This intriguing and challenging book argues against a purely historical account of war and its aftermath. In that sense, it is part of the modern study of conflict archaeology rather than traditional battlefield or military investigations. It is also much more than this. The result of ten years of fieldwork investigations at Sværholt, a former Second World War German artillery battery, POW camp, and fishing hamlet in Arctic Norway, it focuses on the diverse pasts of a host of objects directly and indirectly affected by conflict.
With its meticulous study of war-affected objects, it offers glimpses of distinctive pasts that forgotten things can reveal merely by their enduring presence. Full of data and insight, though written in academic rather than everyday style, the authors argue for a bold and compelling vision of what conflict archaeology – indeed all archaeology – might become.
For readers more interested in military history than archaeology, the book offers a thought-provoking way of looking at and understanding the remains of a conflict past. Not least in this respect is acknowledging that ruined things – from a building to a wine bottle or bullet cartridge – possess afterlives as reused items with different functions, yet are still the remains of war. Many, as the now-abandoned site at værholt attest, exist in a state of waiting or becoming, abandoned but never quite lost, slowly disintegrating yet able to hint at or tell stories beyond the ability of history to recall.
