Place-making, material culture and 'home' at Second World War 8th United States Army Air Force bases.

纵观历史，士兵们一直被派往外国。他们的营地本质上是临时的，一旦达到目的，他们的营地通常被拆除、摧毁或遗弃。尽管大多数战时基地都不是永久性的，但物质文化的生产可以被视为独特的场所制造过程的一部分（Wilson, 2013）。1942年至1945年，在美国第八陆军航空队在英格兰作战的1000天里，美国军人监督了东部地区70多个机场的建设和改造。这些基地通常比周围的小城镇和村庄更大，在任何时候都有多达3000名美国人员居住（Miller, 2008）。这些机场是按照标准化的计划建造的，目的是在盟军为扭转战局而战时，便于对被占领的欧洲进行轰炸。尽管机场的设计是功利主义的，但这些场地是创造性表达和身份的空间，导致了战争所产生的独特的物质文化。墙上艺术、飞机鼻锥艺术和手工艺品，比如用降落伞丝绸制成的心形胸针和刺绣靠垫，都是为了让基地“更适合居住，在某种程度上更像家”；美国人对家园的渴望塑造了每个基地的物质文化，这是一个制造场所的过程（鲍曼，2006）。这一选址过程的效果是将第八航空队的70个机场变成了独立的地方，让居住在那里的群体可以清楚地识别出来。70年后，对这些遗址的依恋仍然存在，退伍军人谈论“回家”到他们以前的基地，现在越来越多的游客声称，当面对机场遗址的物质遗迹时，感觉到了过去的“鬼魂”（爱德华兹，2015）。这一历史案例研究提出了许多问题。机场是如何被他们的居住者改造成有意义的场所的？对家乡的渴望在多大程度上推动了地方的创造？这一过程是否在其他军事基地复制？作为一组独特且相对未被研究的案例研究，第八航空队的空军基地为在日益军事化的世界中具有当代相关性的地方和物质文化的多方面研究提供了机会。我的论文为冲突考古学和遗产研究领域做出了贡献，也提供了一个机会，通过他们创造的结构、物体和图像，促进我们对在英国服役的美国人员的理解。

Soldiers have been posted to foreign lands throughout the course of history. Temporary by nature, their encampments are usually dismantled, destroyed or abandoned as soon as their purpose has been served. Despite the impermanency of most wartime bases, the production of material culture can be viewed as part of a unique process of place-making (Wilson, 2013). During the thousand days that the Eighth United States Army Air Force operated in England (1942-1945), American servicemen oversaw the construction and adaption of over seventy airfields in the Eastern counties. Often larger than the small towns and villages which surrounded them, these bases were home to as many as 3,000 American personnel at any one time (Miller, 2008). Built to standardised plans, the airfields were created for the purpose of facilitating bombing raids into occupied Europe as the Allies fought to turn the tide of the war. Despite the utilitarian design of the airfields, the sites were spaces of creative expression and identity, resulting in a material culture unique to any other that the war produced. Wall art, aeroplane nose cone art and handicrafts, such as sweetheart brooches and embroidered cushions made from parachute silk, were created to make bases 'a bit more liveable, and to some degree like home'; a process of place-making that saw the Americans' longing for home shape each base's material culture (Bowman, 2006). The effect of this process of place-making was the transformation of the Eighth Air Force's seventy airfields into individual localities, clearly identifiable to the groups who inhabited them. Seventy years later, an attachment to these sites has continued to endure, vocalised by veterans who talk of 'returning home' to their former bases, and now increasingly by visitors, who claim to feel the 'ghosts' of the past when faced with the material remains of the airfield sites (Edwards, 2015). This historical case study raises numerous questions. How were airfields transformed by their occupants into sites of meaning? To what extent did a longing for home fuel place-making? Is this process replicated at other militarised sites? As a set of unique and relatively un-studied case studies, the air bases of the Eighth Air Force provide the opportunity for a multifaceted study of place and material culture that has contemporary relevance in an increasingly militarised world. Contributing to the fields of conflict archaeology and heritage studies, my thesis also provides an opportunity to advance our understanding of the American personnel who served in England through the structures, objects and images that they created.