Archeology
Related: artifacts - architecture - Domus Aurea - history - landscape - Pompeii
Bunker Archeology: Texts and Photos (1975) - Paul Virilio [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Definition
Archaeology, archeology or archæology (from the Greek words meaning ancient and word/speech/discourse) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes.
The goals of archaeology are to document and explain the origins and development of human culture, understand culture history, chronicle cultural evolution, and study human behavior and ecology, for both prehistoric and historic societies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology [Jan 2006]
Ancient Greece
In the 18th and early 19th century the sceptical attitudes applied to the Bible in scholarly biblical criticism came to be applied to Greek literature, so much so that scholars dismissed everything before the first Olympic games in 776 BC as legend. The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann, who began excavating Troy in 1870, changed all that. Archaeology has recovered information that enables scholars not only to treat every surviving text from the ancient world in a critical way, but also allows students to find a middle ground between uncritical acceptance of the legends and mythology of Greece on one hand, and dismissing them entirely. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece [June 2004]
Bunker Archeology
The Atlantic Wall has never been as famous as the Maginot or Siegfried line. Built in less than 4 years on the entire French coastline to forestall an Allied landing, this system of fortification designed by General Todt is composed of almost 15,000 separate constructions including 4,000 major structures and 9,000 artillery batteries which linked the fortified ports. On 6th June 1944, the Allied landings put it out of commission once and for all.
In the aftermath of the War, the author started the research of this defence system from a new standpoint, beginning this study which combines the objectivity of the historian, the awe with which the structures inspired in him as a boy, and the aesthetics and philosophy of the modern mind.
This is a photographic and historic study of one of the great lines of fortification of World War II, including a strategic and design analysis of each type of structure - bunkers, observation posts, etc.
See also: Paul Virilio