I have just received a copy of World Crisis in Ruin; the Archaeology of the Former Soviet Missile Sites in Cuba from Mats Burström, Anders Gustafsson and Håkan Karlsson.

Another fascinating archaeology of the contemporary past.

The 1962 Missile Crisis is a well-known episode in the Cold War and twentieth-century history. It is documented in a variety of sourrces, and it has been the subject of extensive historical research. But what remains today of the missile sites that once were a focus of world interest? What does a World Crisis in ruin look like? In order to find new ways of looking at the Crisis we conducted archaeological fieldwork, looking for memories in the ground as well as in people’s minds. The pictorial results of our efforts are presented in this book.

Related is Persistent Memories by Elin Andreasssen, Hein B. Bjerck, and Bjørnar Olsen – extraordinary and haunting archaeological fieldwork in the abandoned Soviet mining town of Pyramiden on Svalbard: