Two Men In A Trench: Battlefield Archaeology - The Key To Unlocking The Past - Hardcover

Oliver, Neil; Pollard, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718144740 ISBN 13: 9780718144746

Publisher: Michael Joseph, 2002

Synopsis

"Battlefield archaeology allows you to touch what history talks about; it starts where the written stories stop" - Tony Pollard In each chapter of TWO MEN IN A TRENCH, Tony and Neil visit the site of a major British battle, and carry out a full archaeological investigation. Sometimes they will find artefacts that bring the battle vividly back to life; in other cases the evidence may totally revise the accepted version of events. Soldiers do not pass through fields of conflict like shadows - they leave evidence which modern archaeological techniques, including 3-D models of the landscape, can interpret.

About this title

Review:

Two Men in a Trench is the richly illustrated companion to the sprightly BBC television history programme of the same name. Despite announcing in their introduction that battlefield archaeology is "too exciting for words" Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver--the soi-disant Jamie Olivers of archaeology--provide an articulate and engaging account of their tour of six major British battlefield sites.

Closely following the formula (and transcripts) of the series, each chapter begins with an impressively succinct historical outline of the battle in question. The duo then present a detailed investigation of the site, revealing along the way just what a tricky but exciting old business archaeology can be. For example, in Barnet, the scene of a bloody Yorkist victory in 1471, the duo finds that a modern golf course has altered the landscape so dramatically that it is virtually impossible to find any traces of the battle. The hunt for a medieval grave-pit in Shrewsbury also ends in disappointment. However, at Flodden their excavations unearth some quite compelling new material to explain how the English vanquished the Scottish king James IV in 1513. While hardly in the same league as Richard Holmes or Simon Schama, Pollard and Oliver clearly know their stuff and their zest for the grubby, hands-on graft of archaeology is admirably communicated here. --Travis Elborough

Review:

"Battlefield archaeology allows you to touch what history talks about; it starts where the written stories stop" - Tony Pollard"

About this edition

• Publisher: Michael Joseph
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0718144740
• ISBN 13: 9780718144746
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352