Hi there,

Is anyone know if Mortimer Wheeler have digged in France during the Great War ? Any help about this will help and is welcome.

Thanks.

He served as a battery commander with the Royal Artillery on the Western Front in 1917 and 1918 but I think he was pretty busy with his soldiering - he won the MC, I think. His autobiography "Stlll Digging" should tell you more. This book looks interesting, I must get hold of a copy.

I have read his autobiography, and the Great War is decribed of few words. He said that he digged in Colchester during summer '17, but he also said that was after the abandonment of the Operation Hush (it seems that he has been involved in this operation). Maybe he has been in France during the rehearsal of hush op. and dig then. I have read that british officers looked after the archeological stuff, even digging the trenches.

I know that a number of archeological items were found during trench digging by both sides. I am sure sir Mortimer would have been interested in any such items found but don;t suppose he would have been actively digging oon the western front. I think the summer 1917 dig he was involved in would have been done while he was based in England just before going abroad.

Was he not also involved in aerial photography?

According to "Still Digging", he was given various Battery Commands in the UK, and didn't get to France until well into 1917. His excavation at Colchester, of the Balkerne Gate under the "Hole in the Wall" pub (I went there once - I was gutted, it was rubbish), was carried out before this time. He makes no mention whatsoever of archaeology "in the field", though I suspect that anyone who found anything would have asked him - probably spent a lot of time dealing with funny-shaped stones... I think the closest he got to archaeology was helping to rearrange the contours of the Butte de Warlencourt!

No real involvement in aerial photography that I can see either.

Adrian

I think OGS Crawford is the chap being thought of - I knew it wasn't Sir Mortimer Wheeler, but I had to dig out my old archaeology books before I could find the correct answer!

Try Jacquetta Hawkes' biography of Wheeler - a little more objective !
Sorry, I don't have it with me for any look ups.
Julian

Yes - Wheeler encountered him explaining to someone that the object on an air photo was a mound (the Butte de Warlencourt), not a hole!

Hmm, Julian's suggestion is interesting - must see if I still have borrowing rights at the History Faculty Library!

Adrian

I met the man briefly when I was about 15 (he was visiting my school and I got the task of guide and runner for him) and then attended a talk by him about his career in archeology. From memory (and it was a long time ago) he described his WW1 service as a gap in his archaeological activities.

In his autobiography, Sir Mortimer said that he didn't get in France before 1917. He had been in the territorial forces since 1914, so why didn't he went to the Front earlier? Was it because the suspicion of Lord Kitchener about the territorial forces? So I had though that during this period he coul had digged around, and why not in Normandy where he has done archeological work in the late 30s.

An interesting question!
'Ric' Wheeler won an MC in the Great War but I am unsure of any excavations he undertook - his one major 'conflict' site perhaps being the Iron Age hillfort of Maiden Castle in Dorset. I know that Sir Mortimer wrote the preface for Huntly Gordon's 'The unreturning army: A field gunner in Flanders,1917-1918' so there might be something here too. Unsurprisingly there were large numbers of archaeological discoveries in the Great War - from Roman sites found digging practice trenches outside Bath (finds sent by the Somerset Yeomanry to Haverfield at Oxford Uni) to individual finds such as the flint scraper found with the remains of a German soldier excavated by Martin and the NML team. Perhaps the most bizarre was the only excavation in Turkey during the Great War; an excavation by French units at Gallipoli!
Hope this is of some use!
all things good
Richard
PS it was indeed OGS Crawford (a friend of Wheeler) that Pioneered Aerial photography and archaeology - thre are many of his images from the Great War (of trench systems) in the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford and also the National Monuments Record in Swindon; Crawford took many images of practice trenches here on Salisbury Plain.

Thanks a lot for this precious information. I will try to go further turning the subject by ailes and get the preface of Huntly Gordon's book.