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

在整个历史过程中，士兵们一直被派往外国。临时性质的营地通常在达到目的后立即拆除、摧毁或废弃。尽管大多数战时基地都是短暂的，但物质文化的生产可以被视为独特的地方制造过程的一部分（威尔逊，2013）。1942年至1945年，美国陆军第八航空队在英格兰作战的1000天里，美国军人监督了东部各县70多个机场的建设和改造。这些基地往往比周围的小城镇和村庄还要大，在任何时候都有多达3,000名美国人员居住在这里（米勒，2008）。按照标准化的计划建造的机场，是为了在盟军为扭转战争局势而战的时候，方便对被占领的欧洲进行轰炸。尽管机场的设计是功利主义的，但这些地点是创造性表达和身份的空间，导致了战争所产生的任何其他物质文化。墙壁艺术，飞机鼻锥艺术和手工艺品，如情人胸针和降落伞丝绸制成的刺绣靠垫，被创造出来，使基地“更适合居住，在某种程度上像家”;一个地方的制作过程，看到美国人对家的渴望塑造了每个基地的物质文化（鲍曼，2006）。这一地点划分过程的结果是，第八航空队的70个机场被改造成了独立的地点，居住在这些地点的各个团体都能清楚地辨认出来。70年后，对这些遗址的依恋继续存在，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，他们感觉到过去的“鬼魂”（爱德华兹，2015）。 这一历史案例研究提出了许多问题。机场是如何被它们的使用者变成有意义的场所的？对家的渴望在多大程度上助长了地方的形成？这一过程是否在其他军事化地点复制？作为一组独特的和相对未研究的案例研究，第八空军的空军基地提供了一个多方面的研究的地方和物质文化，在日益军事化的世界具有当代意义的机会。 有助于冲突考古学和遗产研究领域，我的论文也提供了一个机会，以提高我们的理解谁在英国服务的美国人员通过他们创建的结构，对象和图像。

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.