Vincent Carpentier, an archaeologist at the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, has just published For an archeology of the Second World War (“For an archaeology of World War II,”). This work provides an important synthesis of the research carried out on material relics from the Second World War and also explores issues around how history is remembered.
Why extend the field of archaeology to such a recent period and to an event as well documented as the Second World War? Can archaeology provide any new information?
This is at the heart of the debate on the link between history and archaeology. The same question arose in the case of the Middle Ages – I am a medievalist by training – and it was the subject of a rather lively, even fierce, controversy between archaeologists and certain historians. From written sources, such as charters, a theory on the formation of village communities was developed. However, archaeology has shown that the history of these villages was in fact much older and more complex than the texts say.
The written sources do not show all the realities objectively. That’s why it is worth cross-referencing them with material sources that archaeologists bring to light. This also applies to periods of conflict such as the Second World War, where written sources are a long way from telling the whole story, either for ideological reasons, propaganda or because they are missing, since many archives from the Third Reich have been destroyed. The physical evidence can enrich and complete written, photographic and anecdotal information.
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France was quite late to start looking at the archaeology of World War II. Why?
In France, the system of preventive archaeology means that the state decides whether or not to excavate a plot of land, according to its relics’ scientific or heritage interest, ascertained in a preliminary assessment beforehand. However, it was only at the end of 2013 that remnants from the contemporary era have been considered part of this heritage. That is not to say that in the past, archaeologists did not bring to light the relics of recent conflicts, in Normandy for the Second World War and in the North and East of France for the First. This is actually how the journey began because we were going to excavate Neolithic, Gallic, Roman and medieval sites. And on this occasion, we discovered relics that were associated with the world wars. They were often considered contaminating objects! Some researchers started to study them on their own, others removed them since state procurement was non-existent.
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