The San Pietro & Cassino Project
Modern conflict archaeology is a relatively new branch of field archaeology that employs a wide range of multi-disciplinary techniques to develop understanding of modern industrialised warfare through the study of its material remains and impacts.
A programme of landscape reconnaissance, survey, and recording, supplemented with historical research and oral history, to catalogue archaeological features relevant to the Battle of Cassino between October 1943 and May 1944.
A programme of landscape reconnaissance, survey, and recording, supplemented with historical research and oral history, to catalogue archaeological features relevant to the Battle of Cassino between October 1943 and May 1944.
Monte Cassino was the Stalingrad of the Italian Campaign. The German Wehrmacht, masters of defensive warfare, created a landscape of concealed machine-gun nests, deep dugouts, concrete bunkers, and underground tunnels, shelters, and command posts across the Italian landscape. American, Australian, Canadian, British, French, Indian, New Zealand, Polish, and South African soldiers fought for six months, between October 1943 and May 1944, to defeat them. The result was some of the most ferocious fighting of the Second World War. The total cost was 100,000 dead and wounded.
The abandoned hill-town of San Pietro Infine stands as a monument to this epic struggle. This will be the anchor of a ground-breaking new archaeological project – the first attempt at a comprehensive field-based investigation of an entire Second World War battlefield. Working closely with Italian colleagues and the local Italian community, Military History Live volunteers will begin work in May 2019.
Visit the MHL Cassino website
The abandoned hill-town of San Pietro Infine stands as a monument to this epic struggle. This will be the anchor of a ground-breaking new archaeological project – the first attempt at a comprehensive field-based investigation of an entire Second World War battlefield. Working closely with Italian colleagues and the local Italian community, Military History Live volunteers will begin work in May 2019.
Visit the MHL Cassino website