 So good afternoon seems that I have to be to remain seated. I use normally used to to walk around so Uncomfortable I go to take you to Flanders. I Noticed in the program book that I forgot a word in my title that was in Flanders So this story I'm going to tell you deals with Belgium. So Flanders is a Dutch speaking part of Belgium But it's a problem that we notice that goes beyond the border of Flanders and Belgium The direct cause of this presentation was the increase of the findings of bodies of soldiers fallen soldiers especially of the first world war on the Western front and also the lack of a decent decent guidelines that Helped us how to deal with those bodies for those findings So maybe I give you a short introduction in the first world war for those who are not Comfortable with it. So this is the Western front Over here Point is this is Paris. This is Belgium And so my story deals about this small part of the Western front the part that is situated in Flanders the front and Flanders you see a hillshade map is Divided in two parts. You have a northern part. No, so this is a front This is the Allied troops the German troops that advanced towards the coasts and the Allied troops in 1914 that stopped the German advance and so the front stopped in 1914 and Changed into a trench war into a static quite static trench war and lasted there for the next four years So the front is divided in two parts in the northern part. You have the Inundation area so the floodgates at Newport were opened and the complete plain was set underwater and the front desk remained quite fairly I wouldn't say peaceful but quite and The southern part you have the eeper salient in which one used the the natural hills to defend eeper So eeper the city is Situated more or less over here and was surrounded by those hills you see and The the area of eeper the eeper salient was known as one of the most bloody Areas battlefields in the first world war together with the Somme Valley and Verdun It was known for example for the launch of the first gas attack in human history in 1915 It was a chlorga gas attack launched This was also known for the the battle of Passchendaele I don't know if this picture was really taken taken in an eeper But it was how the landscape looked after the the battle of Passchendaele 1917 so the complete area was destroyed This also implicates that there were quite a lot of Soldiers got killed in that war There are about 600,000 people got killed soldiers got killed and a few number of them are still missing missing It's it's we don't have a real exact number But you see it in the men and gates for the ones who have ever visited eeper This is a gate with about 50,000 names of missed soldiers from the Commonwealth But then totally we estimated about 150,000 to 200,000 soldiers got missed and are somewhere hidden in the fields of the Flanders fields Now the problem is that today eeper is a dynamic Area with a living population with industry and agriculture One one builds roads one constructs pipelines and a regular base Fallen soldiers are found and recovered for about 10 years So this is some some numbers we collected from police and military authorities Average eight to ten bodies were found each year. So you see it on the left side and This goes up to two thousands if you if you go further to the 1980s this remain about the same eight six eight ten bodies a year were found But the last decade we see a significant increase of the number. I think it's quite impressive There are some facts behind the numbers we can we can explain them Here see them divided in two parts you have and in red You see the accidental finds so the bodies that were found during civil works and and so on and then you see quite quite Large increase With a note in 2015 it was To repeat you see in 2015 was because it was found a mass grave of German soldiers So that makes a bit a different image and in blue you see the archaeological interest So you see before 2000 there was almost no excavation of humans of human body no excavation of first world war and no Archaeological registration of human bodies, but then from about 2005 2007. It was a large increase The the two peaks you see is on one hand. You see the construction of a large gas line through the front in 2014 2015 in which I think about thirty third the bodies were found and the last of two thousand eighty but 2018 is a real strange year Is especially the project of hill 80? Maybe you heard about it It's a crowdfunding project in which a four miles graves of German soldiers were found about 120 bodies So that changes the images We luckily we don't have such an excavation and if every year Now If you see the accidental finds The increase of the exit the accidental finds is we cannot conclude that more bodies are found Because one is not more building or constructing Constructing but we notice that findings of bodies are more reports and reason for that increase is the raising of the awareness That a skeleton skeleton of soldiers that they have a value they have an identity sometimes a name and The awareness of that that a skeleton can have a value is Linked directly to first of all the archaeological interest in the first world war, but also In the right indirectly to the commemoration of the hundred years first world war That's this led us to the need of some guidelines because before few years If someone found the body it was completely unknown even at the police officers how to how to act It was there was a lack of a clear guideline So so people police military officers and things like that. They didn't know how to act what to do when someone someone reported Finding of a dead body and Therefore our agency is a flounder's heritage agency Went into dialogue with police with military authorities From Belgium as well as a foreign nation states and also with a public prosecutor And this resulted in a guideline, which I'd like to present to you First discussion points a body of a dead soldier the first world war But also the second world war is this archaeology or is this a military issue? There are for both arguments First of all, there's a convention of Geneva. You can read it yourself The convention of the Geneva describes how to deal with the bodies of that soldier of recent conflicts So in this point of view, it's very undoubtedly That they belong to them. That's a military issue So that the military authorities can decide whether to excavate to repatriate to leave them It's an in fact a military decision But on the other hand, there was also a court of Eber Who decided to set in 2006? They declared that objects and structures from the first world war can have an archaeological value and so that the archaeological Legacy is counting also for objects and structures from the first world war. There's also for dead bodies Is this a conflict? No, we don't believe so We finally concluded that a body of a fallen soldier can be both military as our cardinal So the Geneva Convention does not exclude that the body is excavated by archaeologists using archaeological methods So this let us lead us to the base of our guideline Archaeologists always have to be involved in the excavation or the recovery of a fallen soldier And they have to care a decent and take care of a decent and qualitative excavation of the body Because a qualitative qualitative excavation can deliver details that can lead to identification But also about the circumstances in which he got killed Details about the battle personal life and warfare in general That information won't change our large picture of the first world war or even of the second world war It's also counting for the second world war, but it can highlight unknown details that are hardly unknown unknown by other forces sources The guideline distinguishes two different processes. First of all, we put the spots on the accidental finds in those case and That's counting for every excavation effect if a human if human remains are remains are found It's always the police that is be the first that must be alerted And the reason for that is that they have to exclude that is not a crime scene or a recent recent crime In case of a possible crime scene this is up to the police to to alert the public prosecutor And then they take over in case of it's the conclusion that it seems to be a body of a fallen soldier The police is contacted contacting our services as well as the military authorities Belgian military authorities and then our archaeologists assisted by physical anthropologists carry out the excavations Afterwards we have 30 days to study the bones and the associated associated objects And after that period after those 30 days We handle over the body and the associated objects to the military authorities and they handle it over again to the nation state And then it's up to the nation state to decide whether they go further with for example DNA with historical research or even contacting family Family of things like that if a body is found during archaeological research, and you notice that this happens quite often It's always always again the police that is the first to be contacted in practice is the police then at that moment they ask advice to the Archaeologists archaeologists on the field whether this this is a soldier or not seems quite logical and Here again if it seems to be soldiers It's also the military authorities are alerted But is then it is up to the archaeologists to take the excavation to To take the initiative in the field and to carry out the excavation in case of an excavation It happens very often that we for example This is an excavation from trenches in Eeper that during the trial trenches We did not know that they were hidden there were fallen soldiers, but during the excavations some bodies are recovered Then again police is alerted and then on the suspicion of the military authorities The archaeologists can just carry out the excavations There are two important details funding in Belgium and in Flanders the Malta multi-convention is implemented into regional legacy Including some articles about financing this implicates that the developer has to pay the bill of the excavations in general, but in particular also the excavation of the bodies of fallen soldiers and We're a bit surprised that even the nation-state or the military authorities don't make any problem of that So they fully agree that during excavation when the archaeologists that is carry out the excavation is also Excavating the body that is the developer who pays the bill Secondly is is the press and our contact the way that the the the finding of bodies shown in the press Maybe you've noticed that I did not use pictures of details of pictures of bodies and that is because it deals with soldiers with an identity and We agreed with the military authorities that details of fallen soldiers are not shown in the press Sometimes difficult it happens very often that for example an accidental find that is along the road Someone comes and takes a picture with a smartphone and put it on on Facebook That's quite a problem. We try to avoid it as much as possible So we agreed don't show pictures of dead bodies details in in in the press Let me conclude also the guideline was published just a few weeks ago We implemented this way of working for a few years now So we have some trial With some significant results more findings of fallen soldiers the better consciousness in the broad public and Especially a fertile collaboration between the different archaeologists on one hand and police and military authorities on the other hand