'Missing at the front' is a research project in cooperation with the In Flanders Fields Museum and falls within the project subsidies 'archaeological synthesis research 2020' of the Heritage Agency of the Flemish Gouvernment.

The First World War was the first war on an industrial scale. The new technologies and the massive manufacturing of material and scale of deployment of people resulted in an unprecedented devastation, in which millions of people perished. In the collective memory, there is talk of a 'lost generation', due to the many victims that the 'Great War' claimed from all nations. An international trauma that lives on today. The missing victims occupy a special place.

The former battlefields still harbour their mortal remains. The bodies of at least 55,000 British war dead have never been recovered. On the German, French and Belgian sides, the numbers are more difficult to ascertain. Often those missing come to light by chance: missing soldiers on the spot where they fell, temporary graves that have been lost or cemeteries that have been completely forgotten. Excavations reveal a wide range of ways in which bodies were buried, how burial sites came to be, and how it is that so many missing persons are still found each year.

This synthesis study aims not only to take stock of this special and sensitive topic, but also to provide a practical framework for future research, both in policy and in the field. It wants to offer an answer to the 'who, what, where and how' questions about archaeological research of human remains from World War I and how we can deal with them today.