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Two Pints of Leffe and a Packet of Frites… Saturday, May 17th, 2008
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Your intrepid correspondents were in Belgium at the weekend. The intention of our trip was to meet once more with M. Delrue, whose land we are investigating, Claude, chef-patron of the Auberge and all round good chap, and our friends from the Warneton Historical Society.
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We are pleased to report that all the signatures are in place and that we have now formally applied for the permit to dig again. We hope the Wallon authorities will look kindly on us again!
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While we were out there we stayed at the Messines Peace Village again and look set to use them as Dig HQ again this year. As ever we got a very warm welcome and we salute Louise, who is customer-service personified. Good luck with the pregnancy!
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We are several steps closer to another season at Plugstreet.
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Here we are, here we are, here we are again Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
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Dear Readers (If there are any left out there)
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The lack of posts does not reflect lack of activity on behalf of the Plugstreet Project team! Since last posting we have been busy working towards a 2008 digging season in Belgium and securing a second tranche of works on the Anzac 3 Div training trenches on Salisbury Plain.
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In addition we have been finalising further reports, including one for the annual round up of archaeology in Wallonia. Last year we published our research objectives in “Cahiers de l’Urbanisme” so it was nice to be able to report our first years findings in an interim for the Belgian archaeological community.
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At the end of the month we will be undertaking a recce to Belgium to secure the permissions for this year’s work and look set to be over there in August.
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In the meantime our friends from Bristol University, including Project member Nick Saunders, have agreed to come down and work with us on Salisbury Plain to excavate further sections of the Australian training trenches. As discussed in earlier posts these were part dug and used by 3 Div in preparation for the Messines battle and include a defended mine crater, similar to but smaller than the one we worked beside at Ultimo Crater last year.
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The team will be here 2nd to 6th June, so watch this space for regular dig updates during that period.
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In Despatches Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
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Digging is only part of the story…the site work is fun but ultimately meaningless without reporting. Accordingly Richard and Martin have been working to collate the records from the summer and a report on the 2007 work is now complete and has been sent to our key partners in Belgium. The report is rather large as it includes integrated photos and illustrations so please don’t ask us to email you a copy (all 26MB of it). We are very grateful to anyone who helped us in compiling this – you know who you are (and so do we)! Team members who want a copy should ask and we’ll burn a copy to disk or do some illicit photocopying.
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Now that we have submitted a report we can seek permission to undertake further work this year and already the landowner has received a letter asking where we can dig.
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More news when we have it. I hope that soon we will be in a position to start talking in firmer terms about the 2008 season!
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Emotion and Archaeology Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
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At times this blog has delved into the issues surrounding our work, including issues of emotional engagement. Anyone interested in this aspect of our work might like to seek out Martin’s latest paper on this subject, which appears in Archaeological Review from Cambridge.
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Brown, M. 2007 “The Fallen, the Front and the Finding: Archaeology, Human Remains and the Great War”, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 22.2, 53-68
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This edition of the journal is subtitled The Disturbing Past: Does Your Research Give You Nightmares? Martin’s paper is concerned with the emotional stresses engendered during the discovery and excavation of human remains. Although he does not cover the work at Plugstreet there were emotional issues enough raised in our work there. However he does consider personal responses to bodies found on other NML projects at Serre and Loos, where bodies recovered were identified and in two cases members of the families of the dead were contacted.
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The human remains we uncover are likely to have died chaotic, traumatic deaths, sometimes in prolonged agony. If one takes this fact and considers it alongside the possibility that we could use forensic techniques and careful research to identify them then the reader may begin to understand why this is an issue and why it is significantly different to dealing with bodies on a more conventional archaeological site.
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Readers wanting to know more about the process of researching a casualty should seek out the paper written by Martin and another team member Alastair Fraser in Journal of Conflict Archaeology:
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Fraser, A.H. & Brown, M. 2007 “Mud, Blood and The Missing: Excavations at Serre, Somme, France, JCA, 4, 147-171
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As the abstract says:
The article gives a description of archaeological excavations at Serre and a brief historical overview of the German position south of Serre known in the Great War as the Heidenkopf or Quadrilateral. The remains of one British and two German soldiers were discovered during an excavation there in 2003. The process of identification is discussed and biographies of the two German soldiers are provided.
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While some might seek to see archaeology as emotionally detached and pretending it is scientific we believe that dealing with humanity in such an intimate frame and considering such traumatic issues makes such extreme detachment impossible and pretence to it an abdication of responsibility to not only present results but also to explore the processes and engagements inherent in the study of humanity, especially in time of conflict.
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An early Christmas present Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
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The results from the Magnetometer survey are now delivered as an early Christmas present by the Colonel, and pretty special they are!
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The front line runs from top left to lower right with a splodge representing the crater from the mine explosion (now home to a badger) being present in front (to the right) of the front line near the top of the main rectangle of the survey. Interestingly, there is clear evidence for a T-head running from this as part of practice of crater fortification. This equates well with Dan’s excavation trench at Messines. All manner of Saps and Comms trenches are also visible. There is a clear need for a small, targeted excavation we think….
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Back to the Bustard Thursday, December 6th, 2007
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Last week Peter AKA The Colonel came down to Salisbury Plain to work some more of his geophysical magic. He undertook three days of magnetometer survey over part of the trench system dug and used by Anzac 3 Division during their training ahead of their deployment to France and, ultimately, to Messines. Among the exercise was the blowing, capture and refortification of a mine. Admittedly the mine was much smaller than the Ultimo Mine but they seem to have refortified it in just the same way as we saw in Dan’s trench last summer.
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As soon as Peter has sent me his results I will post them here! Interestingly they show again that this is the technique to use when looking for buried trenches. “Mag” certainly seems quicker and more productive than resistivity.
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What this survey means is that we have an accurate plot of the remains and can target some more excavation to see if we can get more comparative data between Belgium and the training ground here in UK.
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Watch this space!
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Some site record shots Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
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As you will sense, Ian has been very busy. These three photos are some of his record shots of the trenches excavated in 2007.
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Steve L’s team trench with Australian recut of demolished German trench.
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Steve R.’s team trench through the trench that presumably led to a punker which illustrates the 33rd Btns reuse of what was left of the German line.
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Dan’s team’s excavation of the Lewis gun sap.
The lighting for these sondages (in woodland and very sunny) was incredibly tricky and thus the results are really fantastic.
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Ian’s Images Monday, October 8th, 2007
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Those of you on site in 2007 will remember the presence of Ian R. Cartwright, photographer with the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Ian brought his box camera with him and took plate photographs on site in much the same way as Frank Hurley did in following the Australian 3rd Division. His stunning results are presented below. We have also included the original Hurley image of the Australian 3rd Div artillery limber (Richard’s grandfather’s old mob!) to illustrate the motivation for Ian’s studies. The images speak for themselves and we hope to be able to announce their exhibition alongside some of the Messines finds at some point.
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‘Spoils of Archaeology’: detritus of war emerging from the excavated trenches
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‘Front Line dirt’: part of the (enormous) spoil heap from the bunker trench
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‘Life in no-man’s land’: Mr Delrue’s crop emerges in no-man’s land.
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Entitled ‘Anzacs’ – Michael in the Australian Lewis Gun sap
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Entitled ‘Fallen Remembered’ – Tori and Ralph laying the wreath at the Ploegsteert Memorial
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Entitled ‘Sap Team’ Danny and his team (with Martin and Richard) at the Lewis sap
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‘Generations’: Tori and Kirsty by the German bunker with the church of Messines in the distance
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‘Peace Dig’ – Jo and Becki looking on as the Australian recut of the German front line is dug
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‘Messines Ridge’ taken from no-man’s land
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‘Shell burst’ – Tangled iron work from Jon’s excavation of the shell crater
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Archaeological Limber – Ian’s take on the famous Hurley photo of the gun team (below)
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Elsewhere on the web… Thursday, August 30th, 2007
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Three members of the project team work at Defence Estates, so the PR staff were interested in what we did in Belgium. Since running a piece on the project for the DE intranet they have expanded the article, added some new photos and had it accepted as a story for the main Ministry of Defence website.
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You can access the story here:
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/HistoryAndHonour
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Most soldiers will have been on a battlefield tour to the Western Front at some point and many are interested, as are MOD civil servants, for perhaps obvious reasons but it’s great to see the project getting another boost.
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Spirit of Radio Monday, August 27th, 2007
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Don’t all Rush at once but you can hear the interview Martin did for BBC Radio 5 Live programme Up All Night.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/programmes/upallnight.shtml
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Under the heading for Tuesday you’ll see at 03:30 Archaeology with Win Scutt and there is a feature marked listed again, so you can hear what was said. Martin says his key points were that we can still find things on pulverised battlefields, that this is a real archaeological story with physical evidence of the effects of war on people and landscape and that No Man’s Land are an international team investigating a common European heritage. As you would expect he also mentioned smoking, food and the Battle of Messines. All in 13 minutes!
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If you do listen let us know what you think via the comments.
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