Department of Archaeology and Anthropology

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Nicholas Saunders

Dr Nicholas J Saunders

B.A. (Hons) Prehistory and Archaeology (Sheffield), M.Phil. Social Anthropology (Cambridge), PhD Archaeology (Southampton)

Department of Archaeology & Anthropology
University of Bristol
43 Woodland Road
BRISTOL BS8 1UU, UK


Tel: +44 (0) 117 331 1188
Fax: +44 (0) 117 954 6001
E-mail: Nicholas.Saunders@bris.ac.uk

Dr Nicholas Saunders

RESEARCH INTERESTS:


CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS:

1) The Great Arab Revolt Archaeological Project (GARP)

Ottoman trenches and redoubt at Ma-an Station

Excavations at Akabat Hejaz Railway Station

This is an interdisciplinary archaeological-anthropological project co-directed with Dr Neil Faulkner, and in co-operation with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, the Department of Archaeology, al-Hussein Bin Talal University, the Hashemite Royal Court, and Istanbul University. It is a ten-year project (2006-2016), which involves survey and excavation of conflict landscapes - trenches, fortifications, tented encampments, and standing buildings - along the militarised southern Jordanian section of the Hejaz Railway. The railroad was a major focus of hostilities in 1916-18 between the Ottoman Turks and the Arab forces of Sherif Hussein and T.E. Lawrence, in what became known as the Great Arab Revolt - itself embedded within the First World War. The success enjoyed by the mobile Arab and British forces against the largely immobile Ottoman army is famously enshrined in Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and is regarded as the template for modern guerilla warfare. Fieldwork has focused on investigating the sites of Ma'an Station, Wadi Rutm, Batn Al-Ghoul, and Tel Shahm - all Ottoman-built stations or associated fortifications. Extensive landscape investigations have been supplemented by research in document and photo archives, oral history, aerial reconnaissance, and the invaluable support of Jordanian and Turkish colleagues. Almost a century after the First World War ended, the archaeological legacy of a conflict involving Arab peoples, the Turks, and the British, is being investigated by an international team from those same countries.

Ottoman fortification protecting a railway viaduct

2010 Field Team

 

2) Image and Culture at Nazca, Peru 

Walking and mapping the Nazca desert

Nazca geoglyph built between low-lying hills

This project co-directed with Professor Clive Ruggles from Leicester University and Dr Ivan Ghezzi of Yale University is an archaeological/anthropological investigation into large-scale designs made in the desert of south coastal Peru, and involves survey, inventory, and investigating the overlapping construction/re-use of the images between ca. 200 BC and ca. AD 800. The project involves a combination of satellite digital mapping and an experiential mode of inquiry acquired by extensive field-walking, together with the detailed examination of horizontal stratigraphy and surface artefacts. This approach was adopted because we considered that to understand the physical and perceptual relationships of those who created Nazca's geoglyphs and their landscape, we needed to develop our own equally haptic familiarity with that same environment. The project includes a study of the material culture of tourism in Nazca, especially the current utilization of prehistoric iconography as symbols of local and national cultural identity in the cultural heritage arena, and the role of Maria Reiche in this process.  Press release detailing Dr Saunders' work in Peru.

Distinctive Nazca geoglyph, bordered by small heaps of stones

Nazca Town memorial to local potter

 

3) Archaeology, material culture, and cultural memory of 20th-Century Conflict

 

This is a long-term archaeological and anthropological project which initially focused on 'trench art' - 3-D memory objects that embodied the different experiences of war for makers and consumers between 1914 and 1939 (i.e. soldiers and POWs, and refugees and internees). It has grown to include more recent work in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in relation to concepts of ethnicity and materiality, and also to the wider exploration of related issues concerning conflict landscapes, nationalism, religion, heritage and museums, tourism, and commemoration. It has led to exhibitions and collaborations with the Imperial War Museum (London), The Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford), In Flanders Fields Museum (Ieper, Belgium), the Historial de la Grande Guerre (Péronne, France), and the Ludwig-Uhland-Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft der Universität Tübingen (Tubingen, Germany). It has also led to regular conferences on Material Culture and Cultural Memory of 20th Century Conflict at the Imperial War Museum, to a 5-year rolling exhibition on trench art at the In Flanders Fields Museum, and to First World War-related archaeological excavations at Ploegsteert, Belgium, and on Salisbury Plain.  Press release detailing recent Dr. Saunders' recent work with a team excavating at Ploegsteert.


4) Brilliance and Colour in the Americas

This interest focuses on the existence of an 'aesthetic of brilliance' among native peoples of the Americas (past and present). It has three distinct parts: (i) investigation of indigenous philosophies of light and colour via ethnohistory and ethnography, (ii) the ways in which these are embodied in material and visual culture (e.g. obsidian, jade, mirrors), and (iii) the role of this aesthetic in the indigenous experience of the Spanish conquest (physical and spiritual), colonial art, and folk art today.


5) Animal Symbolism in Pre-Columbian and Native America 

 

 

 

 

This long term research interest focuses on the construction and use of animal symbolism in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the Amazon. It has been mainly concerned with issues of ‘predator categories’ of animals, and the ways they have been symbolically constructed/acquired by social elites through political ideology and mythology as expressed in archaeological material culture.

 

 

 

SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

  • Saunders, N.J. and M. Wenzel. (in prep) Fighting with style: Material culture, ethnicity, and conflict in Sarajevo. 
  • Ruggles, C. and N.J. Saunders. (in prep) Desert labyrinth: Lines, landscape and meaning in Nazca, Peru. 
  • Saunders, N.J. (in prep) Bodies in trees: a matter of being in Great War landscapes. In, N.J. Saunders and P. Cornish (eds), Bodies in conflict: Corporeality, materiality, and transformation in twentieth century war.
  • Saunders, N.J. (ed.) (in prep. 2012) Beyond the Dead Horizon: Studies in Modern Conflict Archaeology. Oxford. 
  • Saunders, N.J. (2012, in press) Labour and Longing on the Western Front: Chinese material culture and the First World War. In Li Ma (ed.), Chinese Labour during the First World War. Paris: CNRS.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2012, in press) Materialising Spirits: Smoke and Power in the Americas. In, C. Martinez and A. Llamazares Sarasola (eds.), The Art of Tobacco in Ancient America. Buenos Aires: CEPPA.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2012, in press) Glisten and gleam: ‘Sacred Moisture’ in the Americas. In F. Stevens and R. Whitehouse (eds.), The Archaeology of Water: Social and Ritual Dimensions. Left Coast Press.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2012, in press) First World War Archaeology: Between Theory and Practice. Archeologia della Grande Guerra/Archaeology of the Great War, pp 37-53. Trento.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2001) Shimmering Worlds: Brilliance, Power and Gold in Pre-Columbian Panama. In, R.G. Cooke, N.J. Saunders, J.W. Hoopes and J. Quilter, To Capture the Sun: Gold of Ancient Panama, pp 78-113. Gilcrease Museum and University of Oklahoma Press.
  • Shqiarat, M., Z. Al-Salameen, N. Faulkner, and N.J. Saunders. (2011) Fire and Water: tradition   and transformation in the archaeology of steam locomotion in a desert war. Levant 43 (1):           98-113. 
  • Saunders, N.J., and N. Faulkner. (2010) Fire on the desert: Conflict archaeology and the Great Arab Revolt in Jordan, 1916-18. Antiquity 84 (324): 514-527.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2010) Obsidian Mirror or Portable Altar. In, S. Toby Evans (ed.), Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks, pp 76-77. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.
  • Paisley, S. and N.J. Saunders. (2010) A God Forsaken: the sacred bear in Andean iconography and cosmology. World Archaeology 42 (2): 245-260.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2010) Killing Time: Archaeology and the First World War (2nd ed. paperback). Stroud: The History Press.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2009) People in objects: Individuality and the quotidian in the material culture of war. In, Carolyn White (ed.), The Materiality of Individuality, pp 37-55. New York: Springer. 
  • Saunders, N.J. and Paul Cornish (eds). (2009) Contested Objects: Material Memories of the Great War. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Dewilde, M. and N.J. Saunders. (2009) Archaeology of the Great War: The Flemish experience. In, N.J. Saunders and P. Cornish (eds), Contested Objects: Material memories of the Great War, pp 251-265. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Saunders, N.J., Jean Bourgeois, Birger Stichelbaut, and Piet Chielens (eds) (2009) Military Aerial Photography and Archaeology. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2009) ‘Ulysses’s Gaze: The panoptic premise in aerial photography and Great War archaeology. In, Jean Bourgeois, Birger Stichelbaut, Nicholas J Saunders, and Piet Chielens (eds) Military Aerial Photography and Archaeology, pp 27-40. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2008) Response to, ‘Time to destroy, An archaeology of supermodernity’, by A. Gonzalez-Ruibal. Current Anthropology 49 (2): 268-9.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2007) 'Killing Time': Archaeology and the First World War. Stroud: Sutton.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2005) Peoples of the Caribbean: An Encyclopedia of Caribbean Archaeology and  Traditional Culture. Oxford and San Diego: ABC-Clio.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2005) Culture, Conflict, and Materiality: The Social Lives of Great War Objects. In, B. Finn and B.C. Hacker (eds.) Materializing the Military, pp 77-94. London: Science Museum.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2004). The Cosmic Earth: Materiality and Mineralogy in the Americas. In N. Boivin and M.A. Owoc (eds.), Soil, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral  World, pp 123-141. London: UCL Press.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2004). El 'Estético de Brillo': Chamanismo, Poder, y el Arte de Analogía. En, A.M. Llamazares y C. Sarasola (eds.), El Languaje de los Dioses: Arte, Chamanismo y Cosmovisión Indígena de Sudamérica, pp 127-140. Buenos Aires: Fundacion Desde America.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2004) Matters of Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War. (ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Saunders, N.J. (2003). Crucifix, Calvary, and Cross: materiality and spirituality in Great War Landscapes. World Archaeology  35 (1): 7-21.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2003) Trench Art: Materialities and Memories of War. Oxford: Berg.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2003). 'Catching the light': Technologies of power and enchantment in Pre-Columbian goldworking. In, J. Quilter and J.W. Hoopes (eds), Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, pp 15-47. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

Nick Saunders, Salisbury Plan (1958)

Nick Saunders, Salisbury Plain (1958)

Nick Saunders, Salisbury Plain (2008)

Nick Saunders, Salisbury Plain (2008)

SELECTED OLDER PUBLICATIONS:

  • Saunders, N.J. (2002). The Colours of light: Materiality and Chromatic cultures of the Americas, In, A. Jones and G. MacGregor (eds), Colouring the Past: The Significance of Archaeological Research, pp 209-226. Oxford: Berg.
  • Politis, G., and N.J. Saunders. (2002). Archaeological correlates of ideological activity: Food Taboos and spirit animals in an Amazonian rainforest hunter-gatherer society. In, P. Miracle (ed.), Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption, pp 113-130. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2002). Excavating memories: archaeology and the Great War, 1914-2001. Antiquity 76 (291): 101-8.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2002). The ironic 'culture of shells' in the Great War and beyond. In, J. Schofield, W.G. Johnson, and C. Beck (eds), Matériel Culture: The Archaeology of 20th Century Conflict, pp 22-40. London: Routledge.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2001) A Dark Light: Reflections on Obsidian in Mesoamerica. World Archaeology, 33 (2):220-236.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2001) Matter and memory in the landscapes of conflict: The Western Front 1914-1999. In, B. Bender and M. Winer (eds), Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place, pp 37-53. Oxford: Berg.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2001). Apprehending Memory: Material Culture and War, 1919-1939. In, J. Bourne, P.H. Liddle and H. Whitehead (eds), The Great World War, 1914-1945. Vol.2, pp 476-488. London:HarperCollins.
  • Saunders, N.J. (2000) Bodies of metal, shells of memory: 'Trench Art' and the Great War Re-cycled. Journal of Material Culture, 5 (1):43-67.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1999) Biographies of brilliance: Pearls, transformations of matter and being, c. AD 1492. World Archaeology 31 (2): 243-57.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1998) Icons of Power: Feline Symbolism in the Americas. (ed.).New York and London: Routledge.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1998). Stealers of light, traders in brilliance: Amerindian metaphysics in the mirror of conquest. RES: Anthropology  and Aesthetics 33 (1): 225-52.
  • Saunders, N.J. and D. Gray. (1996) Zemís, trees and symbolic landscapes: three Taíno carvings from Jamaica. Antiquity Vol 70, No.270, pp 801-812.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1994) At the mouth of the Obsidian Cave: Deity and Place in Aztec Religion. In, David L Carmichael, Jane Hubert, Brian Reeves, & Oudhild Schanche (eds), Sacred Sites,  Sacred Places. pp 172-183. Routledge, London.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1994) Predators of culture: Jaguar symbolism and Mesoamerican Elites. World Archaeology  Vol. 26:1, pp 104-117.
  • Saunders, N.J. and C.L.N. Ruggles (eds) (1993) Astronomies and Cultures. (co edited with C.L.N. Ruggles), Niwot: University Press of Colorado.
  • Saunders, N.J. (ed). (1992). Ancient America: Contributions to New World Archaeology. Oxbow Books, Oxford.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1990) Tezcatlipoca: Jaguar Metaphors and the Aztec Mirror of Nature, in R.G Willis (ed.), Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World, pp 159 177, Unwin Hyman, London.
  • Saunders, N.J. (1988) Chatoyer: Anthropological Reflections on Archaeological Mirrors. in N.J. Saunders & O. de Montmollin (eds), Recent Studies in Pre Columbian Archaeology. BAR International Series 421, pp 1 40, Oxford; British Archaeological Reports.

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