Home » Ancient Near East Today » The Archaeology of Conflict and Remembrance at Gallipoli The Archaeology of Conflict and Remembrance at Gallipoli November 15, 2013 9:00 am By: Sarah Midford and Jessie Birkett-Rees The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe, killing millions and setting Europe on the path to further conflict. The eight month battle for the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915 provides an outstanding example of the entrenched conflicts over strategic patches of land during the ‘Great War.’ However, in spite of the large-scale loss and destruction, the conflict at Gallipoli helped provide the national foundation of three young nations: Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. Almost 100 years since the battle, a team of historians and archaeologists have returned to the Peninsula to examine the archaeological record of the battlefields and unite this new material evidence with the history of the campaign. The Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey (JHAS) of the Gallipoli peninsula is a tri-nation project between Turkey, Australia and New Zealand that operates within the Anzac Area demarcated by boundaries imposed in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). It is a multinational, interdisciplinary research project, working in a landscape of international cultural significance that has been closed to archaeologists for almost a century.