REVIEW BY NICHOLAS SAUNDERS
The past 25 years have seen a revolution in our understanding of war (especially modern war), due partly to the shift from a solely military-history approach to an interdisciplinary one incorporating archaeology, anthropology, and scientific-technological advances. The change in the name of this field from ‘battlefield archaeology’ to ‘conflict archaeology’ recognises several components: one focuses on the social-cultural study of material culture and landscape, while another concerns the scientific-forensic study of human remains and funerary events – ‘archaeo-anthropology’. This book concerns the latter, offering French case studies from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century, then mainly WWI subjects.
Tying together these fascinating, disparate studies is a focus on studying human remains across conflicts regardless of historical period. This is an undoubted strength, though it is also true that WWI brought devastating new ways of maiming and killing, and indeed atomising, the human body, which in turn affected how the war dead were located, regarded, and treated.
The earliest study covers 9th-century Carolingian warfare and associated literary sources that discuss military engagements and the role of the dead in light of Christian beliefs. This is illuminating because archaeological evidence is scarce, yet we learn that common soldiers were buried in anonymous mass graves while the elite ended up in churches and monasteries.
Food fads and fashions