Concealment, Raiding, and Ambush

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-214
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Metal Detector ◽  
Conflict Archaeology ◽  
Military Activity

This chapter looks at the Tooth Hill campsites, which were a grail of modern conflict archaeology, as they preserved the faintest traces of military activity in a vast and hostile desert, and others probably lay undiscovered in-between Tel Shahm and Mudawwara. They are the rare imprint of the origins of modern mobile guerrilla warfare which shaped so many military actions across the twentieth century, and into the present. However, guerrilla warfare against the Hejaz Railway achieved arguably its most spectacular success not against a station but in what would later be regarded as a classic ambush. The Hallat Ammar ambush was about metal—trains, track, mines, and munitions—and so metal-detector survey was invaluable. No identifiable trace of the looting of the train was found, though the large quantity of railway debris had doubtless been sifted, robbed, and moved around in the intervening years. Indeed, despite its isolation, the archaeology of the ambush site could not be the pristine remains of the Arab Revolt, but rather, as elsewhere, a layering of the intervening century’s activities, disturbing, overlaying, and obscuring some of the events of the attack.

scholarly journals The actor of power in the conditions of modern warfare: David's strategy vs Goliath's strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
Natalia Aleksandrovna Balakleets
Keyword(s):  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Status ◽  
Regular Army ◽  
Natural Outcome ◽  
Military Activity ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
The Military ◽  
David And Goliath

This article is dedicated to solution of the crucial problems of the philosophy of war – the paradox of David and Goliath. The weaker, technically inferior side of military confrontation often defeats the stronger one, which is equipped with the latest technology by the world political actors. The author describes the heterogeneous and asymmetric nature of modern wars, which involve state and non-state actors, and combine regular and irregular combat practices. It is indicated that the mobile and flexible strategy of partisan war, which is more effective than the actions of regular army, is now being adopted by them. Therefore, if an irregular soldier, a partisan, in the conditions of classical inter-state war possessed the status of “unlawful combatant”, in modern wars, the soldiers of regular army must prove their superiority over the partisans. The scientific novelty of this research lies in determination of the two paradigms of warfare relevant to the current situation in the society, which correspond to the strategies of David and Goliath. The first is characteristic to high-tech societies, which have entered the post-heroic era losing imperative of sacrifice. The conclusion is made that the military activity of modern Goliaths is being transformed in accordance with transhumanistic and poshumanistic scenarios. The natural outcome of high-tech warfare of the future should become a post-human war waged by artificial intelligence. The response to high-tech challenges of the leading world political actors is the guerrilla warfare strategy of modern David, which is founded on the idea of sacrifice and willingness to take lethal risks, and debunks the key role of the factor of technological superiority in achieving victory.

War without Frontiers: The Archaeology of the Arab Revolt, 1916–18

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEIL FAULKNER ◽  
NICHOLAS J. SAUNDERS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
World War ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
Conflict Archaeology ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Military ◽  
First World

The Arab Revolt of 1916–18 played a significant part in the military collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. This chapter argues that archaeological evidence indicates that the revolt's importance was probably substantially greater than has sometimes been acknowledged. The evidence demonstrates the need for a critical re-evaluation of the issue in southern Jordan. The archaeological investigation of sites associated with the Arab Revolt in southern Jordan offers dramatic insights into the material consequences for the Ottoman army of combating the guerrilla tactics of British-backed Arab guerrillas. The aim of the discussion is twofold: to give more precision to the military assessment of the Arab Revolt in the area between Ma'an and Wadi Rutm, and to demonstrate the potential of the new and multidisciplinary sub-discipline of twentieth-century ‘conflict archaeology’.

Archaeology, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-31
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
World War ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Conflict Archaeology ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Many ◽  
First World

This chapter looks at how the timely development of an interdisciplinary archaeology (modern conflict archaeology) of the First World War from the late 1990s offered a comprehensive and nuanced way of investigating the many interlocking military and cultural aspects of the Arab Revolt and its aftermath. Ephemeral archaeological traces in the sands of southern Jordan, it was hoped, would speak to the origins of modern guerrilla warfare which itself contributed to the shaping of the Middle East after 1918. The new approach showed the power of objects to create and transmit impressions and evaluations of the Revolt and its personalities—not least by the catalysing effects of finding similar items during excavations of the original landscapes whence all such objects derived their historical significance. The desert, so apparently empty of information and insight, would prove to be full of both. The key to deciphering its archaeological message lay in understanding the landscape, its layers and its objects—a quest which began with the largest artefact of all, the Hejaz Railway.

The “White Man,” Race, and Imperial War during the Long Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 327-346
Author(s):  
Marilyn Lake
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Constitutive Relations ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Self ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Colonial Settlement

This chapter explores the transnational formation of the gendered and racialized figure of the “white man” in the constitutive relations of colonial conquest and imperial rule across the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The self-styled bearer of a “civilizing mission” to indigenous peoples, the white man became a perpetrator of violence and atrocity as imperial rule and colonial settlement encountered continuing resistance and guerrilla warfare. In the process, the older ideal of moral manliness gave way to a more modern conception of masculinity characterized by toughness, aggression, and a capacity to use firearms to “pacify the natives.” Defined by power, even as he was haunted by his vulnerability, the white man engaged in systematic denial and disavowal, evasion, and euphemism and narratives of nation-building that justified his right to rule.

Fire on the desert: conflict archaeology and the Great Arab Revolt in Jordan, 1916–18

Antiquity ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 84 (324) ◽  
pp. 514-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Saunders ◽  
Neil Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Conflict Archaeology ◽  
Desert Landscape

Archaeologists specialising in twentieth-century conflict here turn their attention from the trenches of Europe to the desert landscape of the Arabian theatre. The thrust and parry between the Ottoman Army and Lawrence's Arabian forces are reflected in defence-works and the outgoing and incoming bullets found there. The Ottoman generals changed their defences from long lines to redoubts, implying that the less visible guerrillas were having a palpable effect on strategy. Here, archaeology amplifies and enhances the story told in T.E. Lawrence'sSeven Pillars of Wisdom.

The Counter-Insurgent State: Guerrilla Warfare and State Building in the Twentieth Century

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 208
Author(s):  
William Reno ◽  
Paul Rich ◽  
Richard Stubbs
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
State Building ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare

Desert Insurgency

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Air Force ◽  
First World War ◽  
Railway Track ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
World War ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This book explores the once-hidden conflict landscape along the Hejaz Railway in the desert sands of southern Jordan. Built at the beginning of the twentieth century. This railway track stretched from Damascus to Medina and served to facilitate participation in the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca. The discovery and archaeological investigation of an unknown landscape of insurgency and counterinsurgency along this route tells a different story of the origins of modern guerrilla warfare; the exploits of T. E. Lawrence, Emir Feisal, and Bedouin warriors; and the dramatic events of the Arab Revolt of 1916–18. Ten years of research in this prehistoric terrain has revealed sites lost for almost 100 years: vast campsites occupied by railway builders; Ottoman Turkish machine-gun redoubts; Rolls-Royce armoured-car raiding camps; an ephemeral Royal Air Force desert aerodrome; as well as the actual site of the Hallat Ammar railway ambush. Ultimately, this unique and richly illustrated account tells, in intimate detail, the story of a seminal episode of the First World War and the reshaping of the Middle East that followed.

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