Matters of Conflict : Material Culture, Memory and the First World War

In its multidisciplinary approach and wide-ranging contributions, the book looks at trench art and postcards through museum collections to prosthetic limbs, and examines the First World War and its significance through the things it left behind.

Matters of Conflict looks at the definitive invention of the twentieth century - industrialised war - and its vast and varied material legacy. From trench art and postcards through avant-garde art, museum collections and prosthetic limbs to battlefield landscapes, the book examines the First World War and its significance through the things it left behind. The contributions come from a multidisciplinary perspective, uniting previously compartmentalized disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, cultural history, museology and art history in their focus on material culture. This innovative, hybrid approach investigates the ''social life'' of objects in order to understand them as they move through time and space and intersect the lives of all who came in contact with them.
The resulting survey sets a new agenda for study of the First World War, and ultimately of all twentieth-century conflict.