Battlefields

The preparation of the Battlefields Register, published in consultation form in September 1994, involved not only a review of documentary evidence but also use of the techniques of landscape archaeology. The Battle of Blore Heath in 1459, for example, took place astride the then main road as the Lancastrians blocked the southward passage of a Yorkist army. The field identification of a slight hollow way respected by the ridge and furrow topography of the former Blore Great Field located the focal point of the battlefield and corroborated the evidence of a memorial cross to Lord Audley, leader of the Lancastrians.

At the Battle of Lansdown Hill in 1643, a Royalist army made a frontal attack up a steep hill against a Parliamentarian force. Against all the odds, the Royalists forced the Parliamentarians back to a second line of defence - a stone wall back from the crest of the hill. This much we know from contemporary sources:

The Enemy...drew his whole strength behind that wall, wch hee lined well with muskeiteires, and in severall places broke down breaches very broade that his horse might charge if theire were occasion, wth breaches guarded by his cannon and bodyes of pikes. (Colonel Slingsby's relation of the battle of Lansdown and Roundway Down, July 5th, Clarendon MSS, 23, 1738 (2))

Landsdown Hill Battlefield, Photograph of repaired wall (JPEG = 35245 bytes)

The location of the battlefield is corroborated by the field identification in the modern landscape of a stone wall with repaired breaches some 400m south of another memorial (in English Heritage guardianship), this time to Sir Bevil Grenvill.

The relationship between documentary and archaeological sources is sometimes rather tenuous, especially with regard to battlefields, which can arouse strong emotions among researchers and the public. The story of Bosworth Field is a case in point. The documentary sources are surprisingly helpful. They identify key landscape features and their relationship to the location of the battle, but there has been little rigorous landscape archaeology to corroborate this evidence. A joint English Heritage and Leicestershire County Council working party is currently defining a brief for better work which is likely to add significant new evidence to the debate. Analysis of the landscape at Naseby (to be published shortly in Medieval Archaeology) is the most comprehensive piece of battlefield archaeology yet undertaken in England: documentary, cartographic, topographic, antiquarian, and artefactual evidence has been combined to locate beyond any reasonable doubt not only the location of the battle but also the specific enclosures within and around which the battle was fought. Work of this sort is an essential prerequisite of successful and positive management and interpretation.

In America, a wide array of archaeo-forensic techniques has been used in the analysis of the Battle of Little Big Horn (Past Worlds: The Times atlas of archaeology, 4, p45). By tracing the movement of individual rifles through their ballistic signatures, the course of the fighting has been reconstructed with astonishing accuracy. Palaeopathology has allowed the harrowing experiences of individual soldiers to be reconstructed, but research of this nature raises a number of moral as well as academic issues. Does this sort of voyeuristic approach actually add to our understanding of the past or the present? Is the interpretation and design studio (so valuable in informing the presentation of information but often without addressing the broader issues) the proper place for battlefield research? It is by no means clear how battlefield archaeology can be related to other academic priorities, or how the archaeological study of English battlefields will develop in the future. The nature of the subject matter, however, is such that it will undoubtedly attract private resources, possibly on a large scale. Perhaps the most constructive role which English Heritage can play is a curatorial one - promoting professional standards for research and helping to ensure that irreplaceable evidence is not needlessly destroyed either by development or by ill-conceived research.