Richard Osgood MBE Operation Nightingale

 We were incredibly fortunate to have Richard Osgood as our speaker in October via Zoom. He gave us many examples of the therapeutic role played by archaeology in the lives of ex service personnel. There's a good synopsis of Richard's career here. 

I took some photos of Richard's slides during the talks and there's an unedited recording of his talk which you can see if you click on that link. I'll write down a few of my notes for the record. 

Richard joined the MOD in 2004, and has been their senior archaeologist for over 10 years; he and his team look after 770 scheduled monuments including 10 world heritage sites. With veterans of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2011, Richard realised that PTSD as a result of conflict was not considered when his father served in WW2, but the wounds are real despite being hidden. Operation Nightingale is the name given to the exercise.

Richard started by telling us about the archaeology of a Burrow Island in Portsmouth Harbour, also called Rat Island.

It looks very scenic from a distance

above you can just see the holes where the bodies were slotted into the ground

above and below some of the skeletons they found

There's a sign warning people that it's MOD land  below

The island is reached by a small causeway twice a day at low tide, and between 2-5 May 2017 the holes in eroded cliffs were examined in an operation known as Exercise Magwitch. The holes in the cliffs are burial sites where the bodies were stacked on each other, It is thought the skeletons are those of the up to 7000 prisoners held in ship hulks in Portsmouth Harbour between 1796- 1814. They could have been French identified by their naval buttons and French graffiti and were maybe prisoners of war, mostly they were male. It's fascinating to see how a face can be built from the skeleton as suggested below:

In May this year, I first caught up with Richard Osgood who was leading an excavation at a football field in Aldbourne which is where the Band of Brothers were stationed during WW2. Richard was involved in the first one of these in 2019 at documented by Wiltshire Museum. Crisp packets and silk stockings are among artefacts found at the site, there are also memorable dog tags from two members of Easy Company, Richard A Blake and Carl Fenstermaker. There is a youtube video about this which you can access by clicking on the links on this X post, I hope.

Below is an example of artefacts found in Aldbourne:

On Salisbury Plain in 2012-14 Operation Nightingale excavated 100 burials of men and women many of which are at Devizes Museum now. DNA has been examined to find out if they are related. 7th Century decorative grave goods have been discovered and a Bronze age pin 2700 years old, seen in an archaeologists hand below

Below is a reconstruction of a bronze Age hut

and here's a 6th Century bucket made of yew, currently in Devizes Museum

Getting together outside doing archaeology is a great way of making friends

I'll finish with a plug for Richard Osgood' book: 'Broken Pots Mending Lives: the Archaeology of Operation Nightingale.

At least I thought that was the end of the post, but after writing it, I went to watch Digging for Britain with Alice Roberts who was looking at WW11 artefacts, and towards the end of the programme, there's Richard Osgood talking about the Aldbourne site and the importance of it at the end of the war when Easy Company were stationed there for 6 months leaving behind a wealth of interesting artefacts, Here's the link to the programme, and here are some photos taken from the tv:

The final one is with Richard Osgood and Alice Roberts.