The Miller's Tale - Episode 13

Episode 13 - in which Mike finally gets to catch up with former Dux Brit partner-in-crime and rock god Andy Hawes, in a wide-ranging discussion covering everything from understanding bias in history to digging for Time Team at Sutton Hoo. This chat was recorded on the 12th June and has taken a little longer to edit than I really wanted, but here it is.

Useful links:

• Sutton Hoo
• Wargaming the Age of the Anglo-Saxons event (July 26-7)
• Time Team
• The Sutton Hoo 2024 dig parts 1, 2, 3 (on site), 4 (micro-excavation of the Bromeswell Bucket)
• Live updates from this year's dig parts 1, 2
• Book for Posh Lard 2025 here

And just to prove you probably have seen the Sutton Hoo helmet, here it is in all its glory...

 

Private Friedrich Brandr, King's German Legion, 1792? - 18 June 1815

A fascinating news piece for those who missed it today.

From the Independent (the original is in the Sunday Times but I don't link to articles behind paywalls if I can avoid it):

The 200-year-old skeleton found under a car park on the site of the Battle of Waterloo has been identified as a Hanoverian with a hunchback, fighting to liberate his homeland from Napoleonic occupation. 

Military historian Gareth Glover believes the soldier to be Friedrich Brandt, 23, a private in the King’s German Legion of George III, who was killed by a musket ball that was still lodged between his ribs when he was found in 2012.

I love it when my military history and archaeology hobbies come together :D 

WW1's Tunnels of Death: The Big Dig

Ok - how did I fail to notice this was on????

A two part Channel 5 documentary that combines two of my favourite subjects - military history and archaeology. A very very big archaeological dig on a massive trench system in the vicinity of Messines, scene of some very heavy fighting in 1917 and the detonation of some massive mines.

Some of the finds are stunning - shells with time fuzes, incredible trench earthworks, stashes of German grenades....

Part 1 is available online here.
Part 2 is available online here.
(You probably have to be in the UK.)

Re an archaeological question

Thanks for everyone who answered my question on Sunday.

For those who are wondering, I picked for mine one of the more plausible sites of the battle of Mons Graupius. I know there's a whole bunch of candidate sites, but there are a couple of fascinating theories (see the Roman Scotland site for one) that given unlimited funds it would be great fun to explore.

More later, since I have an essay deadline of 5am :D

An archaeology question

My assignment for my course this week is quite an interesting one, and I thought I'd share:

Sit back and think of what [tomb, memorial or] battlefield you hope someday to visit. This can be from any time period and from any part of the world. Explain your choice.

I've already made my choice, which I'll explain in a later post.

Which would YOU pick?

Essays, archaeology and history

Apologies for a slightly terse and late post today - I didn't leave work till 7, and I had an essay crisis :D

This online course thing is hard work. It's only 750 words, peer review of five other students work, and about an hour of video lectures a week, but I'm quite surprised how much effort goes into that. It is, after all, nearly three decades since I last did any work that could be described as academic, and my degree's in a subject which really didn't require serious essay writing, namely Computer Science

I'm currently being awfully tempted by DigVentures 'Dirty Weekends' - well, with a name like that, who wouldn't be! A weekend (or a week) doing hands-on archaeology with the pros. I'm really sorry I missed a shot at this weekend, which is a weekend with the Geophysics team at Leiston Abbey in Suffolk - I could have been an archaeologist and a computer geek at the same time!

It's odd - when I was a teenager, I hated essays, and I didn't get history, other than the bits of it I liked through being a wargamer. Nowadays, as I take great delight in pointing out to my son, I write more on my blog most days than he does for homework (about ten times more tonight, in fact!). I have a theory that proper history, by which I don't mean a dry regurgitation of Sir's list of facts about whatever period we're on this term, is difficult for younger kids. History is about people, when it comes down to it, and there is a degree to which you can't necessarily understand what motivates the movers and shakers of the period you're studying unless and until you have the emotional maturity to at least understand where they're coming from.

Professor Mick Aston, July 1, 1946-June 24, 2013

L-R: Tony Robinson, Professor Mick Aston, Guy
de la Bedoyere.

It's hard to have an interest in historical wargaming without, obviously, having an interest in history. It's not a very big step from there, especially when you live in a country steeped in the artefacts of history, to an interest in archaeology.

As such, you can imagine my considerable delight when, 20 years ago, the Channel 4 show Time Team popped up on British TV screens. For the majority of its career, it effectively had a two-pronged front. The charismatic and genial Tony Robinson was, if you like, the 'everyman' presenter, asking the questions we the viewers wanted to ask. His long suffering and expert foil was the wild-haired, rainbow-sweatered Professor Mick Aston, the team's Archaeological Consultant. His aim in participating in the show, to quote from a recent interview, was:

"[...] to get as many people as possible interested in archaeology, because we [in the profession] all enjoy it and think it interesting. That was my personal aim… and on that basis I think it is a success."

Time Team's had a lot of flak, and sadly deservedly so, in recent years, for Channel 4's dumbing down and mishandling of the last few seasons (read archaeologist Raksha Dave's take on it for an idea), and in fact I fully understand why Mick chose to leave the show. But, certainly from where I'm sitting, with the perspective of 20 years of the show to look back at, he succeeded in his initial aim. In another interview he protests that he doesn't feel he has a legacy to leave, but I think that looking at the obituary thread on my current short archaeology course's forum, he would be wrong. There are 37,000 people doing that course, and I would suspect that a surprisingly high percentage can cite Time Team as a reason, even from outside the UK.

Let's not forget that he was a professional archaeologist outside of Time Team, too, and a published author, and as such, respected and missed by the archaeological community as well as those of us who just enjoyed our Sunday afternoon fix of something that actually engaged our brains and our curiosity.

Thanks, Mick, for making me notice the things beneath my feet. Rest in peace.

Catchup...

Having been a little side-tracked by Chain of Command-related stuff, and being suddenly inspired to write the next heraldry post, I should catch you up on the rest of what I've done this week!

The 15mm Brits and Germans are progressing slowly - the British have painted helmets and faces, and aren't that far from done. I also have a batch of Shermans to paint, but due to wanting to run another CoC playtest on Monday, the deadline for those has moved a bit! I've just picked up some MiG pigments to use with those.

I'm involved in a game of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG, Edge of Empire... over Skype, of all things. It's being run by Rich Jones, with Neil Shuck (of Meeples and Miniatures fame) and Mike Hobbs (Gripping Beast's SAGA ambassador) among the players. The short review? Fantastic system - it's very much an RPG, not a wargame - very little need for figures, and as Mike puts it, it uses the best HD display of all - the human brain. Fortunately for my already busy schedule, we're working on playing only alternate Wednesdays, which, since that's my essay deadline....

My archaeology course is on week 3 (of 8). I'm just about caught up, having been a bit last-minute over weeks 1 and 2: I have a 750 word essay to submit by Wednesday which I'm hoping to get done tomorrow. And so far? One essay peer-reviewed, maximum marks, and it's great fun and I'm learning quite a bit.

Learning more about Archaeology

Just popped up on Facebook via the Dig Village folks is this - "Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets", a course via Coursera taught by Sue Alcock of Brown University. Truth to tell, I've always been kind of tempted, if I ever had the time and the money, to do a second degree in archaeology or history - this is particularly tempting living as we do on the edge of the Fens, with Flag Fen but a few miles away, and the local college does in fact do one. I am, however, perhaps getting a bit old to make much practical use of it :D

Anyway, the Coursera course looks kind of fun - it's 8 weeks from the beginning of June, and here's the introductory video. It's free, and entirely online, so...



Watch this space - I'll keep folks updated on any interesting titbits.

"The First World War From Above"

I\d have left this post until I got to the appropriate point in my holiday narrative, but since the corresponding BBC iPlayer programme expires this coming Saturday, I thought I should draw it to folks' attention now.

"The First World War From Above" is a BBC 4 documentary that looks at the Great War trenches from the perspective of ... well, above! It uses a lot of reconnaissance photos from World War 1, as well as some recently discovered footage shot by a Fenchman, Jacques Trolley de Prévaux, from an airship over the front lines after the end of the war in the summer of 1919.

Some excellent footage, some very neatly done computer reconstructions, and some interesting stories. Well worth a watch.

La Musée Des Temps Barbare

The museum

One of the reasons for the silence on here of late is that we've been on vacation - specifically a week in France and then a week pootling along the South Coast of England. Quite a lot of that vacation threw up some wargaming-related stuff, starting with la Musée des Temps Barbare in Marle, to the north-west of Paris (in WW1 trench country).

Assorted recovered and
reconstructed weaponry of the
period

The museum is built in a three-storey disused watermill plus extensive grounds. In the mill there are displays of archaeological remains from the Dark Ages (Frankish/Merovingian era) as well as copious historical wall displays covering the history of the period in France and some marvellous models of Frankish buildings etc.

Detail of a model of a Frankish village

On the downside it's all in French, and certainly for our visit, the curator was (I suspect) not confident enough of his English to be much help. As it was, we got by with a combination of my (passable) French and a dictionary. I even managed a conversation about me not being a archaeologist but a big fan of the period and a wargamer, and he mentioned that they had had the Ermine Street Guard visit for a reenactment day. 

One of the larger Merovingen huts.

The awesome bit, in terms of the sheer amount of work that must have gone into it, is outside. Out the back, you cross a bridge over the mill leat, and find yourself in a small (half a dozen buildings) Merovingen village. It's all beautifully constructed out of period materials, based on their best guesses as to what the buildings might have looked like from archaeological evidence.  

A smaller hut.

We spent about twenty minutes checking out the buildings, with James (my son) taking copious photos (since he'd just discovered how much fun my DSLR is) - most of the shots in this article are his.  We were, it has to be said, pretty blown away by the workmanship.

And then we double-checked the French handout we'd been given, and realised that this wasn't, as we'd thought, the larger of the two historical reconstruction areas, but the smaller. By quite a long way.

One of the main farm buildings.
This was unusual in having a non-
period interior, being set with
wooden chairs and tables,
evidently for talks.

Across a small stretch of field and behind a hedge and wall, we came to the other reconstructed area. 

A Frankish farm. 

Twenty freaking buildings worth of Frankish farm!

A smaller house, showing the wattle
and daub construction.

Again, based on archaeological findings, and painstakingly reconstructed down to the smallest detail (I was particularly taken with the various almost casual arrangements of animal bones in places where they might realistically have been dumped). 

The bit that made me smile (and instruct James to take several photos of) was a display of naturally dyed wool, hanging both inside and out of one of the buildings. If like me, you struggle to be sure that your Dark Ages armies are painted in convincing colours, then you might find the following images rather useful.

So. There you have it. I strongly recommend a visit, but do take a dictionary, a good camera, and someone who speaks decent French.