@article { VIOR002-005,
	year = {2006},
	title = {Inventarisatie van archeologische resten uit de Eerste Wereldoorlog en de mogelijkheden voor onderzoek naar sporen van andere conflicten: Battlefield Archaeology in West-Vlaanderen },
	publisher = {VIOE},
	volume = {2},
	journal = {VIOE-Rapporten},
	url = {https://oar.onroerenderfgoed.be/publicaties/VIOR/2/VIOR002-005.pdf},
	abstract = {The province of Western Flanders contains a 
particular kind of heritage: the World War I remains. 
The German-Allied frontline (the ‘Western Front’), 
which crossed Belgium from Nieuwpoort (Nieuport) 
to Mesen (Messines), is world famous. The Ypres 
Salient is the best known part of it. Less known but 
at least as well preserved are the coastal defences and 
the Hollandstellung, which is a defensive line along 
the Belgian-Dutch border. Making an inventory of 
this heritage (consisting of the remains of missing 
soldiers, trenches, metre gauge railways, (deep) 
dugouts, concrete shelters, etc.) is not an easy task. 
Therefore the study of the so-called trenchmaps 
(maps which were made during the war and indicating 
trenches, metre-gauge railways, wire entanglement, 
etc.) and aerial photographs from the Great War are 
important sources of information. Parts of them 
have been indicated in GIS (Geographic Information 
System) and the CAI (Central Archaeological Inventary). 
In 2001 a first attempt was made to make an 
overview of the archaeological World War One 
heritage in a couple of villages: Houthulst, Klerken, 
Jonkershove and Merkem. This region is not a part of 
the Ypres Salient, but the German frontline follows 
the border from Merkem along the Yser River and 
the Ieperlee Canal (this stream runs from the Yser 
to Ypres). Klerken, Jonkershove and Houthulst were 
part of the German backlines. The forest of Houthulst 
was used as the headquarters of the Germans for both 
the Yser Front and the Ypres Salient. It is clear that 
the region was an important area during the Great 
War. At first an inventory was made of the classic 
archaeological heritage (e.g. Prehistoric, Roman, 
Medieval remains). In a next phase trenchmaps and 
aerial photographs were used to locate the World War 
One remains. Locating the huge amount of structures 
on modern maps proved to be a very time-consuming 
but very interesting task. Besides that, trenchmaps 
did not seem to be accurate enough to make a decent 
inventory of them. 
At the time there wasn’t enough time or money 
to make a full inventory of World War One remains 
in Flanders. That is why the CAI-team focussed on 
the seriously threatened areas. Several techniques 
had to be tried out. The first opportunity came 
as a result of the “A19 project”, the first big scale 
‘battlefield archaeology’ project in Flanders. By order 
of the former minister of Interior Affairs, Culture, 
Youth, and Civil Administration for the Flemish 
Community, Paul Van Grembergen, the VIOE 
(Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed – Flemish 
Heritage Institute) was put in charge of evaluating 
the archaeological heritage on the (possible) future 
A19 motorway trajectory. The study of the World War 
One heritage was going to be especially important, 
because the threatened area consists of an important 
part of the Ypres Salient. Here the combination of 
trenchmaps, fieldwalking and aerial photography was 
crucial for the assessment of the archaeological value 
of the area and for planning and achieving excavations 
of nine different sites. These excavations started in 
November 2002. The combination of an intensive 
GIS study with fieldwork proved to be useful. 
The first step was to locate all the major battle 
lines and hinterland of the different armies involved. 
Therefore some trenchmaps and aerial photographs 
were used, combined with several written sources. 
With this information a large campaign of fieldwalking was started on the future A19-track. Farmers 
and (ex-) inhabitants of the region were interviewed 
about their knowledge of World War One remains in 
the area. This also gave us some very valuable information. 
Everything has been drawn in several GIS 
themes. Based on that and based on a study written by 
Prof. P. Chasseaud from the University of Greenwich 
(Department Of Military Cartography) nine zones 
were selected on which further research had to be 
done. Until now, some of those areas have been excavated. Other areas have been studied using resistivity 
and magnetometry surveys. The aerial photographs 
used for the study are British aerial reconnaissance 
pictures, dating from the First World War\nand are 
from the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Box Collection’ in 
London and the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. 
Most of those pictures have been georeferenced on 
modern topographic maps (scale 1:10,000). Trenches, 
barbed wire, tracks, old field boundaries, battery positions and so on could be located exactly on the map. 
This is of course a very rich source of information, 
not only to select zones to excavate, but also to help to 
interpret the trenches and other structures which are 
excavated or located during the geophysical survey. 
The large amounts of pictures which are available for 
a small area show us the history and evolution of the 
war in its geographical (and archaeological!) context. 
Of course, it is also an indication of the complexity 
of the research, given the continuing change of structures. The results of the archaeological fieldwork are 
very promising: well-preserved trenches and duckboards, ammunition depots, all kinds of artifacts, human remains, etc. 
All this shows that the use of trenchmaps and 
aerial photographs, combined with GIS, can provide 
us a lot of information. They should be used in all 
archaeological research about the ‘Great War’, or 
Battlefield Archaeology in general, whenever possible. 
To make the research about World War One remains 
more organized, a new ‘battlefield Archaeology’- 
unit was set up in November 2003, a co-operation 
between the VIOE and several partners. In 2004 this 
department was transformed into the Association for 
World War Archaeology (A.W.A.). Also in 2004, a 
large scale inventory project was launched. The Ypres 
Salient and other frontlines are inventorized using 
aerial photographs and trenchmaps in a GIS system. 
This new project is a co-operation between the In 
Flanders Fields Museum (IFFM – Ypres) and the 
Flemish Heritage Institute (VIOE).},
	keywords = {},
	author = {de Meyer, , Mathieu}
}

