When James Boswell famously lamented the irrationality of war in 1777, he noted the universality of conflict across history and across space – even reaching what he described as the gentle and benign southern ocean nations. This volume discusses archaeological evidence of conflict from those southern oceans, from Palau and Guam, to Australia, Vanuatu and Tonga, the Marquesas, Easter Island and New Zealand. The evidence for conflict and warfare encompasses defensive earthworks on Palau, fortifications on Tonga, and intricate pa sites in New Zealand. It reports evidence of reciprocal sacrifice to appease deities in several island nations, and skirmishes and smaller scale conflicts, including in Easter Island. This volume traces aspects of colonial-era conflict in Australia and frontier battles in Vanuatu, and discusses depictions of World War II materiel in the rock art of Arnhem Land. Among the causes and motives discussed in these papers are pressure on resources, the ebb and flow of significant climate events, and the significant association of conflict with culture contact. The volume, necessarily selective, eclectic and wide-ranging, includes an incisive introduction that situates the evidence persuasively in the broader scholarship addressing the history of human warfare.

The history of Australia’s Frontier Wars is becoming a hot topic for debate and research. It is now part of our national educational syllabus. However, there are very few books available which explain, in detail, the modes of warfare First Australians applied during the Frontier Wars. How They Fought is written as an introductory guidebook. It is broken into chapters covering organisation, strategies, weaponry, and defences. The book considers both traditional practices and technological and tactical adaptations. To make this complex topic more accessible, How They Fought includes numerous tables, figures and diagrams that illustrate and summarize the contents.

The study of conflict archaeology has developed rapidly over the last decade, fuelled in equal measure by technological advances and creative analytical frameworks. Nowhere is this truer than in the inter-disciplinary fields of archaeological practice that combine traditional sources such as historical photographs and maps with 3D digital topographic data from Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) and large scale geophysical prospection. For twentieth-century conflict landscapes and their surviving archaeological remains, these developments have encouraged a shift from a site oriented approach towards landscape-scaled research. This volume brings together an wide range of perspectives, setting traditional approaches that draw on historical and contemporary aerial photographs alongside cutting-edge prospection techniques, cross-disciplinary analyses and innovative methods of presenting this material to audiences. Essays from a range of disciplines (archaeology, history, geography, heritage and museum studies) studying conflict landscapes across the globe throughout the twentieth century, all draw on aerial and landscape perspectives to past conflicts and their legacy and the complex issues for heritage management. Organized in four parts, the first three sections take a broadly chronological approach, exploring the use of aerial evidence to expand our understanding of the two World Wars and the Cold War. The final section explores ways that the aerial perspective can be utilized to represent historical landscapes to a wide audience. With case studies ranging from the Western Front to the Cold War, Ireland to Russia, this volume demonstrates how an aerial perspective can both support and challenge traditional archaeological and historical analysis, providing an innovative new means of engaging with the material culture of conflict and commemoration.

This volume draws together the ground-breaking work of researchers and archaeological practitioners, working in multiple countries, to explore and understand the material and cultural impacts of the Pacific War. The combat taking place in the Pacific region during the years 1941–45 was characterized by a brutality and violence unmatched in any other theatre of the Second World War. Described by indigenous Micronesians as a ‘typhoon,’ the war was an unstoppable force that rolled across the islanders’ homes, leaving only a trail of destruction in its wake, with physical, psychological, and cultural impacts that continue to resonate today. This difficult period is examined in a variety of ways through chapters that include targeted studies of archaeological sites, wider surveys of battlefield landscapes, and the ways in which we commemorate the experiences and legacies of both combatants and civilian populations. The translation of important research by Okinawan, Japanese, and Russian archaeologists brings into focus regions that have previously been neglected in Anglophone literature, and enriches this comprehensive exploration of the archaeology of the Pacific War. This book will be of interest to archaeological practitioners, students, and members of the general public working in conflict studies or with an interest in the material culture, history, and legacies of the Pacific War.

Every large nation in the world was directly or indirectly affected by the impact of war during the course of the twentieth century, and while the historical narratives of war of these nations are well known, far less is understood about how small islands coped. These islands – often not nations in their own right but small outposts of other kingdoms, countries, and nations – have been relegated to mere footnotes in history and heritage studies as interesting case studies or unimportant curiosities. Yet for many of these small islands, war had an enduring impact on their history, memory, intangible heritage and future cultural practices, leaving a legacy that demanded some form of local response. This is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to what the memories, legacies and heritage of war in small islands can teach those who live outside them, through closely related historical and contemporary case studies covering 20th and 21st century conflict across the globe. The volume investigates a number of important questions: Why and how is war memory so enduring in small islands? Do factors such as population size, island size, isolation or geography have any impact? Do close ties of kinship and group identity enable collective memories to shape identity and its resulting war-related heritage? This book contributes to heritage and memory studies and to conflict and historical archaeology by providing a globally wide-ranging comparative assessment of small islands and their experiences of war. Heritage of War in Small Island Territories is of relevance to students, researchers, heritage and tourism professionals, local governments, and NGOs.

Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often engaging with earlier rock markings. The art reflects and expresses changing experiences within landscapes over time, spirituality, history, law and lore, as well as relationships between individuals and groups of people, plants, animals, land and Ancestral Beings that are said to have created the world, including some rock art. Since the late 1700s, people arriving in Australia have been fascinated with the rock art they encountered, with detailed studies commencing in the late 1800s. Through the 1900s an impressive body of research on Australian rock art was undertaken, with dedicated academic study using archaeological methods employed since the late 1940s. Since then, Australian rock art has been researched from various perspectives, including that of Traditional Owners, custodians and other community members. Through the 1900s, there was also growing interest in Australian rock art from researchers across the globe, leading many to visit or migrate to Australia to undertake rock art research. In this volume, the varied histories of Australian rock art research from different parts of the country are explored not only in terms of key researchers, developments and changes over time, but also the crucial role of First Nations people themselves in investigations of this key component of their living heritage.

‘This volume presents ground-breaking research on fortified sites in three parts of Wallacea by a highly regarded group of scholars from Australia, Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States. In addition to surveying and dating defensive sites in often remote and difficult terrain, the chapters provide an important and scholarly set of archaeological and ethnohistoric studies that investigate the origin of forts in Wallacea. Socio-political instability from climate events, the materialisation of indigenous belief systems, and the substantial impact of imperial expansion and European colonialism are examined and comprise a significant addition to our knowledge of conflict and warfare in an under-studied part of the Indo-Pacific. The archaeological record for past conflict is frequently ambiguous and the contribution of warfare to social development is mired in debate and paradox. Authors demonstrate that forts and other defensive constructions are costly and complicated structures that, while designed and built to protect a community from a threat of imminent violence, had (and have) complicated life histories as a result of their architectural permanence, strategic locations and traditional cultural and political significance. Understanding why conflict outbreaks – like human colonisation – often appear in the past as a punctuated event can best be approached through long-term records of conflict and violence involving archaeology and allied historical disciplines, as has been successfully done here. The volume is essential reading for archaeologists, cultural heritage managers and those with an interest in conflict studies.’ — Professor Geoffrey Clark, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra.