Battlefield archeology at Culloden

From yesterday's Scotsman:

Pollard's regular visits to Culloden, near Inverness, started in 2001 when, researching for his BBC programme Two Men in a Trench, he discovered the battlefield to be much larger than originally believed. His return in 2005 followed plans by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) to develop a new visitor centre and subsequent need to investigate the site before building started. And so began a rare opportunity to rewrite history based on what is known as forensics archaeology.

Fascinating inset picture, with the following caption:

Pollard's favourite discovery is of a nearly severed [read: "bisected"] musket ball . . . "There can be little doubt that this hit the sharp blade of a broad sword," he says.

But this is more than a relic hunt, as the following makes clear:

"The Jacobites and the British army were using different sizes of ammunition. We can actually tell who was firing what," he says. . .

Pollard's team found that what was long thought to have been a quick and lopsided conflict was actually hard-fought and more intense. . .

"What we found – and one of the biggest surprises that we had – were huge fragments of mortar shell actually right in the thick of the hand-to-hand fighting. So these obviously had been fired at very close range – probably over the heads of the British troops – and to my mind that is indicative of a last-ditch effort to break up the Jacobite charge . . . "

Posted by David on January 17, 2006 10:25 AM