Did combat activities during World War I reveal or destroy any previously undiscovered archaeological sites?

by 2hundred20

With all the digging of trenches and destruction from artillery shelling, a lot of earth was moved during WW1. I'm just curious whether there were reports of archaeological findings along the various fronts.

Alkibiades415

Hello, I think you asked this question a while back (or else a similar question was asked). This sent me down a rabbit hole and I did quite a bit of reading around this question, but was not able to find anything definitive for Europe. I know that a great deal of ancient material was found during trench-digging in Greece, including the discovery by ANZAC forces of the "lost" Greek city of Alopekonnesos on Gallipoli, and with it a slew of ancient Greek and Roman artefacts, including Roman-era inscriptions.

I think it was very likely that new materials were unearthed during the war in Europe also, either by the very extensive trenchwork or else by the sheer excavatory power of the larger artillery pieces. There were certain men with an eye for such finds there on the battlefields--a good example being Francis Buckley. I just can't find anything concrete as far as sources with the limited resources available to me at the moment. Here's hoping someone with a WW1 expertise might have a lead. If this book does not exist, it certainly should!

On a side note: it is very difficult to search for this question, since you get a lot of results for "archaeology of World War 1 trenches" instead of "archaeology resulting from World War 1 trenches."