'Those Who Survived the Battlefields' Archaeological Investigations in a Prisoner of War Camp Near Quedlinburg (Harz / Germany) from the First World War

‘Winter camp’ 1917: integrated conflict archaeology on the Messines Ridge 1914-1918 (Belgium)

“…The waste pits just outside the camp were full of glass fragments, mainly from wine and beer bottles. This is somewhat similar to what is found in a 1918 POW camp in Germany (Demuth 2009). A small amount of animal remains were also recovered, representing consumption residues.…”

“…The great additional benefit of excavations is that they provide a detailed picture of the material culture encountered in the soil archive and daily life in military camps (see for instance Beaulieu 2020;Demuth 2009). Some finds specifically point to the living conditions in a forward quarter.…”

“…However, most of this research is still focused mainly on the actual battlefields, trench fortifications and the recovery of human remains. First World War hinterland sites, such as camps, hospitals, prisoner-of-war or training camps and other locations dealing with daily life behind the front line, are only dealt with occasionally along the former Western Front Desfossées 2015;Desfossés, Jacques, and Prilaux 2008;Taborelli et al 2017), other theatres of war (Saunders et al 2013;Kobiałka, Kostyrko, and Kajda 2017;Kobialka 2018) or at the Homefront (Demuth 2009;Price and Howey 2016;Beaulieu 2020;Montgomery and McNeary 2016) This paper provides an integrated approach to a First World War site using aerial photography, geophysical research and historical research in combination with a smallscale excavation and is the result of the interdisciplinary project 'Non-invasive Landscape Archaeology of the Great War'…”

Editorial

“…The middle paper, which I have left to last, is my own work carried out at the Cultybraggan PoW Camp at Comrie in Perthshire. This is another paper about PoW camps, a topic which has been a feature of several papers published by the Journal (Demuth 2009;Cooper 2011;Rees-Hughes et al 2016;Seitsonen et al 2017;McNutt and Jones 2019). This paper is closest in nature to Rees-Hughes et al (2016) in tone, because both relate to the issue of escape.…”