Gone Medieval - When War Veterans Excavate the Anglo-Saxons

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Archaeology has a lot to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the so-called Dark Ages, and every now and then new sites are found in places where we previously knew nothing about the people who once lived there.In today’s Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman goes to the Ministry of Defence land on Salisbury Plain to visit precisely one such site. There she meets Richard Osgood, senior archaeologist for the MoD who is excavating a seventh-century cemetery as part of Operation Nightingale which gives excavation opportunities to injured service personnel and veterans as part of their rehabilitation.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited by Seyi AdaobI and produced by Rob Weinberg.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. The early medieval period was long known as the Dark Ages because compared to the time before and after, we thought we knew relatively little about it. That's certainly the case for the written records, but archaeology has an awful lot to contribute. And every now and then, new sites are found in places where we knew nothing about the people who once lived there.

Right now, I'm driving across the Wiltshire countryside to visit precisely one of those sites. I'm going up on land belonging to the Ministry of Defence on Salisbury Plain to visit Richard Osgood, who is a senior archaeologist for the MOD. Right now, he's excavating a 7th century cemetery. Not only that, but this is part of a fantastic programme called Operation Nightingale, which Richard was one of the founders of. This program gives excavation opportunities to injured service personnel and veterans

as part of their rehabilitation. I've just got to find the trench now. I've been given a postcode and been told to look for the old tank washdown so fingers crossed, I don't go the wrong way, but make it there safely. I should let you know that there's a very windy day out here today and we're right up on an exposed plane

so there might be a little bit of wind noise in the background. All right, so here we are. Richard, hello. Hello, Kat. Welcome to Salisbury Plain. Thank you so much and thank you for inviting me. This looks absolutely brilliant. So I can see you've got a beautiful open chalky trench and I can see all the graves. So you've been here for a few days now, have you? This is the end of the second week and you're right, chalk is the best geology because you can see the archaeology poking out of your big dark stains up against this white background

and we've, yeah, two weeks we found quite a bit. Fantastic. And now let's just talk a little bit about where we are, We are on Ministry of Defence Land here, aren't we? And you are a senior archaeologist for the MOD. Is that right? That is right. That sounds really grand. There are four of us.

But yes, technically, that is what I am. My job's brilliant. I love it because I've got the best train set in the country. You've got such diverse archaeology from really quite early prehistoric through to monuments of the modern day. And I think that's what really grips me. It's really diverse. Different set of challenges.

It's busy and noisy and different every day. And I've never had a Monday thinking, oh, no, it's work. and that's why I've stayed here for so long. Fantastic. That sounds absolutely brilliant. Now, so that also means then that every now and then something like this turns up on your desk and this site here that we're on now.

Tell me how this site was discovered. It's really interesting that it sounds strange that the military presence preserves the archaeology, but it does. It stops deep ploughing, it stops housing estates. But there are developments, and the site we're on at the moment was going to be the site of the new Royal Artillery Museum.

But for various reasons, it never happened. One of the complexities of this site is join the evaluation process in the part of the planning process they were putting together. They found an archaeological site that needed work before it could get built. And we are on that site today and dealing with the legacy of that project. So I can see, obviously, we've got all these graves here then. How soon did you realize that this was an early medieval site? The work that Wessex archaeology did as part of that museum assessment

found these dark stains in the soil. had a quick look in them, found there were bones. And it just seemed to be the perfect location for a cemetery of that early medieval period. It's on the high ground. It's got wonderful vistas that you and I are looking at at the moment. It's a beautiful location above the river valley. And it had all those elements you'd expect to see in the cemetery of that time period. Plus, they were arranged pretty neatly.

So I think we were fairly confident. But it's only when you get into them that you really know what you're dealing with. And that's what we did last year. Yeah. So you started this last year. And you're sort of right the way through your second season. season. I'm going to ask you more about these graves than what you're finding out, but this is very much sort of work in progress here, isn't it? But I also want to very quickly touch on the

people who I hear working with you. This is all part of something really quite special that you are part of founding called Operation Nightingale. Tell me about that project. This is a project we've started in 2011, so it's been going a while now, and it's basically using the powers of archaeology to aid recovery of wounded servicemen and women, and that can be a long-term challenge going back for quite some time. We've got a Falklands War veteran on at the moment. And you and I love archaeology. We know why it's so good because you're in beautiful locations often. We're certainly on one today. And you're finding stuff. You're concentrating really hard. You can have that community feeling. We all feel part of a team, don't we? You think

dig t-shirts, all that sort of stuff. I have a couple of beers around a campfire in the evening. It brings all those components together in a small location. And I think it's just so restorative. I've never been in a conflict zone. I'm pretty thankful about that. But, you know, just from plugging myself in after COVID, you know, all those drawbacks. There's something nourishing the soul about these sites. And it sounds strange that you're on a site with a load of human remains and it's helping people with modern traumas. But it does. There's something about it. So we've got people from the Falklands War from Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, all these kind of traumatic areas. And they've all come together as a team. And I think that's key, being part of a team and being

friends, being human. Absolutely. And I'm going to have a little chat with some of your team a bit later on and see how they're getting on. But let's talk a little bit more about this site then. So I've already had a little bit of a sneaky peak here. So I've had a little look and obviously our listeners can't can't see it. But one of the big features that you've got here is you've got some quite round circles turned up in this soil, didn't they? Tell me about those. The initial work here was a geophysical survey, so magnetometry. And the main thing turned up with those were two big circular ditches, ring ditches. Now, automatically you might think there's going to be early bronze age in date, those tumuli burial mounds, the round barrows. But they had clearly a central grave. And when we

stripped the topsail off onto the chalk and it's not very deep the topsoil here is it you know we're talking about 15 to 20 centimetres it's not deep at all that immediately exposed these circles but the ditches are small and those are in fact the ring ditches of what turned out to be seventh century burial mounds with a central grave in a pit and there are two of those so it almost looks like a like a squashed minion or something's two little round features and next to those on the western side there are graves that seem to respect them and they're much more your traditional elongated rectangles all in a row It looked a bit like a zebra crossing when we took the tops all off with the white chalk and the black graves against it. And that's what we've been working to.

Those two features, I think, are significant. They are prominent. They're on the high ground. They are things that are really important. And I think the others are respecting them. They're citing on those two features. So does that mean that they came first? So we have these two almost like founding burials, do you think?

And then the rest are associating themselves with those two? I think so. I think so. That's certainly the working hypothesis. There's one fly in our ointment, which we may be chatting about later, but yeah, we're certainly thinking that those two are prominent. Neither of those have had burial goods in them. They are of adult males, who seem to be quite big

from the initial assessment that Jackie McKinley has done for us. It might be that the actual graves themselves are the significant item. They don't need grave goods because they've got a burial mound with this wonderful vista. So I think they're going to be the earliest burial things. We do have some earlier features at Neolithic pits, but from a burial thing in this particular location, yes there are Bronze Age burial mounds very close to us because it's Salisbury Plain there's stuff everywhere

but this early medieval point of view yes I think there's the earliest if I'm betting we will try and do some radio carbon dates but we think they'll be quite early and mid 7th century I'm guessing now that is a really interesting point in time and it's a period really where

it's all in the archaeology it's all in the graves and really one of the reasons why we can't say so much about these sites like this one is that we don't have a written record, really. There's nothing really, is there about this area that tells us about what's going on in that time? No, that's right. There's a lot of supposition based on very good theories. We're assuming the settlements aren't very close to the burial grounds. We're thinking

there are going to be in the adjacent river valleys and places like Fyldine and Abington, good Saxon names in the Doomsday Book and, I guess, a longstanding settlement. But that's guesswork. We've got no structure to support it. We do just have the burials. But they tell the story, don't they? They tell their own story. We can look at their teeth. We'll see where these people are from maybe, whether they grew up around here or whether they're people that moved in, what they're at, whether they're related, you know, the progress in science means that we can study their bones, we can find familial relationships through the DNA. And I mean, how exciting is that, those prospects that we've got in the early medieval period now because of breakthroughs in science.

And that's a key reason for curation of these in a proper environment. And of course, what you're quite lucky with here as well is that the bones are pretty well preserved. So you should be able to get quite a lot out of them, shouldn't you? Yeah, fingers crossed. They do look pretty good. This heat isn't helping. It's absolutely roasting out here at the moment. And I think it's going to get worse.

So the key thing is to get them out in a timelier fashion as we possibly can. But you're quite right. The bones are pretty good. The teeth are excellent in many of these. And that always impresses the people to visit the site that the teeth are so good. Compared to maybe their own and there's not a filling in sight, luckily. So yeah, hopefully we'll get some great information from these. And of course, the other thing which you've touched upon briefly already,

is that some of these, not all of them, but some of them do have a grave goods as well. So that's obviously a key to things like the dating, but actually also to tell us a little bit about some of these individuals. So can you talk me through some of the graves? Actually, first of all, how many graves are we talking about here? How many have you found so far? Last year we had 22 burials in 21 graves, the discrepancy being that one of the graves had two people. And this year, we're pretty similar. We're 19 graves. And that is, well, I say that now. But behind us, there's somebody turning up a real jumbler bone. So I don't know, that could be changing. But when we started this, it was a 19. graves of 20 people. Not all of them have grave goods. It's probably only about a third, and we've had quite a few iron knives. The burials tend to be quite gender-specific, we see. So we have looked

to the grave goods separately to the human remains. Tends to be that if they've got jewelry, they're female. I'm wanting to find a chap with a bracelet and a woman with a sword, but it simply hasn't happened yet, but maybe, maybe, never know. So this time we've got quite a few iron knives. You've come on a perfect day because there's a lovely burial at the top. I'm going to say that I think she's probably a female, she's quite fine featured, and the bones seem to indicate it. A little blue bead that's emerged, she has a knife, but most excitingly, she's got an antler comb. And these things are so exciting. I can never see too many of these things. Even if they're not decorated, it's such a human thing, isn't it?

It's a basic thing of looking after oneself, and that goes into the afterlife. It's a wonderful thing. So that's one of the graves. And the person excavating the grave is getting a lot of grave envy from the archaeologist near her, because she's finding some great things. And last year, they really found lots of things, the two guys with her, but they're not quite so lucky this year but you know there's the odd iron knife appearing there as well so that's probably the most exciting one today but then we've had another one found by two of our military veterans including a chap who was in the forklunds war on h-mous glomorgon so a ship that was hit by a missile

so he's just started a degree at bradford university but he and the woman he's working with who is a serving military person i found again i think it's a female burial but with possibly a purse mount a knife and the most exquisite wetstone there's again another thing you can't have too many wetstones This is a beautiful, smooth piece of rock. It's a rectangular piece, probably about 10 centimetres in length. And it's not local stones. So these are things that I've been put into the grave. They've come from distance.

And we found that time and again here that lots of the goods here have come from far away. The necklace made of carry shell, possibly from the Red Sea, the amethyst beads we had last year again from a distance. Think about your carnelian bead. You can't get away from that. This is an object with its narrative, and it's come from a distance, and it means something to that society into the people that put it in the grave.

And it's a really exciting find. I've desperately tried to find some garnet. Because it might have come from Afghanistan. And from the story of the journey that these people have been from and been into Afghanistan is too perfect. We haven't sadly got that. But who knows. You still have time.

We still have time. Yeah. But what's interesting about that, I think, is that this is, for all we know so far, this isn't a particularly remarkable sight. No offense. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. But, you know, this is just one of many. Okay, so we've got maybe 50, 60 people here.

Who knows. It's not a big. big town. It's not a particularly wealthy site, probably, but you are still getting these exotic trade goods in the 7th century in places like this. And I think that's typical. We've got about, yes, you're right,

not many people here, I don't know, 50 to 70 minimations, but that's part of a pattern over the last 10 years. There's probably in this small region along the Avon Valley up towards Bullford and Tidworth and Amesbury, you probably had about 500 early medieval burials that found in the last decade. And that means we can really begin

to extrapolate more. And each of those has had elements of clear trade and elements moving in from distance. We've got our amethyst that's been complete carry shells that have come in from elsewhere. And I think we're going to be able to tell more of a story by analysing a bigger group rather than just our 50 here in isolation. And that's what excites me is that this is all part of a story locally. You're completely correct. These are not atypical.

But that in many ways is the benefit because they will all join together. And one thing that struck me as well when you were just walking me across the site earlier is that you've had children's burials as well and especially one that seemed to have quite a lot of grave goods. Tell me about that particular grave. That was really poignant and you can't work on a cemetery site without it being full of pathos. And when you're working through this,

respect has got to be at the forefront of your mind because these are all human beings and I think it's wonderful to watch the team working here because they are incredibly respectful. Now, there's something added about working on the remains of someone so young. There's a small burial here of somebody we think probably between the ages of two and four so a really young individual.

But the grave cut is wonderful. It's only just over a metre in length. But it's really deep. And you've seen some of the graves here are quite shallow for the adults. This is really deep. We're talking 45, 50 centimetres. So above and beyond what necessarily would be functional.

And the bones didn't really survive particularly well. It was a bit of a skull, a bit of femurs. But a company with just gorgeous jewelry. And for me, that's really poignant because it just shows the love and the reverence of the people that put her, we think, is, into the ground. And for the people doing the work here on site,

there's an extra layer to that, because many of them are moms or dads themselves, and that just gives you a lump in your throat, doesn't it? And it's all about very human. And you are the first people to see this in 1400 years, and the last person to see this, could well have been a morning parent. And I don't know, I'll never get past that sort of feeling.

And yeah, she was certainly treasured, I think. It's so nice, isn't it, to see that care for small children, even in those past societies. It's very, very special indeed. Did Edison really take credit for things he did. invent? Were treadmills originally a form of corporal punishment? And would man have ever got to the moon? Without the bra. You can expect answers to all these questions and more in the brand new podcast from History Hit, Patented History of Inventions. Join me, Dallas Campbell, as I uncover

what really sparked history's most impactful ideas. Each episode, I'll be recruiting the help of experts, scientists, historians, and even a few real-life inventors. Subscribe to patented history of inventions wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, now, Richard, there is one, you've sort of mentioned it briefly, there is one really unusual thing that's come up here. We had a look earlier on,

but let's go back and have a look at it because this happens, doesn't it? You sort of think you know what you're doing and what you've got, and then something just throws you. You've come with a week to go, we know there's going to be more trouble caused in the last week,

because it always happens, doesn't it, the last few days. We think we've sorted out this particular cemetery. We know what the story is. We've got the two circular ones on the high ground, the others respecting it and then this thing turns up so after a bit of cleaning on the chalk you can perhaps make out there's a normal rectangular grave but around it there is a dark rectangle in the soil can you see that this yeah so it's only what it's a rectangle it's about 20 centimetres wide all the way across and we think that might be what could be a mortuary house so you're thinking I'm in descriptive terms like a big dog kennel in many ways these are beam slots so it holds perhaps a timber structure over the grave and the grave is big it's deep. We're talking probably about 50 to 60 centimetres deep and a couple of meters in length into solid chalk. So this is an endeavour to put a grave in of that magnitude. And at the

bottom of this grave, we're standing right next to you can see the burial of an adult male. And I don't normally try and give the sex of the skeletons because I'm not an osteologist, but this is definitely a male because he's got very, very prominent brow ridges and a big chin and he's got quite tight sciatic notches in the pelvis. So I'm pretty comfortable that this is a male burial, laid out on his back with the lower legs crossed arms at his sides. And he isn't the first one to go into this grave. That's the curiosity, because when we excavated it, there was a real jumble of bones above him. There was a skull by his feet, which made us think it could have been one of those Roman burials you get with decapitations, but we don't think it is now. And there

were ribs all over his face, and there were the arms by the side. It was a jumble. But when he was deconstructed, that jumble seems to be the earlier burial of a woman, probably in her 20s, who had been the primary burial, the primary animation, and then it came to this guy's death, and he was then put into this, whether it's a family vault or it's a pulchral monument, or whether they shared the same trade in life or the same role or position in society.

There's some connection, there has to be, I think, some connection between these two individuals. She was taken out the way he was put in the bottom, and her bones were, I'm afraid, very unceremoniously dumped in on top. And she was a skeleton at that point, so there was no articulation. So they were all over the place.

Now, the question with this one, because there are no grave goods to give us any dates on this, unlike the other elements, where the goods are so fixed in the 7th century typology, we don't know the dates of these. So we will radio-carbon date these. And even with the standard deviation being quite wide, we'll get whether it's Roman or early medieval.

Now, if it is Roman, that's thrown our theory completely out because lots of these early medieval burials are respecting it and sighted on it and arranged in the same location. So you have the rectangles following this rectangle, following this rectangular burial, so length upon length, one length. So if it's Roman, then it's a monument of some significance that stayed in the landscape into the early medieval period,

and then those circular features came after. So this is going to be key to our typological and chronological understanding of the formation of the site. So watch the space, I suppose. We've got two bets, one is Roman, one's early medieval, and I'm not taking sides, because it's just safer, but it's a very, very interesting burial, I think we can safely say. Absolutely, and it's intriguing, isn't it?

Because it's not something that you see very often at all. But it's interesting because you do often get reuse of the same sites in different periods. And they meant something to somebody. And even if people later on didn't necessarily know what it meant, they knew that this was a place of importance, didn't they? That's right. All across Salisbury Plain and other areas in the country, there are revisited sites in the early medieval period.

We have so many round barrows that have early medieval secondary burials put into them, a barrow clump being the case in point. and you can see Barrowclump from here where there are 100 plus burials of the 6th century put into a Bronze Age mound that had been there already for 2,000 years. We've got it the same with some Neolithic long barrows and this is a Roman example of the same thing

then that just fits that sequence of monuments in the area. It'd be quite nice if it was Roman. I think it'd be quite good to have another of these patterns going on. We've also had some of the burials that are early medieval here. In fact, the one in the centre of the ring ditch has been revisited itself, probably quite shortly after it had been buried. There's no soil that, accumulated on top of the body, probably a plank set of planks on top of it,

and whoever has revisited had taken the lower legs away. Now, we don't know why the theory going around sight is he must have a very nice pair of boots that have been taken away. Who knows, but the lower legs, the tibia and fibula, have been taken away of this individual and then the grave has been filled, so who knows? I think one interesting thing about that and this one as well is that the dead are very much part of the world of the living as well, aren't they? You don't just put them in the ground and forget about them.

But these graves have an ongoing connection with the people alive and whether that means physically taking something out of the grave or if it means re-burying someone in the same monument or just next to them is all sort of part of an ongoing story, isn't that? It is. And I think certainly in the prehistoric past, you're getting curation of human remains on the plane. We've certainly found some Iron Age settlements that have had Bronze Age human remains that have been kept in the roundhouse.

And that's an interesting thing. It's anathema to how we live today, but that's very much a Western perspective. not unusual in other parts of the world. And I think the landscape is the key thing here. It's reusing the landscape. It's reusing those sites. I had one of the soldiers working with me and he was from India, he was a rifleman and he found a piece of pottery, iron age pottery with a fingerprint on it and he was really moved by it because he said it really connected him with his ancestors. And for him, the ancestors were those that used this landscape in the past. It wasn't a genetic thing.

It was use of landscape. And I think that is key. Roman or early medieval or prehistoric, it's this use of the chalklands. And that's the genetic. And that's a genetic thing. And that's a genetic thing. the connecting factor. Brilliant. Well, I can't wait to get the results of this, so I'm going to have to come back, I think, and hear the rest of it. You're very welcome.

Thank you. So that's so interesting, Richard. Thank you. Now, I wanted to just talk to some of the volunteers that you've got here. So I'm coming over to have a little chat with John Bennett, who's one of the volunteer excavators here. Hi, John. Nice to meet you.

Hi, nice to meet you too. So, tell me, why are you here? For me, it's actually helping me to integrate back into society really after leaving the MOD with complex PTSD and functional disorder. So this is actually not just as a personal interest but it's actually part of that therapy

airspace as well? Oh definitely therapy. Fantastic. So is this your first time on site you've ever been here before as well? I was on the site last year as well. Okay, so tell me what have you been digging at, what have you found in your time here? So far I've just found a single male skeleton I think. Fantastic. And you've been

digging that up. I can see that you're recording Yeah, you're making a beautiful illustration of it as we speak. And how about grave goods? Did this individual have any grave goods? None that I found so far. Still fingers crossed from when I actually live the skeleton. It might be something. Yeah.

And how about being involved in an archaeology project like this? Does that encourage you to do any more of this sort of thing? Definitely. Actually, this has given me a new direction in my life. As I went and I left the MOD with my problems, I had no idea what's going to do next. I was a weapons engineer. Now I'm actually going to be an archaeologist. Oh, fantastic.

So you're going to go on to study archaeology? Definitely. I've been offered a place for free at Winchester University. Fantastic, congratulations. Thank you very much. That's brilliant. So what is it about archaeology? Do you think that is so interesting to you? I've always had an interest in what's around me or the history of what's around me.

And actually also it's something that's really mindful. You can just forget everything else and just focus on exactly what you're doing. Even just start this skeleton, it's like you have to be so careful exactly what you're doing. If I rush it too much, I'm going to damage this, what was one to person. Yes, is that a sense of respect. And I find also working with skeletons, it connects you with real people, doesn't it, from the past? Which I personally think is really special. It's like when you look at a skeleton, it's like you see those teeth.

And the last time somebody saw those teeth that were alive. Absolutely, it's very, very special. Well, brilliant. Thank you so much for talking to me. And good luck with your degree. Oh, thanks very much. Okay, so let's step out of the trench. and away from all the volunteers again and have a little look around.

I mean, so we already mentioned we don't actually really know much what's here, but if we talk about this same sort of period and we're looking around in the landscape, what do we know? Well, I think what we know for a starting point is if you were stood here in the 7th century, you would probably recognise this landscape because it isn't hugely changed because the military's kept here. So maybe the old block of trees wouldn't be here or would be different. But the topography is the same.

It was a cleared chalk grassland. Those vistas, the views that we've got behind you at the moment, looking right over to the Pusey Vale, those would have been something that our people in this empty would have recognised. And I think that's a lovely feeling that you're looking at a landscape that would have been familiar, and that's that timelessness of Salisbury Plain, I think. And you've got colossal skies. We're looking over in the distance, I can see a helicopter going over

to where there was a lot of smoke in the last few days, just past a red flag to show that it's a live training area. But that area they're over at the moment is, in fact, a Roman village. It's a colossal Roman rural settlement of how, is made of brick and cob and chalk and flint. There are wells, there are field systems. It's a really thriving Roman landscape. You've also got a Bronze Age burial mound or two

that you get on the high ground. But it goes right through to the modern times as well. You've got a hillside called Beacon Hill looking out over the A303. And there's one of those wonderful chalk hill figures carved onto the side of it. It's not a horse. We have a Kiwi.

Altogether different. And that's because, not surprising, the New Zealand Army was here in the First World War. And it wasn't the labour of love. They had to carve it to be controlled. by the officers, if I'm brutally honest. But it's a scheduled monument as well. So it's the same level of designation as these burial mounds all around us in the Roman village.

And I think that's because history is just about people. Archaeology is about people. And no matter what time period, I think it's something we just need to bear in mind all the time. So everywhere you look here, there is an element of time palimcess that is of significance. And I think that's why I love the plane so much. I can completely understand that. But what's next here then? So you're going to finish excavating the cemetery?

are you going to be able to look for anything else, look for a village, a settlement, or anything like that? That would be nice. I do have a couple of things in mind, which we'll do some geophysics on. And, you know, it's more of a kind of, there's a religious building here nearby, which is an early church,

you know, there may be some sort of connection. I think this is probably going to be it for us in this field. I say that now, but I may be back next year. I can't promise, but there's always going to be more targets. I'd love to know where they live. That would be a really interesting question. We never know. We could get test bits in people's gardens

in the river valley, see if they find any early medieval pottery, all those sorts of good things that you can do with communities. That would be a nice thing to do. Whatever we do, there will be a trench being excavated in Salisbury Plain in summer 2023, but I can't tell you where yet. Oh, exciting. Well, I'm going to have to come back next year then and get the follow-up. You'd be very welcome. It'd be lovely to see you.

Fantastic, Richard. Thank you so much for having me and for sharing all of this with our listeners. Great pleasure. And that brings me to the end of this episode. If you want to find out more about this excavation and the other operation, Nightingale projects. Do search them up on social media, especially on Instagram and on Facebook. Don't forget to subscribe to History Hits Medieval Mondays newsletter. Just look in the episode notes where you found this podcast on exactly how to do that. I hope to have you join us again

for our next episode, which will be on Saturday with my co-host Matt Lewis, and I will be back with you next Tuesday.