With much foresight, in his book Gallipoli Mission, Australian official historian Charles Bean predicted the intense level of interest the Anzac area would attract after the war. Gallipoli has indeed become a site of pilgrimage, particularly in recent years. A century removed from the campaign, all who served have now passed, but relatives, descendants and other interested visitors retain a strong sense of connection with this battlefield. As Bean suggested, the cemeteries are markers to all visitors, showing the extent of the front line. They are also a visual reminder of the loss of so many. The epitaphs, too, tell us something of the deep grief for families at home, a grief that is no longer raw but is still remembered. Those who visit are inevitably drawn to the cemeteries, but the Anzac battlefield, arguably the best preserved First World War battleground, holds many more stories in the traces that remain in the dense landscape of the ridgelines and scarps.

Anzac Battlefield is the outcome of the first tri-national, interdisciplinary survey (not excavation) of the Anzac area using modern archaeological techniques. It is an effort to document what remains on the surface at Anzac a century on. Drawing on five years (2010–14) of meticulous research, the past and present combine in this book to give us a picture of Gallipoli in its ancient context, as a battlefield in 1915, through its development into a commemorative site, and as a site of significance today. The book provides new insights into Gallipoli through an examination of the battlefield itself as both a constructed and a symbolic space.