Top 5 Battlefield Sites to Visit

Wars and battles have always been part of the human experience. The proof of this statement resounds in the archaeological and historical literature. Battles scenes are inscribed on rock or metal or clay in nearly every period of every culture known to us today. Every ancient literary manuscript from the Q'uran to the Bible to the Iliad to the Bhagavad Gita to the Popol Wuj describes violent cultural conflicts. Blunt force trauma has been identified on buried humans excavated from every culture. Territorial wars, struggles over human rights, battles over political reasons so esoteric we can’t fathom them today: for whatever reasons, we humans have studied and practiced war since we evolved.

Battlefield Sites Fascination

Accordingly, the stuff of war, the sites and military movements and oral histories and paraphernalia remain our peculiar fascination. Today, war re-enactments are common events in the United States and the United Kingdom on every battle ever undertaken. War toys from military action figures (formerly known as tin soldiers) to battle ships to toy guns of every shape and caliber have alarmed plenty of mothers over the past decades. Fictional battles such as the Dagohir Battle Games based on Tolkein's the Lord of the Rings have been played in several venues around the world since 1977. Movies such as Platoon, Spartacus, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Henry V, The Seven Samurai, Le Petit Soldat, No Man's Land, Das Boot, Enemy at the Gates, Braveheart, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and of course Lord of the Rings, are testament to our pretty near global fascination with the science and fantasy of killing one another.

Still, many of the past battlefields throughout the world are considered—well, if not exactly sacred sites, then places of reflection and contemplation, where dozens or thousands died defending some notion of nation, or a misguided attempt to conquer one another. Whether battles were fought for good reasons or bad, they are part of our collective history.

Battlefield Archaeology

Archaeological investigations at battlefield sites got their start in 1968 by Lee Hanson at the American Civil War site of Fort Donnelson, Tennessee. The first intensive investigations were conducted at the Little Bighorn Battle site, also known as Custer's Last Stand, and they proved the efficacy of archaeology in defining a different version of what happened at the battles, apart from what the survivors or legend recalled. While not necessarily the "truth"—after all, archaeologists have their biases as much as witnesses and survivors do—archaeological studies at battlefields often permit concrete evidence of the inglorious effects of war.

Visiting Battlefield Sites

The results of the archaeological investigations have been written in books and news articles, and presented in museums, enriching the battlefield sites. So, which battlefields are worth a visit? I've chosen five of what I consider the top battlefield sites to visit, three in the United States and two in the United Kingdom, all of which have been investigated by archaeologists in one way or another. Are there others you've visited and would like to recommend?

Battlefield Sites