ABSTRACT
Sites of conflict can be overt and poignant ‘lieux de mémoire’ (Nora, 1989), foci of collective identities and national shrines of memorialisation. There are countless evocative, visceral and timeless worldwide representations to the acts of war, from monuments and memorials to arboretums and parades. Yet battlefields where armies met and fought stand out in two conspicuous, interrelated ways. First, although they are only fleeting moments in the history of a place, often lasting little more than minutes or hours, battlefields are sometimes the only tangible vestige of ephemeral clashes with substantial repercussions stretching across centuries. Second, particularly in the case of British battlefields, they are often difficult to positively identify and map because tangible evidence is often lacking or completely missing. Consequently, there are instances where a battle may be seminal in a nation’s history, but its site not yet positively identified, such as the Scots’ 1314 victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in Scotland (Foard and Partida, 2005: 8, Pollard and Banks, 2009: xiii), or (until the archaeological discoveries announced in 2009) the 1485 Battle of Bosworth in England, where Richard III was killed and the usurper Henry Tudor proclaimed king (Battlefields Trust, 2009a).
