Scorched Earth: Studies in the Archaeology of Conflict [illustrated edition] 9789004164482

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SCORCHED EARTH

ALSO PUBLISHED AS VOLUME THREE OF THE

JOURNAL OF CONFLICT ARCHAEOLOGY Devoted to Battlefield and Military Archaeology and Other Spheres of Conflict Archaeology. Covering all Periods with a Worldwide Scope.

EDITORS: TONY POLLARD and IAIN BANKS (The University of Glasgow) EDITORIAL PANEL: Dr Ian Armit (School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast), Martin Brown (Ministry of Defence Archaeologist), Dr Philip Freeman (School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool), Dr Neil Price (Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Uppsala, Sweden), Dr John Schofield (English Heritage), Dr Douglas Scott (National Park Service, Midwest Archaeological Centre, Nebraska, USA).

SCORCHED EARTH Studies in the Archaeology of Conflict edited by

TONY POLLARD AND IAIN BANKS

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

Cover Illustration: German soldiers. Photo by Walter Rapp, probably taken early 1915 (see page 164). This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978 90 04 16448 2 © 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Editorial ...................................................................................................... Tony Pollard and Iain Banks

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Articles Iain Banks, Ghosts in the Desert: the Archaeological Investigation of a Sub-Saharan Battlefield ....................................................................

1

James Bonsall, The Study of Small Finds at the 1644 Battle of Cheriton ................................................................................................

29

Conor Brady, Emmet Byrnes, Gabriel Cooney & Aidan O’Sullivan, An Archaeological Study of the Battle of the Boyne at Oldbridge, Co Meath ..............................................................................................

53

Natasha N. Ferguson, Platforms of Reconciliation? Issues in the Management of Battlefield Heritage in the Republic of Ireland ......

79

Tom Fisher, Objects for Peaceful Disordering: Indigenous Designs and Practices of Protest ........................................................................

95

Derek Allsop & Glenn Foard, Case Shot: An Interim Report on Experimental firing and Analysis to Interpret Early Modern Battlefield Assemblages ..........................................................................

111

Alastair H. Fraser & Martin Brown, Mud, Blood and Missing Men: Excavations at Serre, Somme, France ................................................

147

William O. Frazer, Field of Fire: Evidence for Wartime Conflict in a 17th-Century Cottier Settlement in County Meath, Ireland ............

173

Pádraig Lenihan, Unhappy Campers: Dundalk (1689) and After ........

197

Damian Shiels, Battle and Siege Maps of Elizabethan Ireland: Blueprints for Archaeologists? ..............................................................

217

David Sneddon, Newfoundlanders in a Highland Forest During WWII ....

233

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

DOI: 10.1163/157407807X257322

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Tina L. Thurston, Rituals of Rebellion: Cultural Narratives and Metadiscourse of Violent Conflict in Iron Age and Medieval Denmark ................................................................................................

267

Jonathan Trigg, Memory and Memorial: A Study of Official and Military Commemoration of the Dead, and Family and Community Memory in Essex and East London ..............................

295

Book Reviews Richard Strachan, A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813–1814, by Gregory A. Waselkov ....................................

317

Richard Strachan, Bloody Meadows: Investigating Landscapes of Battle, by John & Patricia Carman ....................................................

320

Biographies ................................................................................................

323

Index ..........................................................................................................

327

EDITORIAL NOT SO QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: PROGRESS AND PROSPECT IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR There has of late been a marked upsurge of interest in the study of the recent past, not least within the field of conflict archaeology, as exemplified by a number of academic books and papers covering issues as diverse as Cold War missile installations (Cocroft & Wilson 2006), the Maze prison in Ireland (Purbrick 2007; McLaughlin 2006) and the Berlin wall (Klausmeier & Schmidt 2006). Particularly noticeable within this general trend, however, has been a growing interest in the archaeology of the First World War. One of the purposes of this present volume is to reflect this phenomenon through a variety of different approaches and investigative contexts (though Fisher’s paper provides a refreshing insight into the material culture of anti-war process, a theme which has also been touched upon by some of the contributors to Schofield & Cocroft 2007). It seems fitting therefore that this editorial provide a brief overview of some of the key developments in this growing field, while also going on to suggest some avenues for future research. It is a subject which to some appears to have taken up residence on the periphery of the wider field of conflict archaeology, which itself has only recently earned a place in the archaeological mainstream. It would not be contentious to state that up until now the field has been led by a small group of archaeologists and historians, both professional and amateur, the involvement of whom has been largely motivated by personal interest rather than operating within the more traditional spheres of development control or grant funded research. Playing a central role here has been ‘No Mans Land’, a group of British archaeologists who over the last five years or so have carried out a number of projects on the Western Front in both France and Belgium, many of them taking leave from their own jobs in academic institutions or archaeological field units to take part in projects. Over recent years, excavations have been carried out on trench systems, grave sites and dug-outs, and indeed previous editions of this journal have carried contributions by some of those engaged in this work (e.g. Doyle et al. 2005; Price 2005). In looking for a motive for this increased archaeological interest, we perhaps need to look to a more general increase in the First World War among members of the public, certainly in the UK, where virtually no village or town is lacking a memorial to local men lost in the conflict © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

DOI: 10.1163/157407807X257331

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(see Trigg’s paper in this volume for an illuminating study of war memorials in Essex). A personal connection to the battlefields of Flanders is also reflected in the dramatic growth of interest in family history, a pursuit which has ironically resulted in people today knowing more about what their great uncles or great grandfathers did in the First World War than their immediate families ever did. What has become almost a national obsession with the war is also reflected in television documentaries, books and newspaper articles (there is barely a week goes by when papers such as the Daily Mail don’t print a story with some reference to the First World War). Nor is this upsurge limited to the British side: Jon Price has described (2005) British WWI remains on the Western Front as ‘Orphan Heritage’ but this is a concept which should be tempered by the increasing involvement of French and Belgian archaeologists (the concept has been developed by Ferguson in this volume with regard to sites of conflict in the Irish republic). There can be little doubt that this hunger to learn more about what used to be called the Great War is closely related to the realisation that almost all of those who fought in it are now dead, and that the very few of these extraordinary people left will not be with us for long, a fact reinforced by a recent spate of momentous anniversaries. While 2006 marked the 90th anniversary of the battle of the Somme, this year (2007) saw a similar round of commemoration of events centred on the series of engagements collectively remembered as Passchendaele (Third battle of Ypres). Harry Patch is 109 years old and the last man living to have fought in the battle of Passchendaele. In late July 2007, Harry revisited the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the Great War, including Passchendaele, where he served as a Lewis gunner in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Harry, who was eventually invalided out of the fighting due to a shrapnel wound, is among the last of a dying breed and very soon veterans of the Great War will be an extinct species (the week before Harry’s visit saw the death of the last Scottish veteran—107 year old Bill Young who served in the Royal Flying Corps—his death leaves just three known British veterans including Harry). The passing of the last of these remarkable men will see an event currently encapsulated within living memory, however tenuously, passing entirely into history. With this passing, our understanding of the First World War will also rely more than ever on archaeology; it has after all been analysed by historians for the almost 90 years since the armistice. What is it, though, that currently motivates the archaeological investigation of First World War remains?

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Chance has played a role here, as some of the most evocative sites have been discovered while excavating for the types of remains more normally associated with the archaeologist. In 2001, for example, the excavation of an incredibly rich Romano-Celtic settlement and ritual complex in advance of the construction of a BMW warehouse near Arras unexpectedly uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of 20 British soldiers, identified as men from the 10th Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment killed in the battle of Arras in 1917. In keeping with any site containing human remains, the grave was carefully excavated by municipal archaeologist Alain Jacques and his team and the release of photographs of the skeletons lying side by side excited a good degree of media attention, especially as they seemed to have their arms interlinked—good companions in death just as they had been in life. The reality however was a little more prosaic; the bodies had been laid in the grave with their hands resting across their laps, but as decay and the pressure of earth forced the arms outwards they crossed with those of their neighbours and thus on first exposure appeared to be interlinked. One of the few programmes of investigation explicitly directed toward First World War remains, as opposed to being incidental to the investigation of earlier sites, took place prior to the proposed construction of the A19 road in the Iepers (Ypres) region of Belgian Flanders (the abandonment of the road scheme was partially due to the results of the archaelogical study). In 2002, in response to a campaign orchestrated by various groups, including historians, archaeologists, veterans’ organisations and heritage conservation bodies, the Institute for the Archaeological Heritage of the Flemish Community (IAP) was instructed by the Ministry of Culture to examine a 4.5 mile long stretch of the proposed route known to coincide with WWI remains. A programme of fieldwalking backed up by documentary research resulted in the excavation of nine areas, including trench systems at Turco Farm and Crossroads Farm (Silberman 2004). Importantly for the long term growth of the discipline, the project also set the stage for the inauguration of the Department of First World War Archaeology, under the umbrella of IAP in November 2003; unfortunately, due to lack of funds, this department does not seem to have evolved. Modern aerial photographs include soil or crop marks indicating the presence of ancient sites, be they Neolithic long houses or Roman villas, but many of them also portray the characteristic zigzagged or castellated shape of wartime trenches, perhaps cutting through or passing close by these older archaeological sites (Stichelbaut 2005). Not so long ago, these legacies of war would have been ignored or even aroused consternation as they demonstrated how much damage had been caused to ancient sites by wartime activity. However, discoveries such as the mass grave near Arras and the A19 project have helped

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to bring about a change in this attitude (thanks to media coverage many people now have some awareness of the phalanx of skeletons at the former but how many know anything of the astounding ancient site into which their grave had been cut?). The media, and most particularly television, has certainly played an important role in bringing about this shift in awareness and has done much to promote work that a few years ago, and to a degree even today, traditional archaeological funding agencies would not consider worthy of support. The editors of this journal were themselves to benefit from the BBC funding 12 projects which otherwise would never have got off the ground, the fieldwork forming the basis for two series of Two Men in a Trench. The programmes not only bankrolled field projects but also brought British battlefields to the attention of an international audience, many of whom had no idea that archaeology had much to tell us about conflict and warfare. This trend has continued with the First World War and a number of projects have taken place over the last two or three years thanks to funding from British and overseas (mainly Canadian) production companies. The field has also benefited from the proliferation of non-terrestrial channels commissioning history-based programmes— The History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic etc. Documentaries with titles like Finding the Fallen, Battlefield Detectives and Digging up the Trenches have all shown archaeologists at work in the fields of Flanders as they reexcavated trenches and exhumed the remains of fallen soldiers. Alongside these overtly archaeological programmes, television’s interest in the conflict has also given rise to programmes such as The Trench (BBC), which packaged history as what is generally known as ‘reality TV’ by throwing together a group of young men and trying to recreate the living conditions of the Western Front in a muddy trench. It was a controversial approach (which television people usually like to refer to as an ‘experiment’) and some criticised it, perhaps not unfairly, for claiming to portray anything like the true experience of those who suffered so terribly on the Western Front. But television archaeology also has its faults, and as Alastair Fraser and Martin Brown discuss in their well-balanced contribution on the excavation of human remains at Serre on the Somme, the needs of a television producer can conflict with best archaeological practice (the programme in question was not one of those listed above). The editors are themselves no strangers to the compromises which television always forces archaeologists to make—television may provide funding and logistical support for projects, perhaps unavailable elsewhere, but there is always a price to be paid in what at times might feel like a Faustian pact (one very serious issue, and one which up to now has been almost ubiquitous, is a lack of adequate funding for the post-excavation phases of projects carried out under the auspices of television).

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Outside development-related interventions, such as in the case of the A19 road or the Arras BMW warehouse, television continues to provide one of the most common sources of funding for First World War archaeology. This trend will hopefully change as the subject matures and begins, like other aspects of conflict archaeology, to be taken seriously as a valid academic pursuit which has much potential to broaden our understanding of conflict in the early twentieth century in particular and human behaviour in extreme situations in general. Until then, we must try to ensure that television sponsored archaeology does not sell archaeologists and the resource short. There must surely be ways of making what is in essence a symbiotic relationship a very worthwhile one. There is after all perhaps no better way of getting the results of archaeological research out into the public domain. But the danger with television archaeology is that the research aspect is lost in a desire to reinforce stereotypes (e.g. mud and carnage—see Fraser & Brown) or focus on timely subjects which are more likely to gain a commission (e.g. anything happening on the Somme last year). Locations identified with particular individuals are another favourite—Fraser and Brown’s project set out to locate the remains of the dugout in which Wilfred Owen composed his poem The Sentry, though as they explain, an enforced methodological deficiency and the discovery of human remains served to foil the producer’s aspirations. Though apparently not wholly driven by a television project, another example of this personality-driven archaeology was the search for the location of Sergeant York’s Medal of Honour winning action when in October 1918 (as a corporal) he single-handedly captured a German machine gun position and took 132 Germans prisoner. No less than two American teams have spent a considerable amount of time in the search and last year both claimed to have located the site, though in different parts of northern France. The clincher for one of the teams, led by an American army officer, was the discovery of 19 spent cartridge cases from a colt .45 automatic pistol—in the account of the action, York is said to have made heavy use of his pistol. The other team came from Middle Tennessee State University, and more convincingly claim to have discovered the true site at Chatel-Chehery after the discovery of a collar disc identifying York’s company. One of the team leaders, geographer Tom Nolan said, It’s truly gratifying that the artifacts we found are consistent with what we thought we would find. The shovels, gas masks and other items that we recovered corroborate historic information that a large number of German troops surrendered at that site. (from online newsletter of Tennessee Tech University, Dec 15 2006)

This evidence, which was recovered after the site was located through the use of trench maps and GIS technology, does seem the more compelling of

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the two cases, but surely archaeology should be aiming a little higher than merely corroborating the historical record? (but see Banks, this volume, for a sobering reminder of the limitations of archaeology). There are those who might suggest that approaches to the archaeology of the First World War have been slow to advance beyond the type of relic hunting espoused in John Laffin’s 1987 book Battlefield Archaeology and to a degree practised by everyone who brings home a spent bullet or shrapnel ball as a souvenir from the battlefields. Not that these sites don’t have them to spare—in Flanders there are places where the amount of iron in the soil has created a geological ferrous layer upwards of a metre thick, a kind of manmade iron pan created by the ‘rain of steel’ that fell on these fields between 1914 and 1918. With this in mind, it is perhaps reassuring that despite recent criticisms of the lack of adequate history teaching in schools, what appear to be increasing numbers of British school children appear to be making visits to the Western Front. There is, however, a world of difference between picking up a bullet or a shrapnel ball from the edge of a ploughed field and the activities of unprincipled collectors who seek out burials specifically for the personal possessions that may have been buried alongside the dead soldier (Saunders 2002, 104). These may then be sold on to collectors, while the human remains may be handed on to the authorities, though with any means of identifying the individual having been removed. As far as research is concerned, though, things have certainly moved on since Laffin’s time. Work by anthropologist Nick Saunders, whose latest study of ‘trench art’ (Saunders 2006) reflects a renewed interest in materiality among anthropologists and archaeologists, has given some idea of how social theory can be applied to this material. Work like this provides a potential stepping stone to the development of a viable research agenda, which encompasses landscapes, archaeological sites, material culture and the other physical manifestations of the conflict. In so doing, it will place First World War archaeology on an equal footing with other fields of interest. It is essential that this theoretical framework grows with the methodological advances which are currently being made on First World War sites. For there can be little doubt that the quality of evidence is increasing as more sites are investigated, knowing what to do with this evidence is perhaps not so apparent. One example of how methodologies are developing, and also a demonstration that not all projects are financed by television or result from development control, was recently undertaken in Northern France. The investigation at Fromelles was financed by the Australian government and involved the

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search for the mass graves of Australian and British soldiers buried by the Germans in 1916 (Pollard, Barton & Banks 2007). The main aims of the project were to establish whether Allied troops killed in the Battle of Fromelles ( July 19–20, 1916) were buried in a series of pits alluded to in a set of German orders and visible on a number of war time aerial photographs, and secondly, to establish the likelihood of the bodies still being present on the site—as they may have been exhumed and reburied elsewhere after the war. Large numbers of battlefield graves were exhumed by the various armies after the war and the remains re-interred with full military honours in the many cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; these have become places of pilgrimage for so many, even nearly 90 years after the war. The battle itself was the type of military debacle so often associated with the Western Front, and the decisions made by the British High Command were much in keeping with the image of heartless ineptitude that has long inhabited the popular imagination. The plan was to prevent the enemy from sending troops out of the line to reinforce the Somme, further to the south, where the massive Allied offensive had been underway since 1 July. Australian and British troops were sent over the top to take German front and second line trenches, with few if any tactical objectives beyond that. The softening up bombardment by Allied heavy guns had insufficient impact on the heavily fortified defences, which included a series of buried concrete bunkers, and despite some units reaching their goals, thousands of men where cut down by German machine guns. Following the failure of the first wave, elements of which were either mown down in No Man’s Land or became trapped in the enemy trenches and the indefensible ground behind them, a second wave was ordered forward. This order was rescinded at the eleventh hour but word never reached the Australians, who went forth into another murderous hail of bullets. The Australians were from the 5th Division of the Australian Imperial Force, which had not long before arrived in France, and the British troops were drawn from the 61st Division. After the fighting was over, around 5,500 Australian troops had been killed wounded or captured (1917 of these killed and 400 captured), while around 1,500 British troops were either killed or wounded. In the days following the battle the bodies of the Allied dead, many of which lay in the German trenches, were quickly collected up by the Germans and carried behind the lines on a light trench railway to a place called Pheasant Wood. There, up to 400 of them were buried by a party drawn from the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, which fought in the battle and just happened to have a 27-year-old corporal called Adolf Hitler among its ranks (perhaps inevitably this coincidence has not been lost in the media

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coverage which followed the fieldwork). The graves were backfilled and largely forgotten, until an Australian called Lambis Englezos began a campaign for the recovery and reburial of the missing of Fromelles. The result has been a noninvasive archaeological evaluation of the site commissioned by the Australian Army. Aerial reconnaissance photographs taken just days after the battle show eight freshly dug linear pits behind Pheasant Wood, adjacent to the light railway which runs from the front line almost two kilometres to the north. By the end of July 1916 five of the pits had been backfilled, presumably containing the bodies of Australian and possibly British dead in them. Other than references to the digging of the pits, ‘for 400’, and the movement of the dead in the Bavarian regiment’s war diary, there had never been any confirmation that the bodies were buried at Pheasant Wood, and there was nothing much in the way of local tradition of any unmarked burials within the nearby village of Fromelles—though the civilian population was entirely removed during the war when the place was turned into something akin to an entrenched fortress. To add to the uncertainty, it was believed by some that if bodies had been present they must surely have been recovered by reburial parties after the war, though again the documentary and local evidence for this appeared to be lacking. Given that the project was to be non-invasive in character an integrated research methodology, which combined topographic, resistivity, ground penetrating radar and metal detector surveys supported by a programme of archive research, was applied to the site, with fieldwork carried out over two weeks in May 2007. Each element provided its own contribution to obtaining an overall picture of the site and the activities which had taken place on it. The topographic survey revealed subtle depressions and ridges not only related to the backfilled pits but also the former railway and a communication trench which at one point passed beneath it (stone ballast from the railway was observed as a ploughed out scatter next to the grass covered area under survey). Metal detector survey, which although it included the extraction of artefacts from the plough soil was still classified as non-invasive as only shallow signals were investigated, quickly confirmed that Australian soldiers were buried in the pits as two medallions with ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) and AIF (Australian Imperial Force) insignia were recovered from positions adjacent to two of the former pits—one of these also bears a place name which from initial archive research appears to be associated with only one of the upwards of 2,000 men listed as having no known grave on the memorial wall in the cemetery at VC Corner on the Fromelles battlefield. Having provided compelling evidence that Australians were buried on the site, the metal detector survey then went on to indicate that they had not been disinterred after the war—British shells (expended shrapnel of various

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calibres), probably related to the final push on Fromelles and the Aubers ridge in Autumn 1918, were recovered in situ at a depth of around 0.50 m in the area around the pits, while geophysical spikes suggested their presence in the fills of the pits themselves—these would have been disturbed if the pits had been re-dug to remove bodies. This picture was reinforced by the geophysical surveys that identified only weak anomalies corresponding to the pits— one would expect the disturbance caused by the later recovery of bodies to have heightened these anomalies. The radar survey provided a more detailed picture of the pits, suggesting a depth of 2–2.5 m with the bottoms being waterlogged. Although it has proven itself an essential, if not indeed the key component of the archaeological investigation of pre-twentieth century battlefields, researchers have generally shied away from using the metal detector as a survey tool on First World War sites—though this does not hold true of relic hunters. On the face of it, the reasons for this reluctance seem entirely understandable. One of the most daunting aspects of the war is undoubtedly its scale. Whereas battlefields from earlier periods tend to occupy a limited portion of any given landscape and represent short-term events, during which armies of limited size deployed weapons on a non-industrial scale, the Western Front is characterised by a vast territory, battles fought over weeks if not months by huge armies using mass-produced weapons delivering projectiles on an unprecedented scale (for experimental analysis of pre-industrial cannon projectiles see Allsop and Foard, this volume). Fromelles provided an ideal opportunity to test the potential for metal detecting survey on sites associated with industrial scale warfare, and not just those from the First World War. It paid dividends. The survey recovered evidence for Australian dead on the site and further indicated that the grave pits had not been later disturbed. Certainly, evaluation will be required to verify these findings but with minimal intervention the programme appears to have provided a valuable insight into the nature, extent and potential condition of the archaeological deposits, which may include the survival of soft tissue in the damp clay, and will serve to inform any future programme of invasive investigation on the site. Decisions on what happens next rest with the Australian, British and French governments but whatever action is decided upon it is likely to serve as an important precedent for the treatment of previously unmarked military mass graves from the First World War and indeed from later conflicts—particularly those under no direct threat from development. Fromelles has not only demonstrated the practical benefits of metal detector survey but also the role of geophysical survey, which like detector survey has up until recently not been a common feature of First World War archaeology.

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As Fraser and Brown explain, the availability of trench maps and aerial photographs does not make geophysics redundant; far from it. Comparison of aerial photographs and trench maps has demonstrated inaccuracies in the latter and some features may survive in the absence of cartographic representations (the importance of historical maps in archaeological fieldwork is discussed by Damien Shiels in this volume with regard to 16th century siege sites in Ireland). The Centre for Battlefield Archaeology first deployed geophysical and radar techniques at Givenchy, south of Arras, in a survey of mine craters, trench systems and tunnels in the vicinity of ‘Red Dragon’, a large mine exploded by the Germans beneath British trenches in 1917. The 2006 survey, led by Peter Barton, was designed to guide the placement of the first memorial to the British tunnelling companies who worked and died unseen beneath the battlefields of the Western Front. The monument, to be erected in conjunction with the Royal Engineers, will be located near the present memorial to the 55th West Lancashire Division but will have a view-point sited on the entrance to the sap through which the only tunnelling Victoria Cross winner, Sapper Hackett went underground (in this, the project is perhaps another example of the character driven archaeology previously discussed). Hackett managed to get several men to safety but refused to leave the side of a trapped and wounded man; the entrance tunnel collapsed and buried both of them beneath what today is an innocuous farmer’s field. On the surface, no trace of the trenches or the mine crater recorded on trench maps and aerial photographs is to be seen, though a subtle depression in the field corresponds to the location of the mine crater. The survey revealed a wide range of anomalies, the clearest of which was the crater itself, which was surrounded by trenches, some of them partially destroyed by the mine blast and others created after the event, at which time the crater had become a topographic feature dictating the shape of the defences. Most of the anomalies corresponded to trenches portrayed on the maps and aerial photographs, though comparison of the two exposed some degree of licence on the former. The radar survey revealed shafts and chambers, some of them possibly steel lined. Geophysical survey is also key to the success of a forthcoming collaborative project which will also involve a group of Belgian archaeologists (and which incidentally will be filmed by a Canadian production company). The site to be investigated, which goes under the rather gothic moniker of ‘Vampir’, is an underground Brigade headquarters constructed by a British tunnelling company during the first half of 1918, only to be abandoned days after its completion in the face of the last German offensive of the war. Recent radar

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survey has suggested that the site, for which we have no plans or diagrams at present, may have been extended by the Germans in the four and half months they had possession of this zone prior to being pushed out by the Belgians in September 1918. Although the project, which will involve various types of remote survey and recording, will be financed by the production company, it is motivated by the immediate threat posed by a nearby clay pit, which may ultimately breach the underground chambers. The lack of central or local authority funding for this project is obviously disappointing and is part of a more general malaise, which is not unrelated to unwillingness in some quarters to recognise the real threat that underground complexes pose to buildings and other structures in rural and urban areas. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, shafts, chambers and galleries running beneath France and Belgium; many of them do not require unexploded mines to turn them into time bombs. In places such as Nieuwpoort, on the Belgian coast, the ground is opening up and buildings threaten to fall into the voids created by tunnel collapses, but like the good burghers in Ibsen’s Public Enemy, the authorities have thus far refused to act on the irrefutable evidence appearing before their eyes and the warnings provided by archaeologists (Doyle et al. 2002; Jacobs 2007). Recent developments, however, look to change this situation. In July 2007, one of these voids appeared as a crown hole in the military cemetery at Hooge, but it is not just the dead who are at risk here as a hole also opened up beside the Menin road. A survey requested by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will hopefully provide vital information that can be used to develop methodologies for the detection, survey and consolidation of these underground sites, which in too many cases are now making their presence felt on the surface. Contemporary plans, although extremely valuable, should never be considered complete. Only geological and archaeological survey can offer indications of potential risk. In Britain, the potential of developer-funded projects to produce good quality archaeological research has undoubtedly increased over time as field methodologies and research designs have adapted to an environment, which without doubt has seen a vast increase in the number of archaeological investigations taking place over the last twenty or so years. Recent examples are the excavations of prehistoric landscapes in advance of Terminal Five at Heathrow airport near London and the A1 road in Scotland. In Flanders, accidental discoveries such as the mass grave on the BMW site have provided some suggestion of the variety and quality of the evidence which awaits discovery. But even the scale of that project will pale into insignificance in the face of what will probably prove to be the largest construction project to take place in

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Europe for the next half century. The 105 km North Europe canal will connect the Oise and Seine basins, travelling north to south through Belgium and France; with a construction corridor in the region of a kilometre wide, it will eat into many archaeological sites. It will be the biggest trench constructed in the region since the time of the Western Front, the route of which at some points it directly follows. Favoured routes have recently been finalised and work is scheduled to begin as early as 2008 and be completed by 2013. The initial budget for the archaeology will extend into the tens of millions euros, but this will be divided between all the archaeological sites to be impacted, prehistoric up to twentieth century, and as yet it is uncertain how much of this global budget will be allocated toward conflict archaeology (sites related to other wars will also be affected). Though the archaeology of earlier periods may be prioritised, thanks to the recent efforts of archaeologists and a general increase in the interest of the First World War these conflict sites will not be overlooked, which would almost certainly have been the case fifteen or twenty years ago. Surely then, if ever a research agenda were needed, it is needed now. Which sites are to be investigated and which are to be ignored: just what are our priorities? It is beyond the remit of this editorial to define what this agenda should be—what is needed now is for those involved in the field to engage in debate and discussion over this issue. It is vital that this process includes archaeologists from all the ‘belligerent’ nations. Given current interests in both a pannational Europe and individual national identities, the First World War surely provides an ideal opportunity to explore issues related to cultural identity— both its differences and similarities as reflected in soldiers’, and indeed civilians’, reactions to the environment of total war (as an example, the Vampir project may provide an opportunity to compare the British experience of being underground to the German experience of the same alien environment). Understanding the impact of warfare on civilians, and indeed vice-versa, is vital in any meaningful approach; the battlefields were towns and fields, and the soldiers were civilians in uniform. The popular image of the Western Front is of a vast wasteland of trenches, shell holes and blasted trees—it is certainly a valid one but it is not the only one. It certainly had a profound impact on the settlements within it—it is today difficult to grasp that the Cloth Hall in Ieper (Ypers) is a post-war reconstruction of the stunning Medieval building that was reduced to rubble during the war. Fromelles village was turned into a virtual fortress by the Germans, who constructed a bunker beneath the ruined church and built concrete blockhouses in the shells of houses. By the end of the war, the civilian population of the village was just one person. In reality, however, the front was a very narrow corridor, either side of which life went on with a fair degree of normality—despite the fact that vast num-

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bers of troops would be billeted among civilian populations with a much depleted male component. Even on the front, our impressions of the reality can be skewed from the reality, for example there were numerous incidents of advances on enemy trenches, so often portrayed as taking place across a shell-blasted mudscape, but which in truth consisted of troops moving through fields of corn very recently abandoned to the maelstrom of war. The Centre for Battlefield Archaeology is currently laying the foundations for a collaborative project, initially with the history department at Liverpool University, looking at the impact of multi-national forces on indigenous populations in Spain and Portugal during the Napoleonic Peninsular war and its approach may have something to offer to this later period of conflict. More immediately the potential of archaeology to provide an insight into the impact of war on civilian populations is explored by Bill Frazer in his timely paper on a 16th century cotter’s settlement in Ireland. Thanks to the work of a small number of archaeologists in recent years, on projects such as that described by Fraser and Brown in the volume and in the discussion above, we now have the tools to do the archaeology of the First World War justice, what lies ahead is the difficult task of ensuring that they are applied as part of a meaningful research framework and not just for the delectation of television audiences or as a means of removing problematic barriers to development. Accomplishing this is perhaps one of the most exciting and perhaps difficult challenges facing conflict archaeology today. Tony Pollard and Iain Banks Glasgow, July 2007 Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank The Archaeology Company for organising the Conflict Archaeology conference held at Aughrim in 2006, which provided the first airing for some of the papers included in this volume. It was very refreshing to find an independent archaeological contractor going to the trouble of organising and hosting a conference, let alone one devoted to conflict. References Doyle, P., Barton, P., Rosenbaum, M.S., Vandewall, J. and Jacobs, K. 2002: ‘Geo-environmental implications of military mining in Flanders, Belgium, 1914–1818’, Environmental Geology 43, 57–71. Doyle, P., Barton, P. & Vandewalle, J. 2005: ‘Archaeology of a Great War dugout: Beecham Farm, Passchendaele, Belgium’, Journal of Conflict Archaeology 1, 45–66. Jacobs, K. 2007: Nieupoort Sector 1917. De Krijger, Dorpsstraat (Belgium). Laffin, J. 1987: Battlefield Archaeology. Ian Allan: London.

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McLaughlin, C. 2006: ‘Touchstone and tinderbox: documenting memories inside the North of Ireland’s Long Kesh and Maze prison’, in Schofield, J., Klausmeler, A., & Purbrick, L. (eds) 2006 Re-mapping the Field: new approaches in conflict archaeology. Werlag: Berlin. 72–81. Pollard, T., Barton, P. & Banks, I. 2007: The Investigation of Possible Mass Graves at Pheasant Wood, Fromelles. GUARD report 12005. Price, J. 2005: ‘Orphan heritage: issues in managing the heritage of the Great War in Northern France and Belgium’, Journal of Conflict Archaeology 1, 181–96. Purbrick, L. 2007: Contested Spaces: sites, representations and histories of conflict. Palgrave Macmillan. Saunders, N.J. 2002: ‘Excavating memories: archaeology and the Great War, 1914–2001’, Antiquity 76, 101–08. —— 2003: Trench Art: materialities and memories of war. Berg: Oxford. Silberman, N.A. 2004: ‘In Flanders Fields’, Archaeology 57, 3. Schofield, J. 2005: Combat Archaeology: material conflict and modern conflict. Duckworth. Schofield, J. & Cocroft, W. 2007: A Fearsome Heritage: diverse legacies of the Cold War. Berg, Oxford. Schofield, J., Klausmeler, A., & Purbrick, L. (eds) 2006: Re-mapping the Field: new approaches in conflict archaeology. Werlag: Berlin. Stichelbaut, B. 2005: ‘The application of Great War aerial photography in battlefield archaeology: the example of Flanders’, Journal of Conflict Archaeology 1, 235–43.

ARTICLES

GHOSTS IN THE DESERT: THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF A SUB-SAHARAN BATTLEFIELD IAIN BANKS Abstract In November 1918, a battle was fought in the Kallaya saltpan as part of the conflicts relating to the Italian conquest of Libya from 1911 to 1936. Archaeological survey of the battlefield was able to record much of the detail of the fighting, but revealed the importance of the historical record in the interpretation of the results. The details of the fighting also indicate the considerable complexities involved in conflicts involving non-state groups.

Introduction The second decade of the twentieth century CE is dominated in the popular imagination by the First World War, a mechanised and industrialised conflict that was responsible for a greater loss of life than had ever happened before. The scale of the conflict means that WWI has tended to overshadow all other conflicts of the period; it is also the case that the attention of the Anglophone world tends to focus on its own history. However, the First World War was not the only conflict of that period. On 11 November 1918, as the European Powers declared the end of the First World War, many believed that this was the end of the ‘War to End All Wars’. Outside Europe, peace lasted a mere three days. On 14 November 1918, a battle took place at Kallaya Pit in the Gawerat Almelh of Tripolitania (Plate 1; Figure 1), where the quiet of the desert was shattered by a fire-fight lasting several hours. The Historical Background Libya is well known for its spectacular Roman remains, the best known of which are undoubtedly those at the site of the coastal city of Labdah (Leptis Magna). This city reached its zenith in the late first to early second century CE (Current Era) during the reign of Emperor Septimus Severus (193–211 CE). Severus was born in the city of Leptis Magna in 145 CE, becoming emperor in the chaos following the assassination of Commodus in 192. During his reign, and following a campaign against desert tribes, Severus built three large inland forts as an extended line of defence or limes. The limes was designed to control movement into the Roman province of Tripolitania and guard against attack by tribesmen from the south, from the region now known © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

DOI: 10.1163/157407807X257340

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Plate 1. Location of Kallaya and Bu Njem (Google Earth)

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Fig. 1. Location Map

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as Fezzan. One of the forts, at Bu Njem (Plate 2), was also intended to protect the trade route from Fezzan to Leptis Magna (Rebuffat 1989). To the north of these fortifications a second line of defence was installed, the Limitanei settlements: this consisted of farms occupied by retired veterans of the Roman army, who received land in return for their fighting services in times of conflict (Wright 1969). The fort at Bu Njem lies just to the north of Kallaya, the site of the battle in 1918. The Roman legacy provided Libya with spectacular archaeological remains, but also brought a less welcome legacy with it. In 1870, the nation of Italy came into being after a struggle throughout the 19th century. The process of Italian unification, the Risorgismento, had provided Europe with a new nationstate, but one lacking a coherent history and sense of identity. The process of unification had been termed a ‘resurgence’ by its propagandists, but the only historical model that existed for the political unity of the Italian Peninsula was the Roman Empire. From the fall of the Western Empire onwards, there had been no unity to the peninsula, and it had been divided into city states, some of which had been parts of rival empires. The new Italian state had considerable popular support within its population, but there were considerable pressures hostile to the new country. There were regionalist voices that never accepted the creation of Italy, while both France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had previously opposed a unified Italy through force of arms. To create a durable state, Italy needed to have an identity and a national identity. In order to create a national identity for the new state, the propaganda needed to look back to the Roman Empire. It was this beginning that shaped the behaviour of the Italian state during the first half of the 20th century CE. Italian politicians sought to associate themselves with the successes of Rome and with the meta-identity that the Empire had provided. They therefore sought to emulate its successes, and in particular the conquests of the Romans. The Eritreans in 1885–1896 were the first to suffer this attempt to recreate past glories, followed by Somalia in 1889–1905. While this could be seen as part of the prevailing Imperialism of 19th century Europe, there was also a distinct element of nation-building for the Italians. There was a determination to conquer the Quarta Sponda, [Fourth Shore], the coast of North Africa, which was expressed as being public opinion in Italian newspapers. How truly this reflected Italian popular opinion is a moot point, but from March 1911, pressure was building for an invasion of Tripoli. The government had been considering an invasion of Tripolitania since 1902, when a secret agreement between France and Italy gave the former freedom of action in Morocco and the latter freedom in Tripolitania. When the invasion came, it was described as being a return to North Africa by the Italians after 1,000 years (Atkinson 1996).

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There was a certain naivety about the campaign to invade Tripolitania. The protagonists of this policy claimed that the Ottomans only had around 4,000 troops in the entire country, and that the local population would welcome them with open arms as liberators from Turkish oppression. The country itself was described as being rich in minerals and very fertile, being well-watered. None of this was true. The Ottomans had more like 28,000 troops in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, while the chances of a Muslim population welcoming liberation/conquest by a Christian army was as unlikely in 1911 as it is in 2007. In 1911, none of the resources of Libya were known or exploited, and water was a constant problem in the area until the construction of the Great Man-Made River in the 1990s. As it was, the invasion of Libya in 1911 was the start of a conflict that lasted until 1932. The Italians were nervous about the reaction of Britain and France to the proposed invasion, despite the 1902 agreement with France. One of the motivations for the invasion, beyond nation-building or the recapture of Roman glories was an attempt to ensure that France and Britain did not hold the entire south coast of the Mediterranean. Britain held Egypt and Sudan, while France had Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco (although Spain had taken some of the western parts of that area, now called the Western Sahara). Before any invasion could be countenanced, the Italians had to have confidence that there would be no interference from the other European powers. On 26 July 1911, the British Foreign Minister Edward Grey gave British acceptance of the invasion, which was followed by French agreement on 12 September 1911 (Ashiuriakis 1995: 44). The conflict was initially seen as being between Italy and the Ottoman Empire. However, the Sublime Porte [the Ottoman Court, particularly the Foreign Ministry] was distinctly unenthusiastic about the war, particularly as pressure was building in the Balkans (and would break out into open war in 1912). On the night of 26–27 September 1911, the Ottoman government offered to cede control of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica to Italy in return for a nominal suzerainty for the Ottomans: this would give Italy control without the need to go to war. The Italians rejected this offer, which indicates that they were determined to go to war, and suggests that the reasons for the invasion were as much to display Italian martial prowess as for any other benefits. On 29 September, with a fleet anchored off Tripoli, the Italians declared war; on 30 September, the fleet began a bombardment of the port of Darna (EvansPrithard 1949: 109) and the invasion began on 3 October after the bombardment of Tripoli. The response of the Libyan population to the Italian invasion was to resist as much as possible. Rather than welcoming the Italians as liberators, the Libyans saw them as ‘Crusaders’ and preferred to fight to continue the Muslim

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Ottoman empire. Indeed, the resistance of the local population was in marked contrast to that of the Ottomans. There were relatively few Ottoman troops in Libya in 1911, despite the fact that war was clearly coming. Ottoman resistance depended upon the support of the local population because they were massively outnumbered. This was despite the fact that there was very little support for the current Ottoman government, which had seized power in Turkey in 1908. The Young Turks deposed the Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II in 1908 and established a more friendly sultan with Muhammad V. They were a liberalising and modernising force, desperate to force the Ottoman Empire into the modern era; as such, they were despised by the Libyans who were conservative in their outlook (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 100–1). Initially, the Italians remained pinned down on the coast. Although they probably could have advanced inland, they were reluctant to move beyond the range at which naval guns could protect them. However, with the storm clouds of WWI beginning to gather, the Turks had other pressing concerns in the Balkans as the First and Second Balkan Wars loomed. Accordingly, in late 1912, negotiations between Italy and Turkey began, culminating in the Treaty of Losanna (Ouchy) on 17 October 1912. This was a clear example of how little the Italians understood Islamic politics: under the terms of the treaty, Italy would annex Libya, but the Sultan would remain as the Caliph of the Libyans. This meant that the Sultan would still be the authority that the Libyans answered to. The Italians assumed that the Caliph title was purely religious, not understanding that there was no effective difference between the sacred and the secular in the Caliphate. However, the effect of the treaty was that the Turks officially withdrew from Libya, which should have left the way clear for Italian conquest. This was not to happen. Quite apart from the fact that the tension between the Libyans and the Turks had been because the Libyans had considered the Young Turk government to be insufficiently valiant in their commitment to the Caliphate, the Turkish withdrawal was only effective in name. Many of the Turkish troops and officers were encouraged to remain and fight alongside their Muslim brothers, which is what they did; one notable example was a young lieutenant called Mustafa Kemal, later better known as Atatürk. The struggle continued despite the treaty, and in July 1915, official Turkish aid was resumed after the entry of the Ottoman Empire to the First World War in October 1914. However, little extra practical aid reached the Libyans. Despite this, the Libyans managed to inflict defeats on the Italians and keep them essentially to the coastal cities. Italian forts deeper in Libya were besieged, and the invaders were constantly struggling to keep territories that cost thousands of lives in the period between 1911 and 1918 (Evans-Pritchard

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1949: 137–38). At this stage, the Italians were entirely confined to the coastal strip and had no presence inland. The fort at Bu Njem was captured from the Ottoman garrison in 1914 by the Italians, and had been adapted to more modern warfare (Goodchild 1954). However, by late 1915, it had become the forward Italian post in the Sirtica as the Waddan, Hun and Suknan posts further south were abandoned in the face of Mujahideen assaults. By 1916, the fort at Bu Njem was abandoned as the Italians could no longer hold the supply lines to the fort. In the face of this deteriorating situation, the Italians opened negotiations through British mediation and hostilities were officially suspended in Cyrenaica with the British-brokered Accords of ‘Akrama in April 1917. This agreement accepted the current positions of the Libyans and of the Italians in Cyrenaica, left to an unspecified future point the issue of disarming the population and safeguarded Islamic personal law and koranic teaching in the occupied areas (Evans-Pritchard 1949). This agreement was a compromise and satisfied neither side; the Italians had achieved little and still could not effect sovereignty, while the Libyans were left with an aggressive foreign power occupying the major towns. Nor did the agreement cover Tripolitania, where in March 1922, the Italian governor, Count Giuseppe Volpi, attacked and captured Misratah. Unsurprisingly, the agreement in Cyrenaica broke down as the Italians regained their strength and brought in more troops and ammunition. The tide of history now turned against Libya once again. On October 28, 1922, Mussolini seized power in Italy and the Fascists had control of the country. They openly fantasised about the restoration of the Roman Empire; as well as needing to conquer Libya to restore Italian prestige, the need to overcome social and political divisions at home encouraged adventures abroad. On 6 March 1923, without a formal resumption of hostilities, the Fascists seized a large number of Libyan fighters at the Khawalan camp, weakening the ability to resist further aggression. This was followed by the suspension of all accords and conventions between the Italians and the Libyans, proclaimed by the new Fascist Governor of Cyrenaica, General Bongiovanni, on 1 May 1923. Although the Italians quickly moved into a dominant position through superior technology, with resistance confined to guerrilla attacks, the war dragged on until 1932, with the Italians unable to stamp out Libyan resistance entirely. However, with the loss of Sheik ‘Umar al-Mukhtar in September 1931, the end of the war was in sight. It came with the death in battle of Youssef ben Rahil on 19 December 1931 and Badoglio’s declaration on 24 January 1932 that the war had been won. The Libyan resistance had varied across the country. Cyrenaica in the east resisted the Italians far more fiercely than the western Tripolitania. This was

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partially to do with political structure and partially to do with social organisation. Tripolitania was a diffuse area, with a loose political structure that made it easy for the Italians to pick off settlements one by one. Each town and village was fiercely independent, which meant that they resisted the Italians but did little to cooperate with each other. Cyrenaica, in contrast, had the Senussi. The Senussi The Senussi were a Muslim organisation founded in Mecca in 1837 by an Algerian called Sayyid Muhammad ibn Ali as-Senussi. Broadly a part of the Sufi tradition, the mystical strand of Muslim thought, the group was influenced by the teachings of the Sunni Wahhabi sect, which was hardline conservative and hostile to non-Muslims. During the last part of the 19th century, the influence of the Senussi spread across the eastern Sahara and central Sudan, while zawias [monasteries; madrassas] were established in Fez, Constantinople, Damascus and India. They resisted French incursions into the Sahara from the Congo during the later part of the 19th century, although most of their efforts were defensive rather than aggressive. Indeed, during the period of the Mahdiyya in Sudan, the Senussi refused requests for assistance and for alliance. The Senussi were strongest in the eastern Sahara, and had their greatest support amongst the Bedouin. When the Italians invaded in 1911, the Senussi were the natural focus of resistance to the invaders in the east. Relations between the Senussi and the Ottomans had never been cordial; from the Ottoman perspective, the Senussi Order was a dangerous alternative power structure that had greater authority in Cyrenaica than the Pasha of Benghazi, while from the Senussi perspective, the Ottomans were secularists and nonobservant in their Mohammedanism. The Bedouin naturally looked to the Senussi to lead their resistance to the Italians, which was largely borne out by the actions of the Sublime Porte to the invasion: the initial reaction to the threat of invasion was to suggest that the Italians could have Libya without a fight. Once the fighting erupted, the Ottomans quickly settled with the Italians and officially withdrew troops and supplies. While they encouraged Turkish officers and troops to remain and fight unofficially, and they continued to feed supplies to the Senussi (Ashuriakis 1995: 69–70), the Bedouin believed that they had been abandoned. There might have been an outright rupture between the Senussi and the Ottomans when the remaining Turkish troops and officers were withdrawn to Egypt in the winter of 1913/1914 (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 121). However, the outbreak of WWI brought Turkish support back to the Senussi as the Ottomans were part of the Central Powers and the Italians part of the Entente. The most significant effect of this change

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in circumstances was that Turkish weapons and ammunition came through in much larger quantities, while the Senussi also benefited from German supplies. It also meant that the Italians were less able to prosecute the war in Libya as they faced heavy fighting in the Alps against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the west, in Tripolitania, the Senussi were present, but far less influential. While the Bedouin were still the main population in the hinterland, they were more dominated by family and tribal loyalties than by a religious movement. Resistance to the Italians was also less apparent in the west, with the Italians able to march south into Fezzan. However, being able to penetrate the hinterland was not the same as being able to control it. Colonel Antonio Miani attempted to push east from Tripolitania to attack the Senussi from the Sirtica, the central area which was largely unsettled. On 29 April 1915, he was routed by the Libyans at the battle of Al Ghardabiya (or Qasr bu Hadi), losing thousands of men and a massive supply train. This contained large numbers of guns and bullets, and included artillery, shells, machine guns, food and money (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 122). This far outweighed the material reaching the Libyans from the Turks and Germans and was a significant factor in being able to continue the resistance against the Italians. The battle also had the effect of pushing the Italians back to the coast. They had occupied a string of forts to garrison the conquered territories, including the old Turkish fort at Bu Njem, but these were successively abandoned as the attacks gained strength. By the start of 1917, the Italians held Tripoli, Al Qums, Benghazi, Darna and Tobruk, but that was all. With the war in Europe going badly for them, the Italian government agreed to the British-brokered Accords of ‘Akrama in April 1917. Post-‘Akrama The position of the Senussi after 1915 was very strong. However, the population was never fully united behind a single leader or group; the only real unity was against the Italians. When the Italians had been bottled up in the towns, the unifying factor that they had provided dissipated. There were traditional hostilities between different groups of the population, particularly between the desert population of Bedouin and the coastal urban populations. There were tensions between east and west, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, and amongst the Bedouin between tribal groups. These tensions quickly flared into violence, with a battle at Bani Walid in 1916 where the coastal group led by Ramadan al-Shtaiwi defeated the Bedouin group led by Sayyid Safi al-Din (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 122–23); the latter had come into Tripolitania from Cyrenaica and represented the Senussi Order. The leader of the Senussi,

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Sayyid Muhammad Idris (later to become the Libyan king after WWII), called Senussi troops back from Tripolitania and accepted that there was a western limit to the extent of Senussi power. The Senussi had also made the mistake in 1916 of attacking British posts in the Western Desert of Egypt, at the behest of the Ottoman and German officers that had accompanied the supplies sent to bolster the anti-Italian campaign. The British response was short, sharp and decisive and resulted in the Senussi losing their positions in Egypt. From 1917, the Senussi were sandwiched between the British in Egypt and the troops of Ramadan al-Shtaiwi in Tripolitania. The seriousness with which the Senussi viewed this particular circumstance can be seen from the fact that Sayyid Idris recruited a new army of Bedouin that established a khatt al-nar [line of fire] across the Sirtica to stop al-Shtaiwi raiding across from Tripolitania (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 146). Ironically, this army was supplied by the Italians in an attempt to spread their influence inland; needless to say, the weapons were eventually turned against them. The important points to consider about the period following the Accords of ‘Akrama include that the Italians were a spent force in Libya until 1922, exhausted by WWI and with little popular enthusiasm in Italy for fighting in the desert; the Senussi had considerable prestige for their lead in the resistance to the invasion, but were feeling under threat from east and west; and Tripolitania was as hostile to the Cyrenaicans as it was to the Italians. In Tripolitania, the Order was more religious than political because of the difference between the two areas in terms of political organisation. The Tripolitanian enmity towards the Senussi was purely on the level of politics and power. The Battle of Kallaya The concentration on the historical background has been necessary because of the complexities of the historical moment in which the Battle of Kallaya occurred. With the cessation of hostilities under the Accords of ‘Akrama, the Senussi turned from the Italian threat and expanded their control over Ajdabiya. They were pushing westwards, towards Tripolitania and Fezzan, hoping to bring the disparate tribes and families in these areas under their control. Tripolitania had no centralised political structure, being divided between local leaders at the head of their tribes, with Ramadan al-Shtaiwi of Misuratah as the most powerful figure. Equally, the Tripolitanians saw an opportunity to push their control eastwards, into the Sirtica and on into Cyrenaica. The Sirtica is the desert area between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which in 1918 had only strategic importance. Today, it is the site of the city of Sirt,

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the administrational capital of Libya, and it is also the location of the terminal of the Great Man-Made River. Its greater modern significance is also due to some extent to the fact that this is where the Qaddafi family came from, Colonel Qaddafi being the leader of the revolution in 1969 that overthrow King Idris, or Sayyid Idris as he was in 1918. The battlefield, the Kallaya Pit in the Gawerat Almelh, lies 20 km to the south of Bu Njem (fig 1). Bu Njem is an oasis some 150 km south-west of the coastal town of Sirt, on a crossroads between the road from El Heisha to Waddan and the haul road between Sirt and Ash Shwayrif. The oasis consists of around 15 wells (water) and occupies the bed of the Wadi Bey elKaib, a tributary of the Wadi Bey el-Kebir (Goodchild 1954). The oasis is also the location of a Roman fort and a Turkish fort (plate 2) re-used by the Italians, emphasising its strategic importance as a major staging post between Fezzan in the south and the coast to the north. The road runs through Bu Njem, past the Turkish fort and then on southwards past the saltpan known as Kallaya Pit. The saltpan lies in a north/south running valley bounded by longitudinal outcrops of igneous rock, and to the east of the road. The salt has been

Plate 2. Bu Njem Turkish fort

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exploited over many years; evidence for extraction takes the form of mounds and depressions covering a large part of the valley floor (fig 2). The hard white crust of crystallised salt is a feature common to desert locations and is known as a sabkha or more properly a playa (sabkhas being a feature of desert coastal locations). The salt crystals have accumulated either as a result of periodic water run-off from the surrounding slopes, which also trap the water, or more probably in this case from the discharge of groundwater which rapidly evaporates, leaving the salt and other minerals behind (Cook et al. 1993). This saltpan was the source of salt for all the local communities, including Bu Njem. Salt is obviously vital to survival in the desert, and the saltpan was a ready source. In late 1918, a force of roughly 300 Senussi came on patrol to Kallaya from Al Jufra oasis to the east. They were probably patrolling the khatt al-nar (the so-called ‘line of fire’), which ran through the Sirtica. They were gathering salt and camped on the eastern ridge above the saltpan. Around that time, on 14 November 1918, a local posse of between 30 and 40 men from the Alpattata family of the Sapayah tribe and Alghus family of the Gdadfa tribe set out from their pastures at Wadi Belhetan searching for men that were wanted for killings and assaults. As they approached Kallaya, two of the group were sent to collect salt for the group from the saltpan. However, when they arrived at the saltpan, despite the fact that this was traditionally where the families gathered their salt, the Senussi refused the men access. Instead, they opened fire and killed one of the men. The survivor went for aid and returned with rest of the Alpattata and Alghus posse. None of these men were professional soldiers but many had experience of battle and had fought at the battle of Al Ghardabiya on 29 April 1915 where the Italians suffered a heavy defeat. Whether the Alpattata and Alghus men were aware of the size of the force against them Kallaya is unknown, but they went into battle against a force nearly ten times their size. The Alpattata and Alghus men came to the saltpan from the direction of Wadi Belhetan and gathered below the heights of Kallaya Pit, probably in a group on the south-eastern side. The Senussi were on the ridge on the eastern side of Kallaya Pit, overlooking the saltpan and with a clear field of fire over the Alpattata and Alghus group. As the firing started, the Alpattata and Alghus group may have been pinned down, with only the spoil from the salt quarrying to provide cover. The action was confined to the saltpan, and continued for several hours with both sides sustaining casualties, many of them fatalities. With no retreat seeming likely from the Senussi, who held the high ground, the Alpattata and Alghus group began to retreat towards the north-west. The

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Alpattata and Alghus group lost 14 dead, with others wounded. The Senussi made the mistake of abandoning their superior position, and appear to have rushed down the slopes and onto the saltpan to pursue the retreating men. However, as they came down onto the saltpan, they lost their cover and received heavy casualties: they may have lost as many as 90 men. This was sufficient to persuade them to withdraw towards the Al Jufra oasis, leaving the battlefield abandoned. If the oral accounts of casualties are correct, losses were heavy on both sides: 30% of the Senussi and up to 50% of the local posse. These are casualty rates that match the carnage of WWI, and reflect the savagery of the fighting in Libya in the period 1911–32. This was a skirmish that had nothing to do with the major events that were taking place elsewhere in the world. World War I had finished three days earlier, while the Italians were beginning to build up strength on the coast of Libya to renew the invasion. This fight had no impact on the Italians or the course of the jihad against them. It was a fight on a local level between locals and outsiders over access to a landscape resource; it calls to mind the scene in the film Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence first meets Sherif Ali (played by Omar Sharif ), and Lawrence’s guide is killed by Sherif for having drunk from his well without permission. As exotic as this may appear, why is the fight of any interest? This will be answered once the details of the archaeological investigation have been given. The Archaeological Surveys The battlefield was investigated through two main techniques. The first of these was a metal detector survey of the entire area (plate 3). This was intended to locate the full range of metal artefacts from the area of the battlefield, while the process of walking systematically across the entire area ensured that all surface material would also be noted. The survey was carried out using three metal detectors: two AF 350 machines made by Whyte’s Electronics, and a CScope NewForce R1 metal detector. All three were capable of detecting all metal types and would be able easily to detect artefacts within 20 cm of the surface. Material buried more deeply could be located if a strong enough signal were created. Signals were checked and any artefacts were marked with pin flags. They were placed in snap-fastening plastic bags and each was given a unique find number. All artefacts were also recorded photographically, either through conventional photography or through video footage using high-resolution video film. The second main element of the project was to undertake a topographic survey of the battlefield. This was partially in order to record the nature of

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Plate 3. The Kallaya pit during metal detector survey, taken from the Senussi positions on the eastern ridge

the terrain and allow the landscape of the battlefield to be visualised, but was also to provide a framework for the distribution of artefactual material. The survey thus covered both landscape features and the location of all artefacts. At the start of the project, while the basic grids for the fieldwork were being laid out, a walkover survey was conducted over the battlefield and the wider area. The intention was to assess the likely extent of the battle in terms of surface traces of human activity, and also to assess the level of other archaeological material on the site. Prehistoric remains had been noted during a reconnaissance visit (Pollard 1999), and the intention was to record the presence of other material in the area. It was not intended to undertake a fullscale field-walking programme to collect artefacts; this lay outwith the scope of the project. Results The Topographic Survey and Walkover Survey The topographic survey was carried out using a Leica TCR307 total station. This produced a contoured landscape survey of the saltpan and surrounding

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ridges (fig 2). The topographic survey ran throughout the programme of fieldwork, establishing a series of survey stations and then capturing the data on both the topography of the site and the precise location of each artefact. While the survey stations were being established, the rest of the team undertook a rapid walkover survey of the entire area. During this walkover survey, artefacts were marked with pin flags but not lifted to ensure that there were no errors in associating the artefact with its precise location. The walkover survey was very successful, showing that the surface material lay essentially on the saltpan and that it tended to decrease toward each edge. This indicated that the main focus of human activity was on the saltpan, as evident both in military artefacts and in domestic material. The other purpose of the survey was to gain information about prehistoric material in the area. The 1999 reconnaissance had noted the presence of worked lithics across the battlefield. The walkover survey extended onto the ridges and hills surrounding the battlefield to the north, east and west, while the flat ground of the wadi to the south was also covered. A large concentration of worked lithics was noted on the plateau above the western ridge, lying on the south-west side of the salt pan (Banks 2001: 10). It would have been unethical to disturb the material without fully recording it, and that lay outwith the scope of the project. The decision was taken that none of the material in this area should be removed and that it should be left for future researchers. The material was left in situ and the general location was recorded. The Metal Detector Survey The metal detector survey covered a very large area in order to ensure that the full extent of the battlefield was investigated. The walkover survey had suggested that the battle had not extended far beyond the limits of the saltpan. However, it would have been unwise to assume that was the case, and therefore the metal detector survey covered the area to the north of the saltpan, up to the hills that form the major ridge parallel with the El HeishaWaddan highway. On the eastern side of the saltpan, the survey covered up to the base of the ridge where the organised force had been; on the western side, the survey covered all ground up to the base of the ridges marking this side of the area. To the south, the survey extended to the rising topography beyond the limits of the salt. The eastern ridge, used by the Senussi, was entirely covered, including all areas that had a view of the saltpan. It was hoped that all potential firing positions would be covered in this way. On the saltpan itself, the survey was conducted in 20 m wide transects to ensure that the area was fully covered. The entire survey was relatively easy

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to keep on track because the footprints from each pass remained visible, showing what ground had been covered. As a result, it is possible to say that 100% coverage of the battlefield was achieved. However, it must be noted that, because the detectors have a limited depth penetration, it is possible that some munitions remain undiscovered because of the depth at which they lay. That said, several of the cartridge cases discovered lay within crystallising salt, and it is likely that little else remains on the battlefield. Indeed, the salt becomes extremely compact very close to the surface. During the metal detector survey, 385 artefacts were recorded. Of these, the largest number comprised fragments of metal, with 86 instances recorded in case they represented shrapnel or other military material. However, some of this material was iron-rich rock, therefore being natural in origin and not artefactual. Other examples consisted of fragments of metal from artefacts that have decayed almost entirely. It is impossible to know whether these relate to the battle or to another point in the long period of exploitation of the saltpan resource. There were also 36 unidentified metal objects and 16 nails in the metallic assemblage. The vast majority of these artefacts were too corroded and decayed to be capable of identification. Three coins or discs were recovered from the battlefield. Of these, one was a 1954 Libyan coin (SF165), and therefore irrelevant to the battle, while a second was an Italian coin dated to 1861 (SF334), which is rather unusual. By the time of the battle, this was already old so there are unanswerable questions about how it came to Kallaya. There was also a small metal disc (SF111), which was identified by Mr Abdulrahma alBasir of Bu Njem as a piece of traditional Libyan jewellery worn by women. It is therefore not a remnant of the battle itself, but testimony of the centuries of salt extraction at the saltpan. The main interest, naturally, was the munitions. In total, 16 bullets, 65 cartridges, 2 lead balls and a stone ball were recovered during the metal detector survey. The bullets varied from pristine slugs that had not been affected by being fired, to slugs that had hit a target and had spread on impact. The pristine bullets are those that hit sand or salt, while the damaged bullets are those that either hit rock or hit a human target. One of the lead shots and the stone ball were undamaged and may not have been fired, although the second lead shot is distorted and may have been used. They all lay on the saltpan and probably came from traditional flintlock rifles. These are likely to have come from the Alpattata and Alghus group. There is no way of dating these artefacts, and it is possible that they are unrelated to the battle. However, as the Alpattata and Alghus group were not professional soldiers, it would be unsurprising if some of the weapons they carried at Kallaya

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included antiquated flintlocks alongside more modern weaponry captured at Al Ghardibiya. The bullets were almost all found on the saltpan, and were considered to be largely of one type on initial examination; the dimensions appeared to match the calibre of the Italian Vetterli carbine. However, the identification of the different types of munitions by David Petts of the Imperial War Museum (Penn 2001) revealed that only three of the bullets were indeed from Vetterli rifles, and that in fact six different manufactures were represented. Three others came from M.1891 Carcano rifle, an Italian design that was a hybrid of the Mauser and Mannlicher rifles. The complication is that these could also be fired by a converted Vetterli M.1870/87. They were used in Italy by Milizia Territoriale units, but may have found their way to colonial units. However, as these were obsolete weapons and the conversion made them inherently dangerous, it is probable that these represent weapons that had come out of military use and had entered private use. Of the other bullets, five represented forms of Mauser calibres. There were two 11 mm Mauser 71/84 bullets of German manufacture. These repeating rifles were used by reserve units such as the Landsturm and were supplied to local troops in Germany’s African colonies, such as the Askaris. These bullets are likely to represent ammunition and rifles supplied to the Libyans by the Turks, who had themselves received supplies from their German allies during the First World War. There were also three examples of Turkish-made Mauser bullets, one a 7.65 mm calibre from a Mauser 93 rifle; this was standard Turkish issue from 1893 and continued in use throughout the First World War. The other two Mauser bullets were 9.5 mm Mauser calibre, and represent very obsolete weapons. These had been in use since 1887, but were a black powder load (i.e. using gunpowder). This load had been superseded by smokeless powder, so this again is likely to represent the Turkish supplies to the Libyans. It suggests that much of the material supplied to the Libyans was obsolete. However, the fact that irregular troops were using black powder loads should not be that surprising as this would allow re-supply far more easily than smokeless loads that required factory ammunition. The final bullet has a tentative identification as an 11 mm Egyptian Remington, and was found with part of the cartridge still adhering to the bullet. The Remington was a popular civilian rifle and was widely used in North Africa and across the Arab world at this time. Its presence, assuming that it relates to the battle, would reinforce the impression that the Libyans were using all available means but were not being well supplied; this makes the ability of the Libyans to resist the Italians until 1931 all the more impressive. The cartridges represent the same weapon models as the bullets, with the tentative addition of a French 8 mm Lebel, and two examples of the Russian

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7.62 mm Mosin Nagant. The latter was mass-produced and had been involved heavily on the Eastern Front throughout the First World War until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1917. The Germans and Austrians captured very large numbers of them, so it is reasonably likely that the Central Powers supplied the weapons to the Libyans by way of Turkey. These cartridges are likely to represent Central Power supplies because one example (351) was manufactured in Germany in 1917, so it is likely to represent recent supplies from Turkey. The French 8 mm Lebel was a colonial issue and very common in North Africa at this time, so it was probably privately owned. One of the most striking aspects of the distribution of the munitions was the fact that the vast majority came from the saltpan. This lack of cartridges on the eastern ridge caused some disquiet, since this was where the much larger Senussi force is supposed to have been located, and for this reason every potential firing position was checked. Despite the close attention paid to the eastern ridge, the only cartridges located here were confined to the northern end of the ridge. It must therefore be assumed that the site has been subject to post-depositional attrition. The number of cartridges does not reflect the intensity of the action, as the accounts all suggest that the fighting lasted for several hours. There were well over 300 combatants, yet there are only 65 cartridges and 16 bullets. There were particularly low densities of munitions on the rocks. It can therefore be assumed that much of the material from the battlefield has been removed in the eighty years since the battle. Attrition certainly seems to be worse on the ridge, but this is probably because of the fact that the cartridges from here would have attracted the attention of any visitors to the site as they lay on the rocks. They would have been far more apparent than the cartridges that lay on the saltpan; the latter would rapidly have been covered with sand. It may even be the case that there was a concerted effort to recover cartridges from the site after the battle. The cartridges could have been re-loaded and re-used, although it increased the risk of using them. The battlefield would have been a rich source of cartridges. If this hypothesis is true, then the conclusions drawn regarding the distribution of the munitions must be treated with caution. It is possible that the concentrations are the meaningless result of unstructured and unrecorded removal of material from the site. Contrary to this, however, the observation of attenuation from prehistoric sites in Britain indicates that it is usual for surviving distributions to reflect the original densities of material. It is certainly possible that the ridge is a special case because of the bare rock, but there are plenty of areas on the ridge where there are relatively deep deposits of sand. It is to be expected that material would have survived in these areas as the munitions would a gain have been covered quite rapidly. However, these sandy areas produced

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no munitions at all, with all of the munitions from the ridge being in shallow sand. The other issue relates to the munitions on the saltpan. This was the largest concentration of munitions on the battlefield, raising the question of whether this represents the Alpattata and Alghus group or whether it is a mixture of both sides’ activities. The question essentially relates to whether the Senussi came down onto the saltpan below the ridge or whether they spent the battle on the ridge, only moving down on the northern side as the Alpattata and Alghus group retreated. One of the 10.4 mm bullets is the furthest northwest of all the munitions located, and this is likely to represent a shot from the ridge at the Alpattata and Alghus group as they retreated. Conversely, the 10.4 mm bullet on the eastern ridge, the most southerly of the munitions up on the ridge, is probably a shot from the Alpattata and Alghus group at the enemy on the ridge. It can thus be assumed that both sides had 10.4 mm Vetterlis. As far as the 6.5 mm Carcano munitions is concerned, these were probably guns of the Alpattata and Alghus group. The two 6.5 mm bullets on the saltpan were misfires, and therefore came from the saltpan, while a 6.5 mm bullet was recovered from the ridge and had been fired from the saltpan. The cartridges were all found on the saltpan and it is a reasonable assumption that these weapons came from Al Ghardabiya. They also reveal something of the battle, because the Carcano cartridges in particular reveal a clustering that probably represents the actions of individuals. The other calibres of munitions reveal interesting aspects of the battle. The Mauser cartridges reveal very clearly the Alpattata and Alghus group’s line of retreat. These follow a line towards the north-west but consist of a mixture of 7.65, 9.5 and 11 mm cases; this indicates that several individuals all fired from along this line. There are also two 7.65 mm Mauser bullets on this line, indicating that individuals with Mauser rifles were firing at this position. These were probably fired by members of the organised force as the Alpattata and Alghus group retreated. Certainly, there was a cluster of cartridges on the northern end of the eastern ridge, which is also the easiest climb onto the ridge from the saltpan. They consist of 7.65, 9.5 and 11 mm Mauser rounds and 7.62 Mosin Nagant rounds. This is the only surviving evidence of the firing positions of the Senussi. From the position of the cartridges, it is possible that this represents the move by the Senussi to attack the Alpattata and Alghus group as they retreated to the north-west. They lay on the easy slope down to the lower ground, which would have allowed the Senussi to come off the ridge without immediately losing cover. Had they come down the main slopes on the east straight down onto the saltpan, they

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would have had no cover and would have been running down very steep slopes in very soft sand. This would have been a very risky manoeuvre, particularly under fire. The Alpattata and Alghus group were undertaking a staged retreat and were maintaining their fire at the enemy. This does not mean that such a manoeuvre was not made; many battles have been lost through mistakes. It is also worth returning to the reasons for the low level of munitions on the eastern ridge. It has already been noted that any cartridges up here would have been more apparent to visitors than those on the saltpan, making it more likely that they would have been lifted. It was also noted above that cartridges could be refilled, although this is a risky process. Finally, the Alpattata and Alghus group was certainly using Italian weapons captured at Al Ghardibiya and it is likely that the Senussi also carried Italian guns. These factors may indicate the reason that the eastern ridge is particularly denuded. Replacing ammunition for the Italian weapons would depend upon the capture of further supplies or the re-use of spent cartridges, unlike the other weaponry where ammunition could come from external sources, particularly in the period between 1911 and 1918. In that case, after the battle, the Italian cartridges would have been a resource allowing the opportunity to re-stock on ammunition for their captured rifles. There would have been less need to collect Mosin Nagant or Mauser cartridges because there were other supplies of this ammunition available. This is all supposition, but it takes some support from the nature of the munitions recovered. Several of the Italian cartridges are severely damaged, while others have been cut. This suggests that they were not capable of re-use and would not then be lifted. The Mosin Nagant and 7.65 Mauser cartridges are almost all pristine, yet were left on the battlefield. There are too few examples for any firm conclusions to be drawn, but this evidence does support the supposition that Italian cartridges were removed to be re-filled for use in captured weapons. It would also suggest that the local Alpattata and Alghus families were responsible for the removal of material as they would have virtually no access to new ammunition, while in 1917–18 the Senussi were receiving guns and ammunition from the Italians so that they could patrol the khatt al-nar. Accordingly, while there appears to have been attenuation of the remains, the distributions recorded do reflect elements of the battle. It is possible to see firing positions for both sides in the distribution, and also to see both individual and group movement. Most striking of these was a cluster of three cartridges from the same Carcano rifle in the area of the salt workings on the base of the saltpan. This is clearly where an individual fired several times at his enemy before either being killed or moving to another position. What

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survives is a fraction of the original debris of the battle, but enough of a shadow to reveal the broad events. Ghosts in the Desert So, why bother with a small scale action with no significant strategic outcomes in the desert between two groups of no international significance? The easy answer is that the project was predicated on the assumption that the fighting at Kallaya had been a battle between Mujahideen and Italians, and that it was a part of the jihad. This was the information that was available when the project started. However, as the project got underway, it became ever clearer that the history of the battle was largely oral. There was no mention of the fight published in English other than an oblique reference made by Col Qaddafi in a short story he wrote about facing death (Qaddafi 1998). The colonel’s father, Mohamed Abdul Salam Hameed Abu Menyar al Gadaffi, was a 23-year-old at the time and was one of the Alghus fighters at the battle; he was wounded in the arm in the fighting. Beyond this, however, there were no published accounts of the battle. There were opportunities to interview local elders during the fieldwork, but none of them was alive at the time of the battle, so their accounts were secondhand at best. They had only a vague idea of the history themselves, which meant that they were not able to reveal that the initial scenario of Italian involvement was incorrect. Indeed, the longer that the work continued on the project, the more insubstantial the individuals became. It was hard to know where the group on the ridge were, because they had left little trace of themselves. It was also clear that the fighting had involved Libyans on both sides, which at the time of the fieldwork was a very uncomfortable notion. The fighting had been presented to the team as an important event in the jihad, and there were obviously sensitivities about the involvement of different groups within the struggle. How would a suggestion that there may have been collaborators with the Italians have played with the Libyan authorities? In the event, there was no need to present such a scenario in the report because the fight was between two purely Libyan groups. This was revealed by a researcher from the Libyan Jihad Centre in Tripoli, who was only available long after the fieldwork had been completed. He was able explain that, from oral testimony recorded by the LJC, the Italians were not involved; as noted earlier, after the Accord of ‘Akrama, the Italians were confined to a small number of coastal towns. There were certainly no Italian troops 200 km inland and at least 500 km from the nearest supply depot. He could also explain that the role of foreign aggressors in this case had been

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played by the Senussi from Cyrenaica. However, none of his material had been published and it was all recorded in Arabic; it was not easily accessible to westerners, so there was no way to verify his account. This is not to say that there is any reason to doubt the account he provided, but lack of verification means that there is still doubt over the situation. Potential issues over the perspective of these accounts include the fact that the deposed king of Libya, Idris I, was Sayyid Idris, the leader of the Senussi Order. The significance of this is that the present regime overthrew the Senussi king in 1969, and the Senussi have been downplayed in their subsequent accounts of the jihad. Indeed, the LJC researcher consistently referred to the Senussi troops as ‘the organised force’ ( El-Hasnawi, pers comm) and refused to use the term ‘Senussi’ at all. As noted earlier, the Sirtica has become much more significant since 1969, with the former fishing village of Sirt now being the administrative capital of the country. The Sirtica lay between the competing power structures of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, remaining far more dominated by tribal and family bonds than either of the power centres. The current historical paradigm could well be dominated by the perspective of Sirt-based anti-Senussi fighters. The historical context the LJC provided was based on the idea that the Senussi were attempting to conquer Tripolitania and Fezzan during the peace with Italy; there was no recognition of the khatt al-nar and its implication of a buffer between two aggrandising groups. Another important point is that the information supplied by local elders during the fieldwork gave a very different story to that of the LJC. In their accounts, the elders from Bu Njem talked of Italians, of hundreds of dead and attempts to wipe out the local resistance to the Italian invasion. Some confusion may have been created by the fact that the interviews were conducted through non-professional translators, and that the expectation from the interviewers was that the battle had involved the Italians. However, that does not explain fully the difference between the current oral testimony and that recorded by the LJC. The best explanation of this is that the battle has become ‘mythologised’ within a general story of the jihad, with none of the elderly informants having firsthand knowledge of the events. It suggests that a degree of caution and source criticism should be used with oral history as well as with written sources. These factors reveal the weakness of studies in conflict. It is vital that the context of the conflict is properly understood so that the action can be understood. The first point is quite apparent. This battle is an extreme example, but it is easy to see from this example how much the understanding of archaeological results may depend on the historical context. It was possible to construct an interpretation of the results that included the Italians when there

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was no Italian involvement; as soon as the Italian presence was removed from the historical account, the archaeological interpretation was able to remove them as well. It is a chastening experience to realise that the strengths of battlefield archaeology lie more in investigating the accuracy of historical accounts than in creating an historical account. It was apparent from the results that the simple scenario of Italian troops being on the ridge while the Libyans were on the saltpan did not work; the archaeology revealed that there were non-Italian troops on the ridge. However, because the archaeological will always be incomplete, it is difficult to prove a negative. Consequently, it was impossible to tell from the archaeological record that there were no Italians present; it might have been suspected, but it would have been impossible to prove from the cartridges and bullets. The fort at Bu Njem was occupied by the Italians in 1915, and it was the last outpost in the area to be abandoned; there were points during the research into the history of the jihad where it seemed possible that the fort might have been occupied in 1918. Without the historical account, even where they are open to question and reliant upon unverifiable oral testimonies, any archaeological interpretation is purely hypothetical. The second point regarding the historical context of a conflict is that most conflicts tend to be much more complex than the initial battle-lines suggest. Every person present at a battle will have a different view of events, which is clear in comparing eyewitness statements; one person will notice something another misses, while the interpretation that each puts on that event may differ wildly. However, it goes deeper than this. People will have different motivations for being present, different histories that have brought them to that particular battle. This will affect how they fight, how they react to both friend and foe and what they do in the aftermath of a battle. On a higher scale, there will be great differences between regiments, units etc., which can be vital in understanding what was happening in a particular conflict. Why did one unit break and run, while another stands it ground? Why does a unit swap sides, or put themselves into desperate circumstances to support another unit? These are important issues in the understanding of conflicts that come from the historical evidence, but which rely upon good source material. In the present case, it is important to know about the internal tensions that divided the Libyans, that coast and desert distrusted each other, that Berber and Bedouin hated each other, that urban dweller and nomad each considered the other to be degenerate. In the face of Italian invasion, they could cooperate, but this fell apart as soon as the immediate Italian threat was lifted. There was also a threat of treachery as individuals and groups settled with the Italians and accepted their authority; families who did so tended to have

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been starved into submission by the Italian blockade of the ports, and were as likely to turn on the Italians when it became expedient. However, there were individuals such as Sayyid Hilal, grandson of the founder of the Senussi Order and brother of Sayyid Ahmad, who was leader of the Senussi until September 1918. Sayyid Hilal went over to the Italians, helping to persuade tribes to surrender and the port of al-Burdi Sulaiman in May 1916. His treachery had a greater impact than merely his overt actions; he undermined the Sayyid position because he lived what the Bedouin considered a debauched life (Evans-Pritchard 1949: 129), which was a particular problem where the Senussi were an ascetic order. It is only through understanding these nuances of Libyan society that events such as the Battle of Kallaya become comprehensible. It was a small conflict, but it represented a check to westward expansion by the Senussi, who were using the period of peace following the Accords of ‘Akrama to expand their political control in Libya following the abandonment of the territory by the Ottomans. It also represented the independence of the inhabitants of the Sirtica, that they would not allow any outsiders to take what was theirs. It also represents the strength, courage and determination of the Qaddafi family, and thus has a greater significance on a national level than it does on a local level. Qaddafi visited the battlefield in 1998, but the majority of the local population knows nothing about the site and the elderly have a vague idea of what went on that is blissfully unrelated to any facts beyond that the battle took place. It also represents a foretaste of the 1969 revolution, where a Qaddafi stood against the Senussi, although the situations were very different. In 1918, the confrontation was violent and indecisive; in 1969, the confrontation was essentially peaceful but entirely decisive as the monarchy and the Senussi were swept away to be replaced by the Jamahiriya, Qaddafi’s Socialist Arab Republic. Conclusions The Battle of Kallaya was little more than a skirmish when compared to the events that preceded it, both within Libya and outside in the world of the First World War. It certainly pales into insignificance against events such as the Battle of Cheriton (Bonsall, this volume) from the English Civil War, the Battle of the Boyne (Brady et al., this volume), the Battle of Aughrim (Ferguson, this volume) and the Western Front (Fraser & Brown, this volume). However, it is a valid study because of the issues that it raises. The project was undermined by being given a false history at the start, which the archaeology on its own was not sufficient to expose; it demonstrates the limitations

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of the archaeological evidence and the critical importance of knowing and understanding the historical evidence. The researcher from the Libyan Jihad Centre, because he knew the historical evidence, exposed the weaknesses of the original report on the fieldwork. At the same time, the battle between Senussi and local tribes from the Sirtica reveals that Libya was not a united country (that would require the Italian conquest and then UN-sponsored independence in 1951). It shows clearly the fault lines within the state that still remain, and how the Italian invasion was aided by disunity amongst the Libyans; that there was disunity is less surprising than the idea that there would be unity between people scattered thinly across enormous areas. It is also possible to see the selection of elements of the historical record for political purposes, where the significance of the battle lies in the presence on the battlefield of Qaddafi’s father. This is a double-edged sword, of course. While it shows the courage of the man, the independence of the family and their participation in the events of the jihad, it could be used to show that the Qaddafis were looking out for themselves instead of fighting the jihad against the Italians, that they represent divisive or disruptive elements within the Libyan state. It explains the ambivalent attitude the Libyan authorities had towards the project, because it could be damaging to their intent of ensuring the cohesion and stability of the state. So, was there any point in conducting archaeological fieldwork on the battlefield? Would it not have been better to leave the battle to the research of the Libyan Jihad Centre with its historical evidence and oral testimonies? Certainly, that was the opinion of the Libyan Jihad Centre (Dr Habib elHasnawi, pers comm). However, there was certainly a place for the archaeological approach. The archaeological evidence gets closer to the people involved than the historical evidence does; a good example is the man firing his Carcano rifle from the saltpan, firing repeatedly from the same position in the face of fire from the ridge above him. There are also elements of the fight that are not really picked up in the historical record. The history notes that the local posse retreated off to the north-west; the archaeological record confirms this but adds the fact that it was a staged retreat in good order, shown by the cartridges that also retreat to the north-west. What does the archaeological evidence provide that does not come from the historical account? One element is that it provides an insight into the nature of the Libyan forces through the munitions recovered. This consists of obsolete rifles and ammunition provided by the Turks; and the presence of private weapons, such as the Lebel, the Remington and the flintlocks. The obsolete munitions suggest that the Turkish support for the Mujahideen was half-hearted or low priority, although the fact that one of the Moisin Nagant cartridges has a 1917 date stamp indicates recent supply from the Ottomans.

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The use of weapons such as the Remington rifle or the flintlock is testimony to the irregular nature of most of the Libyan fighters. These are all more likely to be from the local posse than from the Senussi patrol, and it shows the lack of standardisation that would be a problem in the long campaign against the Fascist Italian offensives of the 1920s and 1930s. The archaeological evidence also reveals the scale and scope of the action, showing that the violence was confined to the saltpan and that there was no pursuit of either side; once they left the saltpan, there was no further fighting. Equally, questions are raised about the figures given in the historical accounts. There is nowhere near the level of material to be expected from a fire-fight lasting several hours involving over 300 men. Nor is there any indication of human remains, despite the fact that a determined attempt was made to locate any burials in the vicinity of the saltpan. It begs the question of what happened to the 90 dead from the Senussi: they were far from home, in hostile territory and on patrol. Would they have been taken back or buried locally? The latter certainly seems not to have been the case. The archaeological investigation of the battle provided an extra dimension to the historical accounts, giving detail that is lost to the recorded history. It also provides reasons to question the historical account, indicating that the scale of the fighting is likely to have been far smaller than the official accounts state. Taken together, different strands of evidence produce a rounded account of the events of 14 November 1918 and have important lessons for the discipline of conflict archaeology. The archaeological interpretation depends upon the historical context, while the historical context must be understood in its complexities to understand the events of a battle. It is far too easy to allow a battle to become divorced from its context, as an hermetically sealed event. Battles are integral parts of historical processes, arising from the specific circumstances and having a major impact on the consequences. The archaeological evidence should never be divorced from the historical and socio-political context, and the conflict archaeologist needs to have a grasp of the relevant historical processes. The Ghosts in the Sirt Desert remain insubstantial, but at least now have a clearer story. References Ashiurakis, A. M. 1995: A Short History of the Libyan Struggle against the Italian Colonialism (1911–1970). Dar El Fergiani: Tripoli. Atkinson, D. 1996: ‘The politics of geography and the Italian occupation of Libya’, Libyan Studies 26, 71–85. Banks, I. 2001: Battle of Kallaya. Unpublished GUARD report 792: University of Glasgow, Glasgow. Cook, R., Warren, A. & Goudie, A. 1993: Desert Geomorphology. UCL Press, London. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1949: The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

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Qaddafi, M. 1998: Escape to Hell and Other Stories. Hushion House: London. Goodchild, R. G. 1954: ‘Oasis Forts of Legio III Augusta on the Routes to the Fezzan’, Proceedings of the British School in Rome 22, 46–59. Reprinted in Reynolds, J. (ed.), 1976 Libyan Studies: Select papers of the late R G Goodchild. Paul Elek: London. Penn, D. J. 2001: ‘Appendix B: report on recovered small arms ammunition and components from a battlefield site in Libya, c 1917–1918’, in Banks, I Battle of Kallaya. 19–21. Unpublished GUARD report 792: University of Glasgow, Glasgow. Pollard, T. 1999: Bu Njem, Libya. Unpublished GUARD Report F013: University of Glasgow, Glasgow. Rebuffat, R. 1989: ‘Notes sur le camp Romain de Gholaia (Bu Njem)’, Libyan Studies 20, 155–67. Wright, J. 1969: Libya. Ernest Benn Ltd: London.

THE STUDY OF SMALL FINDS AT THE 1644 BATTLE OF CHERITON JAMES BONSALL Abstract A metal detection survey over a 2.6% sample of the Registered 1644 Battlefield of Cheriton yielded 355 metallic small finds, of which 92% were directly related to the battle. An archaeological analysis of the sample emphasises the use of non-valuable small finds as an aid to understanding the location, direction and participants of battle. An appreciation of battle and the actions of warfare has been indicated via the social and functional aspects of weaponry. The finds have been assessed within their Civil War context and indicate that the presumed extent of the battlefield could be much larger than previously thought. The distribution of the finds confirms that the retreating Royalist army were pursued as they fled. Individual regiments within the armies have been identified based on find typology and distribution, to build up a coherent interpretation of the battle.

Introduction This pilot study seeks to emphasise the benefits of the detection, mapping and recovery of non-valuable small finds as an aid to understanding the spatial extent of a battlefield. The study demonstrates the benefits of a multi-disciplined approach to the 1644 Civil War Battlefield of Cheriton, near Winchester, Hampshire, United Kingdom. The ‘battlefield’ discussed here is defined by the geographical limits of the English Heritage Register of Historic Battlefields. The pilot study area concentrated on a single field (Dark Copse Field) on the battlefield. 355 non-contextual metallic small finds were recovered from the topsoil of the study area using metal detection. The analysis of these finds forms a basis for a pilot study and for future research. The metallic small finds analysis represents a body of evidence recovered systematically over an 18 year period, complemented by auger surveys, aerial photography and regression analysis of local mapping. A social context of human activity in warfare is explored through the weaponry of the soldiers to demonstrate the bloody violence of the battlefield. These studies provide new and relevant information pertaining to the archaeological understanding of the Royalist retreat from the Battle of Cheriton. The study area of Dark Copse Field is situated on the northern extent of the 454 ha Registered Battlefield, 1 km NNE of Cheriton village, Hampshire, in the south of England (Figure 1). The historic city of Winchester lies 10 km to the west, and the town of Alresford lies 3 km to the north. Dark Copse © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007

DOI: 10.1163/157407807X257359

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Fig. 1. The Registered Battlefield of Cheriton, Hampshire, United Kingdom

Field rises sharply to form a plateau, commanding an extensive view of the surrounding area. The view of the Cheriton Battlefield from Dark Copse Field is one of undulating land obscuring successive valleys. To the north and northeast, the study area is bounded by Dark Copse, a small wood from which the field is named. The study area lays on chalk bedrock, which is overlain by clay in the northern half of the field, whilst the southern half contains no clay, only a rich sub-soil. The Battle of Cheriton, despite a listing on the English Heritage Battlefield’s Register, is poorly understood from an archaeological perspective. Primary and secondary written source material has been investigated and evaluated thoroughly (Godwin 1918; Gardiner 1987; Adair 1973), but no archaeological study has occurred on the battlefield. The small finds have been identified (insofar as possible) with the aim of determining if the study area of Dark Copse Field featured in the battle as suggested by the Battlefield Register. Other objectives of the study include tracing the course of battle, addressing the issue of a disputed location for the battle and mapping the historically suggested retreat of the Royalist Army through the study area. An understanding of battlefield events has been enhanced by the recovery and distribution of small finds via metal detection to trace the battle. The study of Dark Copse Field is interdisciplinary and draws on themes devel-

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oped by the Bloody Meadows Project (Carman 1998; 1999a; 1999b) by taking a comparative landscape approach to the study of battlefields. A combination of archaeological, geographical and historical applications to a landscape has utilised a multi-disciplinary research design supplemented by biology, phenomenology, physics, social analysis and spatial analysis. Studying the material remains of warfare is an effective use of archaeology where little or no physical landscape remains are present. Battles are essentially a material phenomenon, derived from landscape, people and technology. The 1644 Battle of Cheriton was fought during the 17th century; a period of technological development that moved beyond the Medieval longbow and embraced warfare fought with pike and most significantly, gunpowder-powered shot, the material remains of which are easily detectable in the landscape. The Battle of Cheriton In 17th century England, a series of civil wars, the first from 1642–46, originated with Charles I’s attempt to convene and control Parliament. Parliament in turn attempted to limit the constitutional powers of the monarchy and both bodies wrangled over tax revenues and Church reforms (Hall & Barber 1985: 227). As Parliament changed from being an occasion to an institution, so did the conduct of war (Carlton 1992: 8). A number of violent encounters took place in the form of battles and skirmishes between the supporters of Parliament (Parliamentarians) and supporters of Charles I (Royalists). The 1644 Battle of Cheriton occurred during the middle of the first conflict. Represented in battle for the Parliamentarians, was Major-General Sir William Waller of the Southern Association, and for the Royalists, Lord Ralph Hopton, protector of the King’s strongholds in Hampshire. Hopton and Waller were great friends and professional rivals; their friendship illustrated perfectly the nature of the English Civil War, dividing families and friends alike. Prior to the Battle of Cheriton, Charles I had the offensive in the war, holding the city of Oxford and capturing Bristol in the west of the country. Parliamentary reinforcements were sent to Waller at Farnham, in Surrey. Hampshire, the only county in the south with Royalist armies, was sent a large force of volunteers from Oxford. Strategically and politically, the outcome of the war was still open in the autumn of 1643. As Waller moved his troops, London, the centre of Parliamentarian arms manufacture, lay undefended. On 27 March 1644, Hopton’s Royalist forces left Winchester Castle completely undefended with the intention of ejecting Waller’s Parliamentarian army from southern Britain. Waller, ordered to stop Hopton from taking the

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counties of Sussex and Kent (Clarendon 1888: 338), took the offensive and Parliament duly sent him ammunition and cannon. Marching from Surrey, east Hampshire, Kent, London, and Sussex, Waller’s regiments of horse and infantry joined 4,000 horse and dragoons (mounted musketeers), from Newbury, at East Meon. The Parliamentarian army of 10,000 marched towards Alresford, where Waller intended to make a stand, but Hopton’s 6,000 Royalist troops held Alresford. Waller’s forces fell back to the east of Cheriton, where they quartered for two nights as Hopton’s forces camped upon an adjacent hill. On 28 March, small skirmishes ensued, and it was independently decided by both sides to fight on the following day, 29 March 1644. Located on topographically high ground and sheltered by the hedges and thickets of local field boundaries, Waller’s Parliamentarians had a tactical advantage. The Royalists closed in on Waller’s troops and were forced to fight uphill. As Parliamentary musketeers held cover, some of the charging Royalists successfully pushed up the rising ground to find Waller’s troops waiting behind hedges and thickets. Here, the tide of battle turned, the Royalists began a retreat to the north chased by Parliamentarian musketeers. Hopton sent his Royalist artillery and some infantry north to Alresford, as the remaining infantry covered the retreat and held the line. The Royalist infantry holding the line finally abandoned their weapons and fled for safety, chased 3 km to Alresford, losing many more men on the way. In the short term, the benefits of the Battle of Cheriton were minimal; Edmund Ludlow, a contemporary Parliamentarian source, remarked “we achieved little more than the field and the reputation of the victory” (Adair 1973: 148). In the long term, the battle of Cheriton was disastrous to the royal cause (Duthy 1839: 55); the Parliamentarians had destroyed the remnants of the King’s Southern Army, which would later have a knock-on effect by lifting the Royalist blockade of Gloucester (Newman 1990: 27). Cheriton had altered the “whole scheme of the king’s counsels” (Clarendon 1888: 338), and became the watershed point of the war. Instead of holding the offensive, Charles I was forced to fight a defensive war whilst the Parliamentarians held the initiative (Woolrych 1961: 55). Cheriton forced the Royalists out of the south to Oxford and the west, just as the Battle of Marston Moor forced them out of the north of England three months later (Newman 1985: 65). Parliament was in control of southern England, Waller was sent to campaign in the west of the country, but returned south in an attempt to force Charles I out of his Oxford stronghold just three months after Cheriton. Had the Royalists won, Charles I would have had the supreme force in Hampshire, Sussex and Kent (Godwin 1918: 25), possibly even taking the Parliamentarian stronghold of London.

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Metal Detection Survey The topsoil of all fields within the parish of Cheriton was systematically surveyed via metal detectors over a period of 18 years. The topsoil metal detection survey recovered various finds from the parish, including continental Anglo-Saxon jewellery of a previously unknown typology and Bronze Age daggers. Controlled collecting and recording techniques were applied in order to increase the value of the archaeological information. A systematic approach was used for the metal detection survey, combining the principles of fieldwalking and geophysics to give an unbiased survey, determined by the extent of the field boundaries, rather than the judgement of the surveyors. Methodology Between 1978–1996, more than 800 man-hours were spent surveying the study area of Dark Copse Field. The study area was surveyed twice, with a prolonged period of time elapsing between each survey. Transects were laid out across the field at 5 m intervals. Two surveyors used the same instrument consistently through both survey periods. The metal detector had a penetration depth of up to 0.15 m. An auger survey established that the penetration depth of 0.15 m falls within the topsoil of the study area (topsoil ranges from 0.11–0.36 m); the recovery of metallic finds at this depth is unlikely to disturb any potential underlying archaeological contexts. Each find was mapped to within 10 m. The survey was restricted to the recovery of metallic finds, identified by a metal detector, in the topsoil and did not take into account stone cannon balls, ‘grapeshot’ of pebbles, chalk, or other material artefacts. Plough movement is likely to have disturbed the finds from their original context. The metallic finds recovered from the study area were examined as a pilot study, representing a 1.8% sample of the total area surveyed in the parish of Cheriton and a 2.6% sample of the Registered Battlefield area. Archaeological Analysis of the Metal Finds The analysis of the finds sought to establish the nature, form, date and function of the finds assemblage from the study area. A process of examination and quantification identified attributes and condition, date, form, function, material/fabric type, method of manufacture, known parallels and source where possible, which were entered into GIS compatible database. The 355 piece assemblage of metallic finds recovered from the study area dated from the Bronze Age (Taylor 1985: 275) to the late 20th century, with

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the majority dating to the 17th century (Table 1). All finds were examined regardless of date, to establish a comprehensive database for future research in the study area. The finds discussed here relate directly to the Battle of Cheriton and can be given a depositional date (i.e. the date they were discarded, dropped, lost or thrown), of 29 March 1644, no earlier than 8 a.m. and no later than 6 p.m. It is rare in archaeology that such a precise time can be placed upon the deposition of any artefacts, as finds analysis tends to rely upon terminus post quem or a typological sequence. The palimpsest of the landscape has been preserved through the finds deposited that day. Find Type Musket Shot Pistol Shot Armour

Frequency

Date

241 59 12

A.D. 1644 A.D. 1644 Early 17th c.–A.D. 1644 A.D. 1643–1799 Post-Medieval Various (A.D. 1400–1800) Post-Medieval Late Medieval Undated 20th c. A.D. 1644 Post-Medieval A.D. 1585 17th c. 1599–1500 B.C. Post-Medieval Medieval A.D. 1644 Post-Medieval

Horse Shoe Unidentified Iron Horse Harness Buckle

8 7 6

Boot Iron Cannon Barrel Slag Plough Fragments Powder Charge Horse Pendant Coin Lead Seal Dagger Hinge Plates Teaspoon Powder Flask Cannon Ball

3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Material Lead Lead Iron Iron Iron Copper alloy, Pewter Lead Lead Predominantly Iron Iron Lead Copper alloy Silver Lead Bronze Iron Silver Lead Lead

Table 1. Frequency of find types within the Study Area Historical Context of the Civil War Finds The provenance of the metallic finds was determined by comparative evidence to verify the extent of military and/or battlefield finds (Blackmore 1990: 7–63; Cherry 1977: 99; Crossley 1975: 13; Emberton 1997: 23; Margeson 1993: 25; Moorhouse 1971: 46–59; Murray 1937: Plate XVII, Fig. 11). Experts were also consulted from the Medieval Department at the British Museum, the Archaeological Sciences Department at the University of Bradford, the

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Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds and the Royal Armouries Museum, Fort Nelson, Portsmouth. 3% of the metallic finds recovered from the study area were thought to be non-battlefield related and included a Bronze Age Wessextype dagger and Medieval horse harness buckles. Of the battlefield-related finds, 92% represent projectiles, cannon, armour and powder cases which can be directly linked to the 1644 Battle of Cheriton. Royalist infantrymen “threw down their arms, and fled confused” recalls a secretary to Parliamentarian Colonel James Carr, as the final order to retreat was given (Adair 1973: 135). At the Civil War battlefield of Marston Moor (1644), weapons discarded on the battlefield or clasped in the hands of the dead, were picked up by the victors, and reused in later battles (Newman 1981: 127). The life of a 17th century soldier was a hand-to-mouth existence and he would have thought little about picking over the weapons and armour of a corpse. In the Dark Copse Field study area, no weapons were recovered other than projectiles; it is therefore likely that functional items such as musket, pistol or pike, were removed and reused. No military exercises or encounters are known to have taken place at Cheriton before or after 1644. We can therefore assume that all military equipment can be given a depositional date of 29 March 1644, and that its manufacture occurred some weeks or months before that. Cannon barrel fragments were the exception to this, as cannon were used continually from the Tudor period. Prior to the Civil War in England, all military arms conformed to patterns held by the Ministry of Ordnance (Blackmore 1990: 6). The uniformity of both armies allows for the successful identification of military items, although no distinction can be made between Royalist and Parliamentarian items. 87% of the battlefield finds from the study area were projectiles fired by musket and pistol, which account for the largest grouping of find types. The distribution map indicates a noticeable linear trend of projectiles across the study area from south-west to north-east (Figure 2). The distribution of all recovered finds reveals that horse buckles, pendants, plates of armour and many other artefacts were also located along the same linear trend on either side of a field boundary that dates from at least 1838–1940. The remains of the field boundary are visible as a topographical low relief feature running across the study area, at the break of slope on the edge of the plateau. Regression analysis, topographic profiles and aerial photography have identified further relict field boundaries across the study area that correspond with less frequent linear find spot trends. Potential boundaries may be inferred from other find spot trends, where corresponding features are absent in the existing archaeological record, which implies that find spot trends can be used to identify old field boundaries that pre-date Ordnance Survey and tithe

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Fig. 2. Distribution of recovered Musket and Pistol shot find spots

mapping. These trends suggest a new method of mapping the field boundaries of a battlefield at the time of battle. The trends suggest that the study area contained 5 separate divisions in 1644 (Figure 3). Field boundaries are important architectural features of the battlefield; Parliamentarian Lieutenant Elias Archer recorded that both armies used hedges and thickets as cover from enemy fire on Cheriton Battlefield (Adair 1973: 135). Projectiles with impact marks recovered from the linear find spot trends could suggest an impact upon human bone or field boundaries, indicating areas where troops were stationed. The ploughzone is an important factor when discussing small finds evidence within an agricultural context. The study area of Dark Copse Field has been used as arable land since at least 1838; arable ploughing is the most common type of formation process affecting archaeological resources in the countryside (Boismier 1991: 17). All recovered projectiles (and a large number of other finds) were