Re: Military Archaeology
Many of the CAIRN members that attended the last two FOC conferences will be
aware of the survey work we are doing at the D-Day site of Pointe du Hoc in
Normandy. We will be continuing our survey work from March 10-20 and if any
CAIRN members are in the area and would like to visit us please feel free to
visit. We will be doing some geo-physical work, laser scanning and some low
level aerial photography work.
One of the things I am particularly interested in is identifying individual
bomb and shell craters and tying them to a particular air-raid and size of
bomb. The aerial photography record is not complete and only about 25% of
the craters can be attributed to a particular raid. I am going to
investigate if there is a way to identify a crater by analysis of its
physical dimensions and I would be interested to know if any CAIRN members
are aware of any similar work in this area.
Richard
Dr. Richard Burt, MRICS
Associate Professor & Associate Department Head
Department of Construction Science
Texas A&M University
TX, 77843-3137
979-845-0994
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Richard and Peter: There is a formal process for crater analysis, although it may not give you ordnance size specifically. The references I have are:
U.S. War Dept. Technical Manual TM E9-1901 - Identification of Japanese Shells and Shell Fragments; Location of Enemy Batteries dated 1945 (This is the intro to Crater Analysis).
United Nations
2003 Crater Analysis. School for Peace Support Operations Training Manual, New York. I have a copy - this is a color spiral bound piece meant to go with a power point based training session.
The two together provide the basis of large ordnance crater analysis. The TM should be findable by interlibrary loan. The UN one, I am not so sure, but try ILL. If you don't turn it up, let me know and I will copy what I have.
Doug Scott
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