Battlefield ‘contaminated’ by re-enactment groups to be searched by Yorkshire academic

Huddersfield University’s Dr Glenn Foard is facing the challenge of sorting the modern artefacts left behind by battle re-enactors from items left from 1066.

The first stage, likely to take place in spring 2015, would be to spend a week machining away the top layers of soil at a substantial area of the battlefield, in order to eliminate modern artefacts. Then there would be a search for genuine remains.

Archaeologists would carry out the actual survey, with parallel sessions for children and parents, which would provide insights into archaeology and the use of metal detectors.

“Now the challenge is on to find out what archaeology is there, before it suffers contamination from all the activities that are going on,” says Dr Foard.

“Whether there is archaeology under the ground to be confused by the re-enactment activities, we don’t know yet.”

One of Dr Foard’s battlefield coups was to detect the true location of the Battle of Bosworth, where Richard III was slain in 1485.

The result of Dr Foard’s work found that the actual battle took place more than two miles from the site where it was traditionally thought to have been fought.

However, as he collaborates with English Heritage to plan his investigation of Hastings, he is working on the assumption that the Battle of Hastings in 1066 was fought on its traditional site, even though there have been attempts to establish an alternative location.

“I have no reason to believe that any of the alternatives are likely. I will never say that they are impossible – not after my work on Bosworth – but all the evidence I saw when I looked at Bosworth suggested that it wasn’t fought on the traditional site. At Hastings, however, everything I have looked at tells me that the battle did take place on the generally accepted site.”

The book Bosworth 1485: A Battlefield Rediscovered, co-written by Dr Foard, has been shortlisted for a top award. Winners will be announced on July 14.