Nicholas J. Saunders[1] is a British academic archaeologist and anthropologist. He was educated at the universities of Sheffield (BA Archaeology, 1979), Cambridge (MPhil Social Anthropology, 1981), and Southampton (PhD Archaeology, 1991). He has held teaching and research positions at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of the West Indies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., and at University College London, where he was Reader in Material Culture, and undertook a major British Academy sponsored investigation into the material culture anthropology of the First World War (1998–2004). As of 2014[update] Saunders was Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Bristol, where he was responsible for the MA programmes in historical archaeology and conflict archaeology. As of 2018, he is Emeritus Professor of Material Culture in that department. He is a prominent contributor to the nascent field of conflict archaeology, and has authored and edited numerous academic publications in the field. In addition to his research specialising in the anthropology of 20th-century conflicts and the archaeology of World War I theatres in Belgium, France and the Middle East, Saunders has also conducted extensive fieldwork and research in pre-Columbian and historical archaeology of the Americas. He has been involved with major museum exhibitions in London, Ypres (Belgium), Tübingen (Germany), and at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (France). Saunders has investigated and published on material cultures and landscapes of Mesoamerica, South America, and the Caribbean. His most recent research has been on the aesthetics of brilliance and colour in indigenous Amerindian symbolism, an extensive survey investigation of the Nazca Lines in Peru, the anthropological archaeology of twentieth-century conflict (especially the First World War) and its legacies along the Soca (Isonzo) Front on the Slovenian-Italian border, and the conflict artworks of the Chinese Labour Corps on the Western Front during and after the First World War.
Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality and Transformation, (ed.) (with P. Cornish) 2014. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315851846
Astronomies and Cultures (ed.) (with C.Ruggles) 1993. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.
Ancient America: Contributions to New World Archaeology, (ed.) 1992. Oxford: Oxbow.
People of the Jaguar, 1989. London: Souvenir.
Major article publications
Placemaking at Les Blanches Banques, Jersey’s First World War Prisoner of War Camp. 2023. The Antiquaries Journal 103: 407-437. (with H. Mytum, G. Carr, and R. Philpott).
Identity, Place and Memory in First World War Trench Art Coins. 2022. In, R. Kelleher (ed.) Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest, pp 96-101. Cambridge and London: Fitzwilliam Museum and Paul Holberton.
East of the Jordan: Curating and forgetting the First World War and Arab Revolt along the Hejaz Railway. 2022.In, P. Cornish and N.J. Saunders (eds.)Curating the Great War, pp 107-127. London: Routledge.
The education of attention: Visualizing conflict at the In Flanders Fields Museum, 1998-2021. 2022 In, D. Dendooven and P. Trogh (eds.), Nous irons en Flandres: Festschrift for Piet Chielens pp 326-335. Ieper: In Flanders Fields Museum.
The dead and their spaces: Origins and meanings in modern conflict landscapes. 2021. In, N.J. Saunders and P. Cornish (eds.), Conflict Landscapes: Materiality and meaning in contested places, pp 3-33. London: Routledge.
Forged in conflict: Francis Buckley, the First World War, and British Prehistory. 2020. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7 Nov 2020 online, with S. Griffiths.
Zeitgeist archaeology: conflict, identity and ideology at Prague Castle, 1918–2018. 2019. Antiquity 93 (370):1009-1025. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.107
Traces of being: Interdisciplinary perspectives on First World War Conflict Landscapes. 2018. In, S.Daly, M.Salvante and V. Wilcox (eds.), Landscapes of the First World War, pp 209–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89411-9_12
Pearl's Treasure:The Trench Art Collection of an Australian Sapper. 2018. In, L. Slade (ed.), Sappers and Shrapnel:Contemporary Art and the Art of the Trenches, pp 13–27. Adelaide:Art Gallery of South Australia.
Trench Art: Objects and people in conflict. In, J. Bourke (ed.), War and Art: A Visual History of Modern Conflict, 2017, pp 209–215. London: Reaktion.
Materiality, space and distance in the First World War. In, N.J.Saunders and P. Cornish (eds.), Modern Conflict and the Senses, 2017, pp 29–42. London: Routledge.
Bodies in trees: a matter of being in Great War landscapes. In, P. Cornish and N.J. Saunders (eds.), Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality and Transformation, 2014, 22–38. London: Routledge.
Travail et nostalgie sur le front de l’Ouest: l’Art des tranchées chinois et la Première guerre mondiale. In, Li Ma (ed.), Les travailleurs chinois en France dans la Première Guerre mondiale, 2012, pp 435–451. Paris: CNRS.
Fire on the Desert: Conflict Archaeology and the Great Arab Revolt in Southern Jordan 1916–1918. (with N. Faulkner). Antiquity 2010, Vol 84 (324), pp 514–527.
People in objects: Individuality and the quotidian in the material culture of war. In, C. White (ed.), The Materiality of Individuality 2009, pp 37–55. New York: Springer.
The Cosmic Earth: Materiality and Mineralogy in the Americas. In N. Boivin and M.A. Owoc (eds.), Soil, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral World 2004, pp 123–141. London: UCL Press.
'Catching the light': Technologies of power and enchantment in Pre-Columbian goldworking. In, J. Quilter and J.W. Hoopes (eds.), Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia 2003, pp 15–47. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.
Matter and memory in the landscapes of conflict: The Western Front 1914–1999. In, B. Bender and M. Winer (eds.), Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place 2001, pp 37–53. Oxford: Berg.
Bodies of metal, shells of memory: 'Trench Art' and the Great War Re-cycled. Journal of Material Culture 2000, Vol 5 (1), pp 43–67.
Biographies of brilliance: Pearls, transformations of matter and being, c. AD 1492. World Archaeology 1999, Vol 31 (2)pp 243–57.
Stealers of light, traders in brilliance: Amerindian metaphysics in the mirror of conquest. RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 1998, Vol 33 (1): 225–52.
Zemís, trees and symbolic landscapes: three Taíno carvings from Jamaica. (with D.Gray). Antiquity 1996, Vol 70, No.270, pp 801–812.
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.
The Ypres Salient, around Ypres, in Belgium, was the scene of several battles and a major part of the Western Front during World War I.
Battlefield archaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology which studies the material remains and topography of a battlefield to understand a conflict. Archaeological battlefields consist of skirmishes, sieges, camps, and training sites. The study of the relationships and contexts of the material by-products of war give an alternate account to the version recorded in a history book, poem, or witness account, which may be constructed though bias, or may present only a limited perspective of the events. Examination of these locations gives insight to what tactics were being used, weapon modifications, and battle formations. It is not considered distinct from Military archaeology or Recceology.
Merlyna Lim is a scholar studying ICT, particularly on the socio-political shaping of new media in non-Western contexts. She has been appointed a Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society in the School of Journalism and Communication Carleton University. Formerly she was a visiting research scholar at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy and a distinguished scholar of technology and public engagement of the School of Social Transformation Justice and Social Inquiry Program and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. She previously held a networked public research associate position at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD, with distinction, from University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, with a dissertation entitled @rchipelago Online: The Internet and Political Activism in Indonesia.
Conflict archaeology is a sub-discipline within archaeology focused on intergroup and intragroup conflict. Closely linked to battlefield archaeology and Military Sites Archaeology, conflict archaeology is developing as an umbrella sub-discipline that encompasses these others, allowing for greater epistemological elasticity than other terms. Modern conflict archaeology deals with technological, social, cultural, psychological aspects of present conflicts. Unlike battlefield archaeology, modern conflict archaeology delves deeper into the anthropological study of the conflicts rather than the physical manifestations of the battles. As stated by Nicholas J. Saunders in his book Beyond the Dead Horizon, "These complexities are generated partly by nature of modern wars/conflicts of industrialized intensity and they incorporate political and nationalistic motivations and notions of ethnicity and identity."
Paul Richards is an emeritus professor of technology and agrarian development at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and adjunct professor at Njala University in central Sierra Leone. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University College London for many years, and previously taught anthropology and geography, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Timothy Ingold is a British anthropologist, and Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.
Claire Smith, is an Australian archaeologist specialising in Indigenous archaeology, symbolic communication and rock art. She served as Dean (Research) of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in 2017-2018 and, prior to that, as head of the Department of Archaeology. She served two terms as president of the World Archaeological Congress from 2003 to 2014 and greatly increased the organization's size and visibility. Among her many publications is the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology.
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Robert H. Layton is a British anthropologist and Fellow of the British Academy. He is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Durham University. He has carried out fieldwork in rural France and in a number of Aboriginal communities in Australia, and recently on traditional craft in rural China. Robert Layton studied anthropology at University College London under the famous Australian anthropologist Phyllis Kaberry. He completed his DPhil under the supervision of F.G. Bailey at the University of Sussex. He is known for his eclectic approach to anthropology and diverse range of interests. He has written extensively about art, archaeology, the evolution of hunter-gatherer society and culture, the co-evolution of genes and culture, social change and anthropological theory. He was the recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute's Rivers Memorial Medal for a substantive contribution to anthropology in 2003
Alice Gorman is an Australian archaeologist, heritage consultant, and lecturer, who is best known for pioneering work in the field of space archaeology and her Space Age Archaeology blog. Based at Flinders University, she is an expert in Indigenous stone tool analysis, but better known for her research into the archaeology of orbital debris, terrestrial launch sites, and satellite tracking stations. Gorman teaches modern material culture studies, cultural heritage management, and Australian stone tools. Gorman is also a founding member of the Archaeology, Science and Heritage Council of For All Moonkind, Inc., a nonprofit organisation developing and seeking to implement an international convention to protect human cultural heritage in outer space.
Stanley Keith Pearl was an Australian sapper with the First Australian Imperial Force during World War I, known for his trench art. Stanley Keith Pearl was born on 21 December 1893 in Ulverstone, Tasmania, the youngest child of Charles Pearl and Sophia Ann Wells. After enlisting at the town of Ulverstone in Tasmania on 9 November 1915 at twenty-one years of age, Pearl, in August 1916, became a sapper with the Australian 5 Field Company Engineers. He performed this role for the duration of the war.
Pushkar Sohoni is an architect, and an architectural and cultural historian. He is an associate professor and the chair of the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.
Barbara Bender is an anthropologist and archaeologist. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Heritage Anthropology at University College London.
Veronica Strang is an author and professor of anthropology affiliated to Oxford University. Her work combines cultural anthropology with environmental studies, and focuses on the relationship between human communities and their environments. Strang's publications include the books 'The Meaning of Water' ; Gardening the World: agency, identity, and the ownership of water' ; 'What Anthropologists Do', 'Water Nature and Culture' and most recently 'Water Beings: from nature worship to the environmental crisis', which is based on a major comparative study of water deities around the world. Further information is available on her website at: https://www.veronicastrang.com/
Anne (Annie) Clarke is an Australian archaeologist and heritage specialist. She is a professor of archaeology and heritage at the University of Sydney. Clarke is a leading scholar in Australian archaeology, both historical and Aboriginal, as well as critical heritage studies. She has specialisms in archaeobotany, contact archaeology and rock art.
Leskernick Hill is on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, UK. It is 329m high and has grid reference SX183803. Leskernick Hill is within the Cornwall AONB as part of Area 12: Bodmin Moor in the parish of Altarnun. It lies in an area of moorland that is common land. Its parent hill is Brown Willy and it is within sight of Rough Tor and other local tors
Francis Buckley (1881-1948) was a British Army officer and archaeologist whose work helped in the development of Mesolithic studies. His work on collecting, recording and classifying findings, marked an early use of scientific techniques.
The National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought is an Argentine government agency dedicated to preserving national cultural and archeological heritage. It is a part of Argentina's ministry of culture.
The anthropology of technology (AoT) is a unique, diverse, and growing field of study that bears much in common with kindred developments in the sociology and history of technology: first, a growing refusal to view the role of technology in human societies as the irreversible and predetermined consequence of a given technology's putative "inner logic"; and second, a focus on the social and cultural factors that shape a given technology's development and impact in a society. However, AoT defines technology far more broadly than the sociologists and historians of technology.
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