Historical archaeology as a discipline, grew from many different traditions, not from a single Western source. That is according to new research led by Dr Sanja Horvatinčić, an Honorary Fellow in our Department of Archaeology. Dr Sanja Horvatinčic’s study traces one of these overlooked traditions of knowledge through the heritage practices of socialist Yugoslavia. What she found was an area of study that weaves together history, art, architecture and the knowledge of local communities.
The research looked at Partisan Hospital No. 7, a secret medical complex built in a Croatian forest during the Second World War. Camouflaged with moss and pine, its multiple buildings sheltered thousands of wounded anti-fascist fighters, staffed largely by young women.
From the 1960s, art historians, architects, archaeologists, veterans and villagers worked side by side to record what survived, mapping the ruins and gathering objects and memories. Their fieldwork shaped the memorial later built on the site.
The aim was not just to conduct scientific research and collect items, but to protect places of political struggle and care, and to keep their meaning alive for the communities tied to them.
Their work drew on skills that no single discipline can claim, but together they amount to what we might now call historical archaeology — or, when the research concerns the Second World War, contemporary archaeology.
Dr Horvatinčić said: “This area of research has no single home and no single history. It grew, again and again, from people making sense of difficult pasts with whatever tools they had. Seeing these many roots helps us value its most important work, which is political and shared with communities.”
Dr Horvatinčić believes that recognising these tangled origins changes how we judge the discipline’s significance. Its strongest contributions are often interdisciplinary, politically engaged and rooted in the communities whose pasts are at stake.
The research is presented in a special issue of Historical Archaeology on the archaeology of guerrilla resistance across Europe. Further fieldwork at Drežnica is already under way.
Image 1: Wartime photograph (taken in 1943) of the main hospital building of the Partisan Hospital No. 7 on Mount Javornica near Drežnica, Croatia. (Photo courtesy of the photo archive of the Ogulin Heritage Museum; ZMOG-F-1183.)
