ANZAC battlefield secrets unlocked

Despite the centrality that the Gallipoli Peninsula and the historical importance of the site where the diggers embedded themselves in trenches, tunnels and dugouts occupy in the psyche of Australians and New Zealanders, the battlefield has never been investigated using modern archaeological approaches and techniques.

“In fact,” says Professor Antonio Sagona, Professor of Archaeology in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, “the last substantive survey of the battlefield was conducted in February to March 1919 when Charles Bean, Australia’s official historian, accompanied by a photographer and a war artist, visited Gallipoli to lead what was officially named the ‘Australian Historical Mission’.”

In late 2010, with the permission of Turkish authorities and the support of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Professor Sagona led a team of Australian, New Zealand and Turkish archaeologists, classicists and historians in the first season of archaeological fieldwork of the ANZAC battlefield.

Unlike Bean, whose eye witness report concentrated on the cemeteries at Gallipoli and considered the future for the ‘ANZAC’ area, the 2010 multidisciplinary team used modern, non-invasive archaeological approaches and survey techniques. These integrated landscape archaeology and artefact analysis with written accounts and maps from 1915 onwards.

“Our aim,” says Professor Sagona, “was to identify and record sites significant to Turkish, Australian, and New Zealand forces during the 1915 campaign still visible on the landscape, including boundary markers, trenches, dugouts, tunnels, pathways, cemeteries and memorials.”

This first field season was carried out from 15–27 October 2010. “Although a relatively brief period by usual standards, the results exceeded our expectations and have provided solid foundations for more detailed work in the lead-up to the anniversary of the 1915 landing,” Professor Sagona says.

The participants focused on the areas dubbed by the ANZACs Johnston’s Jolly (the northern portion of the heart-shaped 400 Plateau) to Quinn’s Post on the so-called second ridge.

“This was a hotly-contested portion of the front from 25 April to 12 December 1915,” says Professor Sagona, “and, moreover, contains the most visible and visited remains of the ANZAC trench system, protected by pine needles from the growth of bushes and shrubs which hide them over.”

The team explored and mapped many of the surviving Australian front line trenches. Communications trenches were also investigated, as well as a long winding trench along the top of the escarpment of McCay’s Hill north of the road leading from Lone Pine to the coast.

“The war on the surface was only one element of the struggle at these positions,” says Professor Sagona. “An unending underground battle became a feature of the fighting, here as elsewhere. Tunnelling became a major preoccupation of the forces on both sides of the line, for both offensive and defensive reasons.”

In preparation, the team consulted maps and trench plans held in the Australian War Memorial and The National Archives, London, including trench and cemetery plans produced in the field, the mapped results of Bean’s mission, and the series of 43 maps resulting from the Turkish Mapping Directorate’s 1916 survey.

According to Professor Sagona, the combination of the rugged and complex terrain, varying climate and geomorphology has affected the survival, visibility and accessibility of archaeological remains in the Gallipoli region, and poses challenges for archaeological surveying.

“Initially we proposed to carry out a systematic study by using a variety of ground search survey and collection techniques – standard field strategies.

“Instead, the most effective way was to follow trenches, delineating their full extent and recording associated features along their length. Two members at the head of the line carried out the initial reconnaissance, identifying the main trenches, with the rest of the team following behind recording the trenches and associated features in detail.”

Using Differential Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and a handheld GPS receiver equipped with an external high-accuracy antenna in the field, and a fixed reference receiver at the base station, the team combined archaeological survey and historical research to provide a progressive, interdisciplinary approach to the documentation and analysis of the ANZAC landscape.

The team recorded ten categories of landscape features – boundary markers, trenches, tunnels, dugouts, pits, camps, cemeteries and memorials, modern roads and 1915 pathways, and gathered from the surface a wealth of artefacts including rusted metal food containers, lids of bully beef containers, billy cans, fuel containers, unexpended bullets, heavy fragments of shrapnel, buttons, part of the metal heel of a boot, fragments of heavy WWI British stoneware rum ration flagons and, on the Turkish side, littered red brick fragments, and shards of dark brown beer bottles and bluish-green apothecary glass.

In future years, the team aims to locate those sites with no visible evidence remaining by using innovative techniques, including ground-penetrating radar. “Broadly speaking,” says Professor Sagona, “it is hoped that the survey project, in its entirety, will broaden our knowledge of the 1915 campaign through the creation of new evidence and interpretations.”

For further information
http://shaps.unimelb.edu.au/
http://classics-archaeology.unimelb.edu.au/