Martin Brown (Ministry Of Defence, UK)

Between 1914 and 1918 the Western Front became the ultimate landscape of military occupation as an entrenched battlespace developed in, under and above a landscape that had been primarily agricultural. The nature of the conflict was such that not only were entire civilian populations uprooted but whole sections of the landscape were changed.

As the civilian population fled the main theatres of conflict the soldiers entered and the domestic was transformed and militarised as fortifications were built, buildings were either destroyed or utilised and whole sections of landscape were transformed beyond recognition.

This paper will consider two sites: Auchonvillers in France and St Yvon in Belgium, one occupied by the Allies and in the rear area of the Somme, the other fortified by the Germans. Examples from both sites will be offered in support of an idea that the archaeology not only tells a story of military experience but also of an absent civilian population who experienced dislocation, loss and trauma. In doing so we look beyond
the trench to the wider sense of conflict archaeology in an era of total war.