Preservation by record?

[Simon R]

Dear All,

Who are 'The Diggers'?

Are they the only group involved in the archaeological examination of WWI sites?

Are there any British projects using archaeological techniques to investigate such martial landscapes? Can someone give me a contact address if they are?

[Paul Reed]

You'll find out more about the Diggers on their website:

http://www.diggers.be/

[Hedley Malloch]

... and more about battlefield archaeology on Nils' fabiansson's excellent site at

http://w1.865.telia.com/~u86517080/Battlef...rkeologENG.html

[Simon R]

Thanks very much for those refs., exactly what I was looking for.

[Fabiansson]

Simon,

For more information, see my website, as Hedley linked to, see under Defining "battlefield archaeology" 2., Current situation.

There are two British teams and one British-Belgian team (apart from other groups that is).

One team is involved in the "Ocean Villas Project". The archaeologist there is Jon Price.

Another team is The Durand Group. Mike Dolamore is this group's archaeological recource, but they also have assistance of and team work with French and Canadian archaeologists.

The Belgian-British team is the "old" A.B.A.F., now named A.B.A.C. (Association for Battlefield Archaeology and Conservation). It constists of, among other, Johan Vandewalle, the geologist Peter Doyle, the TV producer Peter Barton, and Kristof Jacobs.

But your question was: Are there any British projects using archaeological techniques to investigate such martial landscapes?

You should defintely see the work of the Defence of Britain Project (see literature list at my site). See also http://www.britarch.ac.uk/projects/dob/index.html

You shuld also see the field work of U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, see http://www.cilhi.army.mil/ (Unfortunately CHILI have limited their web site to only a few photos.)

/Nils

[Guest franky]

Hello Nils,

Just to say the 'old' ABAf is still alive and kicking.

We are non-stop operational since the middle of August in Bayernwald-Wytschaete.

220 metres of trenches are discoverd and renovated.

We are at the moment very near to a second deep mineshaft.

We chose not to go for national press as this is complicating the excavations.

A press-preview will be done in January,

Franky

[Fabiansson]

Hello Franky,

Nice to hear from you again.

But - it is a bit confusing - is not your group the "new" A.B.A.F., the "Association for Battlefield Archaeology in Flanders vzw" since the split some years ago? Well, there is now only one A.B.A.F. in Flanders. It was stupid of me to write anything else. The other amateur (or semi-) archaeological groups are A.B.A.C. and De Diggers.

Should have mention in an earlier post that also the ongoing archaeological work at the motorway extension is partly a Belgian-British co-operation, but supervised by professional Belgian archaeologists with assistance of some British personel (for example Doyle, Barton etc., including individuals from A.B.A.C. that is).

Looking forwad to read more of your work at Bayernwald, Franky! It is a very comlicated piece of historical terrain that wood I can tell from reading your Bayernwald book and visiting the site: multi-dimensional so to speak, with archaelogical remains from several WW1 and post WW1 periods, where the activity of the later periods have disturbed the earlier in an extraordinary complicated way, as it was made to make fake WW1 remains look as credible as possible. Good luck!

/Nils