Archives & Archaeology: Towards a More Complete History of Global Conflicts

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Material Aspects of Global Conflict" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper addresses a fundamental challenge in accounting for global conflicts in the historical record. The problem, as described here, is the “archives-versus-archaeology” gap: the space that exists between documentary evidence related to global conflicts held in archives and archaeological evidence of those conflicts on the ground. The “global” nature of these conflicts is reflected in the flow of primary source materials into multiple archives in multiple countries. Archives dedicated to these conflicts are often established in each combatant nation, sometimes far from the site of conflict. The documents preserved in these archives shape our historical understanding of events. Yet the sites of conflict, themselves, tell their own stories, anchored in the physical space and lived experience of where conflicts occur. These two bodies of evidence often provide different interpretations of events, sometimes complementary and sometimes conflicting. Nevertheless, both are required for a full historical understanding. This paper outlines the archives-versus-archaeology gap and discusses methods for bridging it, drawn from research and fieldwork related to the recovery of remains of soldiers killed in the Philippines in World War II. In doing so, it adds to a growing literature on archival theory and its integration into the field of archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Material Aspects of Global Conflict   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51922