Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 24. Mars 2002 / Time Line March 24, 2002
Version 3.503/24/2002
Pleading for Peace : Archaeologists studying camp where
anti-nuclear activists staged protests
By Keith Rogers
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Sunday, March 24, 2002
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2002/Mar-24-Sun-2002/news/18354606.html
Like the towers and craters from 41 years of nuclear weapons
testing that dot the landscape of the Nevada Test Site, a patch of
ground on the other side of the highway has attracted
archaeologists charting the last years of the Cold War.
It's known as Peace Camp, the location where anti-nuclear activists
from around the world staged some of the largest civil disobedience
actions in America.
Last week, Desert Research Institute archaeologists Colleen Beck,
Harold Drollinger and their British colleague, John Schofield, set
out to record Peace Camp's rock-art and graffiti even though the
site still is used by tribes, environmentalists and faith-based
groups to protest continued U.S. nuclear weapons research.
Beck said a report about their project will be submitted to the
Bureau of Land Management and Western Shoshones. In addition, they
intend to publish articles about it and make presentations.
Schofield describes the work as "the archaeology of opposition," or
"how the anti-nuclear movement will be represented in the
record."
"If we don't record it now, it will all be gone and no one will
know how the anti-nuclear activists left their mark on the
landscape," he said last week when snow covered many of the more
than 90 features the team has logged at Peace Camp, located across
from the entrance to the government town of Mercury.
They believe the site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, could in
another 35 years become a historic place. To be eligible for
inclusion in the national registry, sites must be at least 50 years
old.
Beck has charted historical places at the test site, and Schofield,
a military archaeologist, has recorded Greenham Common, site of the
Women's Peace Camp and anti-nuclear protests west of London, from
1981 to 2000. Realizing their work converged, they began planning
the project after discussions three years ago at the World
Archaeology Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.
"We thought it was important," Beck said. "People think
(anti-nuclear activists) just take down their tents and leave. I
don't think they realize how much they used the landscape to
express their views."
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