We are hoping to launch a new project at a meeting in Bristol on 23 February. It will take an archaeological and anthropological approach to investigating the Auxiliary Units, which were set up in 1940 with the intention of creating guerrilla resistance/sabotage cells that would become active behind German lines in the event of an invasion. The British Government created a network of small, secret, elite Home Guard units and a network of underground bunkers, signal-stations, and store-bases.
These remains represent a 'virtual' guerrilla war - a planned guerrilla war that never happened. They offer an opportunity to study an entire guerrilla-war landscape at macro-level, while using individual sites and artefact assemblages to explore how the war would have been waged and experienced by individual participants at micro-level.
We have excellent preliminary contacts with people heavily involved in recording these remains for the Defence of Britain Project surveys in the 1990s, and our planned initial study area will be Somerset and perhaps Monmouthshire. However, there is great potential for establishing local projects elsewhere. All those interested in becoming involved are welcome to attend the preliminary meeting:
5.00pm, Tuesday 23 February
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology
University of Bristol
43 Woodland Road
Clifton
BristolAngie Hibbitt
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment