Dig Hill 80: Presentation of Findings

More than a year ago, viewers of Forgotten Weapons stepped up and were instrumental in successfully funding the Dig Hill 80 project – an archaeological excavation of a remarkably intact series of trenches from Wrold War One in the town of Wytschaete, Belgium. Through the spring and summer of 2018 the dig took place, with limited time before construction of housing was scheduled to begin on the site. The final Presentation of Findings was made in late 2018, showing the history that had been uncovered. I was privileged to be able to attend the presentation in London on November 12th, and am proud to be able to share that presentation here for you.

If you were not involved before and would still like to help, the project is still accepting donations to finish cataloging and publications – there were many more human remains recovered than expected, and that pulled a lot of money out of other parts of the project budget.

11 Comments

  1. I also went to Dig Hill 80 as a Backer. It whas verry interesting to see how this all worker. That day they found 2 france militaire and some unexploded ammonition. The pictures i took that day can be found on Facebook at JO-KA Roadtrips.

  2. Typographical errors abound here, but I hope nobody gets haunted by the past. Just be sure to keep looters away from that dig site.

  3. Could I form my thoughts into words? I do not know, but I will try.
    For me little personal items you presents among others, are tiny ghosts of past. Speechless witnesses of history. Yet… unleashing so many thoughts… mostly gruesome thoughts… DEATH… impartial… doesn’t matter on which side you fight or why you fight: for adventure? for glory? due to sense of duty? or simply you do not want but was drafted? This doesn’t matter. Even if you are ready to final sacrifice, in greater scale, it doesn’t matter.
    I can’t not link one text in this place: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ironmaiden/thelegacy.html
    But important part is what we could learn from that?
    Carefully examine potential consequences of own actions.
    Great War was not*first example of unexpected consequences, but it is intimidating big example
    *see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Crusade

      • It’s just as bad if you deal with so-called “Social Justice Warriors.” To them, “facts don’t matter, FEELINGS MATTER!” Those people want to force “tolerance” on everyone. When I say “tolerance,” I mean “cultural nonintervention and acceptance of whatever any culture (especially hardcore LGBTQ) says regardless of validity.” They’re also among the groups that would gladly trash the American 2nd Amendment. Trust me, they grabbed me off the street once and actually tried to force me into wearing clothes of the opposite gender just to “make me tolerant of transgender people.” I escaped by hitting them with pepper spray.

  4. I believe Australia and Turkey have done work on the Gallipoli trenches.
    As a former archeologist digs like this are necessary in order to understand how the military did things but the battleground is so vast people with metal detecters are going to save items that would have been lost to us forever
    Metal rusts.

  5. What a great opportunity to reconstruct history and document actual findings.

    What a shame that it was presented so poorly. The audio is largely unable to understand, the constant flipping between slides on the screen and full slide view makes them difficult to understand. Silly CGI looks cool but doesnt add to understanding.

    The scientists need to stay in the field doing what they do best, and the presentation should be handled by professional speakers and graphic artists.

    • I get what you mean, because I was not impressed by the presentation either. But a professional speaker would not know the details. He (or she) would be just a hired mouth. So more presentation training for the diggers? the archaeoligists are also doing lectures, so would be very useful to them.

    • This presentation will be given at other times and places. It would be nice if a later effort was put on forgotten weapons. One made after the presenters learn to speak into the microphone and find a venue with decent acoustics.

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