Hidden Battlefields: Power, Memory, and Preservation of Sites of Armed Conflict

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Hidden Battlefields: Power, Memory, and Preservation of Sites of Armed Conflict" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

For over 20 years, the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program has funded projects devoted to planning, interpreting, and protecting battlefields and other sites associated with armed conflicts that shaped the growth and development of the United States. This symposium dives deep into the question of what we can understand about the formative role of violence in American history when we look beyond the lens of traditional military analysis: i.e., what forms of collective violence does the focus on armies meeting on a field obscure? How were less recognized conflicts instrumental in shaping relations of power and sovereignty in the United States, and how do the ways we preserve different sites reinforce these relations over decades or centuries? This introductory paper will frame the questions that connect the symposium's case studies on massacre sites, Indigenous history, labor conflict, and racial violence in the practice of preservation and community archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Hidden Battlefields: Power, Memory, and Preservation of Sites of Armed Conflict   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology