Argentine Archaeology, War Veterans, and Mental Health

Abstract

In 2020, a group of Argentine scholars with different backgrounds joined forces to create the Equipo de Arqueología Memorias de Malvinas (EAMM) (Malvinas Memories Archaeology Team). Its main goal was to explore and develop archaeological research approaches to the Malvinas/Falklands War of 1982. The obvious obstacle posed by the limited access to the disputed territory to carry out traditional archaeological fieldwork was a stimulus to devise alternative lines of research that focused on material culture and space, veterans’ war and post-war experiences, and commemoration and memorialisation. It was recognised that such an approach could still produce original knowledge and interpretive narratives about the war and its participants, as well as contribute to the recovery and value of the experiences, feelings, and memories of those involved in it. The team, which is interdisciplinary in nature and integrated archaeologists, historians, social anthropologists, and specialists in social communication, has now consolidated and carried out research focused around four main lines of enquiry, which can be framed in the general approach of modern conflict archaeology. These four research lines are: (1) the study of the links between objects, memories, and experiences of veterans; (2) the reconstruction of battles and military actions through the combination of veterans’ testimonies and remote sensing data; (3) the involvement of veterans in archaeological investigations on sites in Argentina for therapeutic purposes; and (4) the study of war commemoration and memorialisationin both Argentina and in the Malvinas/Falkland Islands.