New Generation Thinkers: Battlefield Finds

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began looking at what you might find in the soil in the middle of a World War One battlefield. In her Essay, Seren Griffiths traces the way Francis Buckley used his training for military intelligence to shape the way he set about digging up and recording objects buried both in war-torn landscapes of France and Belgium and then on the Yorkshire moors around his home.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Dr Seren Griffiths teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in a project to use new scientific dating techniques to write the first historical narrative for two thousand years of what was previously 'prehistoric' Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She has also organised public events at the excavations she co- directs at Bryn Celli Ddu in North Wales and you can hear her talking about midsummer at a Neolithic monument in an episode of Free Thinking. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Welcome to the Arts and Ideas podcast.
0:39.4	I'm Seren Griffith, and my essay is called Battlefield Fines.
0:43.9	You might think that there's nothing new to be said about the experiences of soldiers in the trenches of the First World War.
0:50.3	But I'd like to introduce you to Francis Buckley.
0:53.8	He served as an officer in the 7th Northumberland Fusiliers, eventually becoming a captain.
0:59.6	And like many who fought on the Western Front, he was gassed, sustained injuries,
1:04.6	and saw his friends in the regiment maimed and killed.
1:08.4	He suffered from a profound depression as a result of his experiences and was
1:13.0	mentioned in dispatches for his bravery. But it was not this that made Francis Buckley stand out.
1:21.1	What makes Francis different was what he was doing in the lines and behind them aside from his
1:27.3	military work,
1:28.6	and the way these experiences shaped his subsequent career,
1:32.3	because Francis Buckley was in one sense, the first wartime archaeologist.
1:38.4	His practice was created by his wartime experiences,
1:42.1	and his work was to have a profound effect on the future of archaeology in Britain.
1:48.0	Francis worked as a pioneer and as an intelligence officer.
1:52.0	As a pioneer, a kind of non-technical engineer, he was responsible for excavating trenches and digging gun emplacements and earth moving in a variety of
2:03.3	other ways. As an intelligence officer, he was learning how to investigate landscapes. One of his
2:11.9	commanding officers introduced Francis to archaeology in the trenches, and he spent the war years recovering stone
	...

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