Dear Paul,
Just a brief thought about WW II archaeology before rushing off to catch a
train. There was a reasonable amount of archaeological activity in the UK
during the war; despite paper shortages many local journals continued to
publish and there was certainly some excavation on defence related sites. I don
not have the totle to hand but some sites were collected and published by (I
believe) Cyril Fox. Indeed one of the major finds of Iron Age metalwork in
Britain was found at llyn Cerrig Bach on the island of Angelsey when the runway
was being constructed at RAF Valley. (New fieldwork next month when the runway
is relaid and new drainage installed). One check on activity is to go to some
on-line library resources (e.g. FirstSearch) and check what archaeology was
published in the war, and, if possible, what happened to individual
periodicals. In some cases you could not tell there was a war on.
Now we have the archaeology of war - there is a campaign to record ephemeral
defence sites in the UK such as the lines of pill-boxes thrown up in 1940-41.
Its a good topic - have fun with it.
Peter Northover,
Dept. of Materials, University of Oxford
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