Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[mcbishop]

The real mystery of the project is why are the archaeologists not apparently looking for the site, surely it would make their careers if they scored a hit.

Simply answered: funding. On a day when TAG is discussing the current assault on archaeology (in universities and at county level, with HERs and curators being chucked out, museums shut down) the research side of archaeology is in no position to pursue a chimaera as rare and elusive as this one (there's no research archaeology on Hadrian's Wall at the moment – Vindolanda is on the Stanegate, before anybody objects – so a stray battlefield stands little chance). Developer-funded archaeology has to look where the development is (otherwise developers won't fund it!), in which case finding the battlefield would be serendipity, which just leaves specialised community archaeology projects funded by the HLF or similar and I can just see the proposal for that particular tranche of funding:

'We're looking for a battlefield'
'Where?'
'Well, we have a few candidates...'
'Any hard evidence?'
'Umm, Tacitus... ish...'
'Thank you, good bye'

Archaeology is labour-intensive and expensive even if everybody on the ground volunteers (specialist services such as geophysics, conservators, environmental analysis, pottery and small find reports, cost serious money) and it is simply impossible to go hunting for one specific 'event' (which may or may not have left a substantive trace in the ground) without a major clue to its presence (the identification of the actual battlefield at Bosworth is one example where this did work, but they had more than the mangled text of Tacitus to go on).

For all the debate over likely candidates, the best chance still remains a lucky find. Digging up a scythed chariot would be bound to get somebody's attention ;-)



Mike Bishop