Ghosts of Place

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 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 thirty-year 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 ongoing revelation. In Albania archaeological material from the second-century AD “was being taken from ancient sites reconstructed under the Communist regime to signify domination” and then later taken and used again in the rebuilding of churches (p. 110). Thus here Schofield is able to distinguish between modes of remembrance of a personal kind and much broader categories of “reappropriation” of forms of political and historical significance.In Chapter 5 on presentation and interpretation, Schofield presents in effect what he calls an “outline of some of the principles that underlie the interpretations of sites of conflict... based on personal experience” (p. 152). The first principle is not at all clearly presented. It seems to be a call for complete authenticity of every item that can bring “intensity and feeling” (p. 155). Schofield gets side tracked into a discussion of the site of the 1944 Nazi massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane (France) – is the car that was left in the square the real car or was it the wine merchant's car? Strangely, Schofield calls presentation based on authenticity “hot interpretation” (pp. 152–5). The car in the square is also mentioned in the discussion of the principle of “punctum” – again strangely: the “car may be punctum to some, but for the wrong reasons. Things need to prick visitors, but they need to be authentic as well” (p. 157). Again the third and final principle is that these sites should “attempt to convey a sense of the place to the visitors” (p. 158). Thus Schofield favors meetings with ghosts (p. 158). In talking through specific examples, Greenham Common is discussed as a site. Here Schofield notes the Peace Garden near the main gate, but says that he's asked his own students (he gives the course details) what might be done to go further – the “students have come up with many more imaginative and challenging ideas than mine,” he admits, not giving anything away (p. 168). Summarizing he says that such presentations should be accurate, facilitating, respectful, and be signposts and symbols, but he notes, finally, the evident irony that it is often places that have been abandoned and forgotten, receive no funding, are not managed and interpreted that “are often the most evocative.” Indeed “it is the former control towers on abandoned airbases that veterans return to. It is in these out-of-the way places that the ‘ghosts of place’ are most likely to be felt” (p. 171).Thus the book is really full of contradictions. On the one hand it wishes to provide principles for the most effective presentation of “authentic” sites of modern conflicts, but on the other the most effective symbolic sites are those that have been truly untouched and remain unvisited except by the small number of people who are in the know. In this sense, modern sites are no different from prehistoric sites which have to be protected. Some of the most famous of these sites (e.g. Lascaux) have simulated caves that the visitors in fact believe are the originals; indeed they may be more realistic than the originals. This book holds back from an analysis of this problem and seems more comfortable with a kind of English Heritage nostalgia, and being in contact with the authenticity of the objects, than with the full spectacle of a copy that is better than the original

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