maintain a bias free approach, there are many with an agenda
or a research thesis to prove. As I read Tunwells articles I come to the realization that he, and
his associates, have done quite a decent job at creating a work that gives the facts of the
landscape and the methods and findings of any archeological data. Though as I progress further
into research I plan to find at least one with some form of attitude toward some faction of the
WWII Era.
Searching though wings libraries I soon found myself struggling for sources that fell in
line with my research. I read about five or six different articles that turned up little to no value
for the paper and had to shift how I turned out my search results. Though as I continued to
search I began to realize the topic I chose wasnt one that had been looked into with great detail,
save for the same author that I have been using before, Tunwell. It looked to me as if this man
and his team are the only ones going out into the WWII battlefronts and asking the question that
I have been. Though it may just be he is the only American going out and doing this kind of
research. It was this time I began to lose a bit of hope for the topic as I began to use Google to
see if there were any texts or research documents in German, French, or possibly Russian.
It was after a long while of running into dead ends with Google searches that I retreated back to
the Wright State Universitys library pages once again. I began to try and focus my search by
key terms of Archaeology, WWII, and even tried WW2 to see if the variation would have
an impact on the search results. Again I came up with the same work by Tunwell and for the
sake of time, I thought, I added his thesis work on European archaeology to the list.
In Tunwells thesis dissertation he explains in his work that he used primary documents
and aerial photographs to document the landscapes and possibly the history of military actions
and movements during the Battle of Normandy in 1944. The surviving features of the post war
battlefield have been in surprisingly good shape. The heavy forests have held possibly the most
well preserved and examples of the most extensive amount of non-hardened WWI landscapes
that have been documented Europe. More than 900 archaeological archives were created to
characterize ammunition, from small arms to larger rounds and shells, fuel depots as well as
ration stations were all mapped and located in the surrounding area that were used to supply the
German defenses. The terrain also has kept the craters from explosions surprisingly intact, as
these were created by the air raids from about 1000 aircraft that dropped nearly 1200 tons of
explosive ordinance in the forests while the area was occupied by American forces in August
1944.4
This new piece of information did actually fit with the overall theme of the paper as it fit into the
questions I have asked about the archaeology of conflict. This site found many well preserved
4 Capps-Tunwell, David. 2016. WWII conflict archaeology in the Foret Domaniale
des Andaines, NW France. I British Library EThOS, EBSCOhost (Accessed February
13, 2017)
and well documented earthwork, well documented and preserved logistical supply stations, and
even munition and ration depots. This serves as a good piece of archaeology as the forests have
overtaken much of the battlefield leaving most, if not all, of the conflicted areas covered in dense
foliage and underbrush. But from the aerial photographs, the forest cannot even hide what is
lying beneath as the craters and supply routes show up visibly during these photos.
Unfortunately, all I was able to get out of this work was the research itself. I was unable to find
the actual photos, research methods, or any of the data that would be present during an
archaeological survey. I did search the web to try and find this exact piece, but after an hour or
so of turning up nothing I decided to give up as the documents are possibly in another librarys
archival section.
Another section of work was the underwater surveys that I was able to find after almost
writing a lengthy closing statement. Though not in the European theater of war I did find pacific
naval operations and the surveys that were completed on those portion of the world, though not
directly in line with the area I was looking at I do believe it is valuable to make it an addition to
this piece.
This volume of works looks at the battles of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands in
1944 and the underwater archaeology that came about its discovery. This book shows how the
group of archaeologists and set them to gather the collection of sunken items of archaeological
significance and develop a research plan on how to present this to the academic world.5 Though
this particular field was possibly a little too precise of an area to look into for a lengthy paper.
Either that, or it was as I though earlier, that this field of research has not drawn many people
into the academic view that produce this material in English. That being said I feel that next time
I will do preliminary research beforehand to make sure there is enough documentation out there
to supply my needs.