Battlefield and Conflict Archaeology

Conflict-casualty archaeology in the twenty-first century is conducted by three overlapping communities. Military casualty recovery units, such as the CWGC Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre, the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and the German Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraberfursorge (VDK), focus on WWI and WWII casualties. International forensic teams, including the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the EAAF (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team), work on more recent conflict victims from the 1990s Balkan wars, Latin American dictatorships, and ongoing conflicts. National archaeology units work on longer-term historical conflicts as opportunity, developer funding, or government commission allows.

The legal frameworks differ significantly. Military recovery operates under domestic defence law and international conventions on the repatriation of the war dead. International criminal tribunal recovery operates under the evidentiary standards of the ICC or ICTY. Both demand unbroken chain of custody from the ground to the laboratory and from the laboratory to the identification report or court exhibit. Both require the same foundational field standards.

The standard model for conflict-site survey integrates metal-detector transects into the pre-excavation phase. Survey transects are laid out at 0.5-metre or 1-metre intervals across the site, walked by detector operators whose signals are flagged by assistants. Each flagged signal is given a spatial coordinate and a descriptive note (signal strength, estimated depth). The survey is complete before any ground is opened.

1. Pre-excavation metal-detector survey
   Systematic transects at defined spacing map the distribution of metallic signals across the site. Signal concentrations that may represent burials (military equipment clustering over a defined area) are noted. UXO-specialist signals (large ferrous anomalies consistent with unexploded shells) are flagged separately and define initial exclusion zones.
2. UXO clearance and risk assessment
   An Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) specialist assesses the flagged UXO signals. Depending on signal characteristics and site history, UXO may be removed before excavation begins, or exclusion zones may be defined that constrain excavation zones. Archaeologists do not proceed in an EOD exclusion zone until clearance is confirmed.
3. Metal-detector integration during excavation
   Once excavation begins, a metal-detector operator works ahead of or alongside the excavation team. As each context is excavated and removed, the exposed surface is swept. Signals within the burial or deposit are located with precision, and the detector guides the hand excavation toward metallic finds while the archaeologist provides the spatial and stratigraphic context.

Personal effects recovered by metal-detector survey at conflict sites carry the highest single-item identification value. A legible identity disc with a name, number, and unit is a presumptive identification that can be confirmed by DNA and dental evidence. The Fromelles excavations recovered 119 identity discs, which provided presumptive identification for 119 of the 250 recovered individuals, substantially reducing the DNA and dental workload.

Projectiles, shrapnel, and ordnance fragments recovered in situ within a skeletal deposit are not merely battlefield artefacts. They are evidence of cause and mechanism of death. Their position relative to the skeleton, their deformation state, and their orientation (where recoverable) contribute to the reconstruction of the wound track and in some cases allow determination of firing direction.

Standard in-situ recording follows the same principles as any in-situ find. The object is left in position until photographed with scale bar and cardinal orientation. A total-station coordinate is taken. The position relative to named skeletal elements (within the left thoracic cavity, adjacent to the left temporal bone, embedded in the right ilium) is described. The degree of deformation is noted: a jacketed bullet that has mushroomed has behaved differently from one that passed through at high velocity and retained its shape.

Belgium and France collectively recover around 200 tonnes of WWI ordnance annually during agricultural and construction activity. This background rate means that any excavation on a WWI site in northern France or Belgium will encounter UXO at some stage, and archaeologists must be trained to recognise it and to respond correctly. The same principle applies across all major twentieth-century conflict zones.

• Pre-site briefing: all team members receive UXO awareness training before any ground-breaking, covering the visual identification of common ordnance types, the immediate actions protocol, and the contact procedure for EOD.
• Recognition: common WWI/WWII UXO includes artillery shells (cylindrical with a pointed or flat nose), stick grenades, and rifle grenades. Chemical shells have different external markings and require specialist response; they should never be handled by non-specialists.
• Immediate actions: stop work, do not touch or move the object, mark the location with a visible flag, withdraw to a minimum safe distance (typically 300 metres for unexploded artillery shells as a precautionary standard), and contact EOD through the site commander.
• Exclusion zones: EOD may designate a zone around a live item within which no work proceeds until the item is removed or made safe. The archaeologist records the position of the item within the site record even if EOD removes it for disposal away from the site.

At the Fromelles excavation, EOD teams were embedded with the archaeological team throughout the project. Several live items were recovered during the excavation itself, halting work temporarily in affected zones. The integration of EOD as a permanent operational component rather than an on-call resource is the standard model for conflict-era sites.

The Battle of Fromelles on 19-20 July 1916 was the first major action by Australian forces on the Western Front, and one of the worst single days in Australian military history. Australian and British forces attacked German lines near the village of Fromelles, suffering approximately 5,500 casualties in less than 24 hours. German forces gathered their dead for burial behind their lines. Historical research by Lambis Englezos, cross-referenced with German records and aerial photographs, identified a site at Pheasant Wood as a probable burial location.

A test excavation in May 2008, led by Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD), confirmed the presence of human remains in at least five pits. The Australian and British governments authorised a full excavation in 2009. The project ran from May to September 2009, with 250 individuals recovered from eight mass graves. The project was distinctive in several ways: it was conducted under a transparent public protocol with full media access at designated points; it included a dedicated scientific advisory panel; and it ran a simultaneous DNA family-reference collection program, eventually gathering over 3,000 reference samples from descendants of Australian and British soldiers missing after Fromelles.

Identification used four evidence streams: DNA kinship matching, dental records (where available), identity discs, and personal effects including cap badges, religious medallions, and inscribed items. By the time the new Pheasant Wood CWGC Cemetery was dedicated in 2010, 144 of the 250 individuals had been individually named on headstones. Further identifications continued in subsequent years as new DNA reference samples were submitted; by 2023, approximately 173 of the 250 had been individually identified, a rate of approximately 69 percent, unprecedented for WWI remains at the time of the initial operation.

The methodological lessons from Fromelles influenced subsequent WWI and WWII recovery projects globally. The embedded EOD model, the real-time public transparency protocol, and the simultaneous DNA reference collection that ran parallel to field excavation are now standard elements in large-scale conflict-casualty operations.

Individual identification at a conflict site is a multi-source decision, not a single-test result. The identification board, which includes the forensic archaeologist, a forensic anthropologist, an odontologist, a DNA specialist, and (at military operations) a military historian, weighs all available evidence before issuing an identification. No single evidence stream is treated as conclusive without corroboration, except in exceptional circumstances where documentary evidence is unambiguous.

• DNA kinship matching: the most powerful tool where living relatives exist. STR profiles provide identification strength equivalent to direct reference samples for first-degree relatives; SNP approaches extend this to more distant relatives.
• Dental comparison: where service dental records survive, dental comparison can be definitive. For WWI, British Army dental records were not routinely kept, limiting this evidence stream; WWII and later conflicts have better dental record survival.
• Identity discs and personal effects: presumptive identification, confirmed by one or more biological evidence streams where possible.
• Skeletal biological profile: age-at-death, sex, and stature from the skeleton contribute to narrowing the candidate pool when combined with unit records and casualty lists.

The chain of custody begins with the body part number assigned at the grave during excavation. Every skeletal element, personal effect, and DNA sample collected from an individual carries a number traceable to its three-dimensional position within the site. This traceability is both a methodological requirement and, for international criminal tribunal work, a legal one. The integrity of the identification rests on the integrity of the spatial record.