*** CANCELLED***Archaeology Seminar Series 2020: Prof. Neil Price discusses conflict archaeology in the Pacific
*** CANCELLED***
The Department of Archaeology's Seminar Series for 2020 continues with a talk by Prof. Neil Price of the University of Uppsala who will discuss "War of the Worlds: The Present Past on a Pacific Island Battlefield, 1944-2020".
Join us on Friday 20th March between 3-4pm in QC-2013.
Prof. Price explains: "The Second World War was arguably the most traumatic complex event in human history. Its troubled legacies have left a global mark, but nowhere more so than in the Pacific, with today's unresolved tensions between Japan, China, Korea and other former combatant nations. The island battlefields of the region formed a zone of cultural interaction and conflict for all the peoples of the Pacific and many from outside. Both directly and thematically, causal links can be traced back from the War to the colonial contact period, and literally underlying the wartime landscapes (but often overlooked) are the earlier settlements and sacred sites of the indigenous islanders. The properly contextualisedstudy of the conflict therefore involves a chronological range and complexity that extends from the 1500s to today. Themes of death and memory naturally take centrestage, perceived differently over time among the multicultural actors of the Pacific. Using examples from the Palau islands, drawn from published and ongoing project work by the author and colleagues, this talk presents a programmeof archaeological investigation that promotes the preservation of the battlefields as places of reflection and commemoration, and the innovative role of archaeology as a medium of reconciliation."