GALLIPOLI, TURKEY—Archaeologists from Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand are wrapping up a five-year project to survey the World War I battlefield site on the Gallipoli Peninsula. For eight months, Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman Empire and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) engaged in trench warfare. “We are trying to find out what’s still there and what we can learn from it,” retired Rear Admiral and Australia’s team leader Simon Harrington told The Age. They have found latrines, bomb shelters, command posts, and trenches from the battle lines. “An individual find doesn’t tell us much. But we look at patterns—and what those patterns tell us about human behavior. Home-made bricks show us where the Ottoman trenches were. Barbed wire shows us the front line. Bully beef cans on the ANZAC side show us where they ate, brick ovens on the Turkish side show us where they cooked,” said Tony Sagona of the University of Melbourne. Ian McGibbon of New Zealand’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage is searching for the trench set up by the Maori contingent at Gallipoli. The “Maori Pah” is marked by a tiki carved into the rock face of their position. “It would be just sensational,” he said. For an in-depth report on this project, see ARCHAEOLOGY's "Letter From Turkey: Anzac's Next Chapter."
