The Archaeology of Conflicts: Early modern military encampments and material culture

Abstract

For the first time, this volume brings together an international group of experts on the topic of early modern military encampments in Northwestern Europe. Despite the flourishing of conflict archaeology across the continent, the discipline lacks a consistent terminology and adequate typology for describing and interpreting the large variety of structures in encampments and the finds they contain. On a methodological level, it remains difficult to detect these large-scale but low-impact military features in the small windows offered by trial trenching. Many of these sites go unrecognized, as a result of their ephemeral nature and lack of comparative framework and are therefore subsequently destroyed. The authors in this book take on this challenge, giving an overview of the documents, features and finds that are linked to military encampments and the methodologies that can be applied for their identification and interpretation