It was this underlying problematic that was taken as the point of departure for the Landscapes of the Great Depression project funded by the Leverhulme Trust and carried out by the authors at Durham University (UK). In particular, it explores how an international event may be examined through the spatially situated (site, settlement, landscape) approach that archaeology assumes. This article explores the initial results of a major research project that attempted to explore the Great Depression in one corner of the United Kingdom through an avowedly material lens. The Depression acted as a key bridging phenomenon that linked the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to reach a satisfactory political and economic new beginning following the Great War with the emergence of new global socio political structures that resulted in the вЂњhot warвЂќ of 1939-45 and the subsequent Cold War which ended in the late 1980s.

As well as the immediate impact of unemployment and inflation, it also led to a crisis of confidence that capitalism (and the notion of economic growth) was constant, self-correcting and required little in terms of intervention to keep it functioning (Hobsbawm 1994: 87-88). In particular, the Great Depression was arguably the first crisis in вЂњmodernity,вЂќ and a truly global articulation of economic and social disruption. These social, economic, and political developments all resulted in material developments that can be interrogated archaeologically. Simultaneously, the foundations of the post-War settlement, welfare states and European style social democracies were being laidВ (Harrison 2009).

The tensions between these new state formations and traditional polities resulted in re armament and ultimately conflict. Extreme politics flourished, and authoritarian regimes became established in Spain, Italy, Russia, and Germany. Out of the ashes of World War I grew an increase in consumerism, which from the late 1920s was paradoxically played out alongside the Great Depression.

The interwar period (1918-39) was one of extraordinary change.

Hearts of iron 4 great depression