Abstract
The prisoner of war camp at La Glacerie in Cherbourg, Normandy was established by the American authorities in August 1944 and was the first of many camps to be erected in the region. In August 1945, the camp was handed over to the French authorities and finally it was closed in October 1946. An archaeology-led research project carried out by Oxford Archaeology was conducted during the winter of 2009 and is significant as the first prescription in archéologie préventive (Code du Patrimoine 2010) in France for a World War II archaeological site. Evidence for the project has been collected not only from excavation but also from a range of sources including international, national, and local documentary sources, oral history, and photography. However, emphasis has been placed on the value of archaeological evidence and its contribution to a multidisciplinary study.
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Acknowledgments
This research project has been a team effort. Thanks are due to Jane Phimester, Oxford Archaeology (OA) for aerial photographic research, Valentin Schneider (Université de Caen) and Catherine Person (OA) for historic research, Nathalie Lemarchand (Centre Régional de Culture Ethnologique et Technique) for conducting the oral history study, Ian Scott (OA) and Christophe Prime (Le Mémorial de Caen) for artifactual research, Alan Hardy and Rebecca Peacock (OA) for working on the archaeological analysis, and Markus Dylewski (OA) for preparing the figures. Thanks are also due to all the archaeological team that worked so hard during the snow and the rain in the winter of 2009.
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Early, R. (2013). Excavating the World War II Prisoner of War camp at La Glacerie, Cherbourg, Normandy. In: Mytum, H., Carr, G. (eds) Prisoners of War. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4166-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4166-3_6
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