1. Introduction 1.1 Context Winston Churchill once called battles “the punctuation marks of history” (Lynch and Cooksey 2007, p. 19). Names like Antietam, Culloden, Gettysburg and Hastings evoke images of triumph and glory, but also of violence and bloodshed. A battle can end an era or mark the beginning of a new one; it can even raise men to kings. Within the course of a few hours, history can be changed forever. The punctuation mark is set. But what happens after the battle has been fought? All that is left is a seemingly empty field which played an important role once. Andrew Brown of English Heritage aptly stated that if Churchill was right, “then battlefields are the fragmentary pages on which those punctuation marks were written in blood” (Sutherland 2005, p. 12). As fragments, they are rapidly erased from the shared memory until they are only remembered in local lore or completely forgotten; they can be damaged and reclaimed. If a battlefield survives as a place of importance, however, it becomes a resource to tribes, peoples and nations. The writing is resumed. Although battlefields have attracted a growing interest both from the academic world and the general public in Britain since the mid-19th century, they have only been acknowledged as heritage resources in the last decades (see App. A). Now, interpretive programmes draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the fields per year; emerging methods and disciplines contribute to the knowledge about past conflicts. The fragments are rediscovered and reinterpreted. Management planning for fields of conflict in the United Kingdom has only partially been realised effectively. Even sites which are regarded as visitor attractions have not drawn up management plans. Guidelines have been issued, but if so, address only certain thematic areas. Thus, comprehensive guidance for the management of British battlefields is needed. This dissertation will propose a guideline framework for the compilation of management 1 plans and test it against the planning frameworks of several historic battle sites in the United Kingdom. After a theoretical review, the methodology is explained and the guideline framework introduced. Results are presented and discussed in relation to the theory. At the end, a summary draws conclusions and gives recommendations. 1.2 Targets 1.2.1 Aim of the Dissertation Historic battlefields in the United Kingdom have scarcely received attention as management entities. Now, that more and more schemes for their presentation and safeguarding are being initiated, guidance is needed. The aim of this investigation therefore is to establish and test a practical guideline framework for management planning at British historic battlefields. 1.2.2 Objectives Define British battlefields. Explain the legislative background for the protection of battlefields in the United Kingdom. Describe the current management situation of British battlefields. Develop a guideline framework for the management planning at historic battlefields. Test this framework against case studies from the United Kingdom. 1.2.3 Hypotheses The investigation aims to test the following hypotheses: 2 (i) Every British battlefield represented by an organisation needs a management plan. (ii) The presented guideline framework provides appropriate guidance for planners at British battlefields. 1.3 Background Compared to the measures undertaken in the USA or Canada (see App. B), the efforts for the professional protection and management of conflict sites in the United Kingdom are still at the very beginning. Piekarz (2007) ascribes this to a variety of reasons, such as the lack of confidence in locating the field(s). He goes on to explain that the appeal of battlefields in Britain is not as great as, for example, in the USA, because of the temporal distance and the small scale of the conflicts. Freeman (2001) observed that the opening up of battlefields as an attraction is, in most cases, connected to tourism. But a heightened interest from authorities and the general public and contributions from the academic world have, over the last decade, led to a growing professionalisation of battlefield management in the British Isles. Separate heritage registers could be introduced for English (EH 1995b) and Scottish (HS 2011b) battlefields. During their compilation battle sites have been investigated with analysis techniques from several disciplines. Some historic battlefields are professionally managed by heritage organisations and local authorities; at others, interest groups have been set up. A remarkable percentage of these have recognised the potential and offer guided tours, trails and/or visitor centres with exhibitions. In the course of this professionalisation, it is essential to raise the quality of the management to standards established and widely accepted for other properties. A decade ago, the US National Park Service, responsible for the management of a high number of historic battlefields in the USA, called for the drafting of conservation plans in a 3 never before seen guidance document (NPS 2001). Influenced by the achievements made through structurised management planning at American battlefields, this has been picked up by British authors like Sutherland (2005, with Partida) and Foard (2008). In their publications, they recommend that management plans be drawn up for British historic battle sites. Guidelines issued in the United Kingdom (Heritage Lottery Fund 2008, Natural England 2008) agree that in heritage, proactive planning in the form of an officially approved document can help in developing a suitable management framework, however small the site. It gives the owner(s), the planners and the general public an overview over the strategies needed for the conservation and presentation of the site and details the necessary steps. Battlefields are complex sites with a varied stakeholder audience: A management plan offers consistent and continuous orientation for all involved parties. Historic Scotland (2011c, p. 9), which equally advocates the advancement of written documents, argues that management planning at battle sites can even set the parameters for “new research or information to be added, developing our knowledge base and understanding of a site over time”. While particular areas of planning have been addressed in the literature, no comprehensive model has been constructed. Therefore, a framework will be presented and tested in this paper. 4 1.4 Theoretical Review 1.4.1 Definition of the Resource Although many historic battlefields of Britain posses high value because of their natural features alone, these fields are important because of the battles which were fought on them. It is the association with a battle that turns the seemingly empty field into a heritage resource (Piekarz 2007). So in order to be able to define a battlefield, crucial to the management of these sites, the first step must be to understand which action constitutes a battle and which not. Over the course of centuries, warfare has radically changed, not least because of the introduction of firearms at the end of the Middle Ages. It is therefore difficult to propose a single, coherent definition of battle. Foard (2008, p. 4) offers a reconciliatory classification of historic battles: “A battle is here taken to be an action involving wholly or largely military forces, present on each side in numbers comprising battalion strength (i.e. totalling c. 1000 or more), and normally deployed and engaged on the field in formal battle array.” The reliance on the number of combatants to define military actions attracted criticism (see Newman 2004). Carman (1997, p. 217) suggests another approach: A military action is classified according to certain characteristics. “Organised violence [...], clear function and purpose [and] ritualised elements” indicate a battle. Other types of offense actions must insofar be excluded from the definition, in that they lack either the formal array of troops or the declared intent to fight or both. These actions encompass the skirmish, the ambush, the border conflict, the clan warfare, the civil unrest, and the massacre (MacSween 2001, Foard 2004b, Foard and Partida 2005, Sutherland 2005). The siege takes a special position among military actions. Scott and MacFeaters (2011) emphasise that as a conflict of a primarily defensive nature with built structures predating 5 the action, it has to be classified as a distinct form of warfare. A more detailed overview is given in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 below. Armed Conflict Offence Defense Siege Armed attack on a fortified built structure, often of longer duration. Fig. 1: Typology of Armed Conflict and Definition of “Siege” (MacSween 2001, Foard 2004b, Foard and Partida 2005, Sutherland 2005). 6 Battle •Armed organised conflict of larger scale, with the pre-signalled intent to fight. Skirmish •Armed conflict of smaller scale, often spontaneous and unplanned. Ambush •Armed attack on a group of armed or unarmed persons from a concealed position. Border Conflict •Armed conflict over and along a territorial border. Clan Warfare •Armed conflict of smaller scale between members and associates of hostile clans in the Scottish Highlands. Civil Unrest •Armed or unarmed uprising of a group or groups of people against the ruling authority. Massacre •Armed mass killing of (an) armed or unarmed group / groups of people. Fig. 2: Types of Offence Actions and their Definition (MacSween 2001, Foard 2004b, Foard and Partida 2005, Sutherland 2005). 7 Historic battlefields have variously been described as sites or landscapes (Carman 2005). Terminology like battlescape, battle terrain, battle site and field of conflict add to the confusion. Essentially, battlefields are both and this typology needs to be taken into consideration when managing the resource. In the simplest terms, a battlefield is “an area of land over which a battle was fought or significant activities relating to the battle occurred” (HS 2010, p. 2). The site therefore encompasses the “area of fighting”, “vantage points”, “overnight camps”, “natural [and] built elements” used in the action, “burials” and “memorials” (HS 2010, p. 3). However, the field should not be regarded as an isolated site.