New book on archaeology of war from SOU professor

SOU anthropology professor Mark Tveskov has a new book about the archaeology of war and battlefields, and how war and conflict are remembered and commemorated. The volume includes a chapter on Tveskov’s research on the archaeology of the Rogue River War and a discussion of the experiences of African Americans and the Indigenous Metis people of Canada during that war.

“Conflict Archaeology, Historical Memory and the Experience of War: Beyond the Battlefield” is an edited volume from Tveskov and Ashley Ann Bissonnette, an assistant professor of public health at Eastern Connecticut State University. It was published by University Press of Florida.

Essays from a variety of contributors go beyond forensic analyses of sites of conflict “to consider the historical memory, commemoration and social experience of war,” according to the publisher’s website. The writings challenge prevailing accounts of wars throughout the “settler colonialism” of North America.

Conflicts that are examined include the battle of Chikasha, King Philip’s War, the 1694 battle at Guadalupe Mesa, the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862 and a World War II battle on the Pacific Ocean island of Saipan. The Schenectady Massacre of 1690 and colonial posts staffed by Black soldiers also are analyzed.

“This book is a collection of studies that considers a question of the day: How does a society remember, critique, commemorate, and find significance in events, artifacts and places of conflict and war?” Tveskov and Bissonnette write in its introductory chapter.

Tveskov – who teaches in SOU’s Sociology and Anthropology Department – has focused his current research on the Rogue River War of the early 1850s, shell middens on the Oregon Coast and the African American logging community of Maxville in northeastern Oregon. He has conducted research in Iceland, New England, Southern California and Alaska.

He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Connecticut, and his doctorate at the University of Oregon. He is a member of the governor’s State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation.

Tveskov and Bissonnette, his co-editor for the new book, both grew up in New England and received archaeological training at the University of Connecticut.