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Introduction

Today's archaeologists realise that they can contribute better documentation provided by improved archaeological techniques.

The latest methods of archaeology, especially arial perspectives, have given us exciting new insights into a past that remained previously undiscovered. In particular, two areas of historical interest, industry and war, benefit from these modern archaeological techniques.

The archaeology of industry

Reconstruction of a bloomery furnace at Riveaulx Abbey  © During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain was at the forefront of the industrial revolution - and the economic changes that created the modern world. Underpinning the revolution were a series of innovations that occurred around the British Isles - the smelting of iron, using coke, in Shropshire, the construction of water-powered textile factories in Derbyshire, the mass production of pottery in Staffordshire.

From these centres, the new technologies spread out to create an industrialised landscape linked by a network of canals and roads, and then railways. Industrial archaeology can help us to understand what actually happened on the ground, and why this 'industrial take-off' took place. The changes that took place in Britain from the early 18th century onwards have left a massive legacy, as can be seen in our landscapes and in many old buildings. From the 1950s onwards, these remains have been studied by a network of volunteer groups, who have recorded what they found at the most interesting industrial sites, many of which were fast disappearing.

These remains of the industrial revolution are as much a part of our heritage as ancient abbeys or castles, and the volunteers who have worked to record them are now joined by professional archaeologists, keen to study this aspect of our past. Because Britain was the leader in industrialisation, many of these sites also represent important places for modern world history. This has been recognised by UNESCO, which has designated several British sites as World Heritage sites - China may have its Great Wall, and France its great abbeys, but Britain's world heritage lies in its industrial past.

Industrial innovation

The Iron Bridge, crossing the Severn Gorge near Coalbrookdale  © What do these industrial remains tell us? One of the most important things that archaeologists can do is to study innovation. It was the inventiveness of the industrial pioneers that contributed to the rapid changes that took place. However, many of these inventions were not recorded at the time - so the actual physical evidence of the pioneering processes helps us understand the complex changes that took place during the industrial revolution.

One area rich in such evidence is the Ironbridge Gorge, a famous industrial World Heritage site. A series of linked innovations took place here, based upon the discovery that iron could be smelted by using coke rather than charcoal. Abraham Darby moved up the river Severn to Coalbrookdale in 1705, and by 1708 was experimenting with coke smelting using an old blast furnace. Initially his iron was very weak and could only be used for making cauldrons, but as the technology improved, so the range of iron products increased.

Soon the Coalbrookdale Company was building cylinders for early steam engines, vital to pump mines. It then moved on to make iron rails to develop the prototype of railways, and then to construct the world's first iron bridge spanning the Severn Gorge. Archaeology has done much to help us understand these developments, from the actual excavation of the old furnace itself, to the study of the other furnaces, forges and workshops.

Evolution or revolution?

One of the big questions is whether there was an industrial revolution, or more of an industrial 'evolution'. The new iron technologies, for example, developed from medieval practices. Large quantities of iron, lead and steel were required in many great cathedrals and castles, and some medieval industrial pioneers, perhaps surprisingly, were monks in the Yorkshire Dales.

These monks had become the owners of large areas of uninhabited moor land, and they set about turning these barren areas into an economic asset. They created huge sheep ranches for wool production, but they soon realised they needed effective tools to shear the sheep, as well as stone and lead to build their great abbeys. The Dales proved to be as rich in minerals as in sheep pasture, and the monks soon developed iron smelting and lead production on a substantial scale.

To find out more about this, archaeologists from the universities of Bradford and Bristol set about smelting local sources of iron ore in a furnace that was constructed from a design based on archaeological evidence from the monks' lands. The smelt took six hours, and the resulting bloom - a spongy mass of iron, slag and charcoal - was taken to a local blacksmith's forge to turn into a wrought iron knife.

The purpose of the experiment was to obtain the waste products from the process - the slags, hammerscales, the pieces of bloom - in order to compare them, in a carefully recorded experiment, with those from other archaeological excavations, and so develop a better understanding of the processes involved, and of what was going on elsewhere.

Landowners' profit

On the basis of what the monks achieved, there could perhaps have been an industrial revolution several centuries earlier, but for the fact that Henry VIII suppressed the monasteries and had their lands sold off between 1536 and 1540. The new landowners - the king's favourites - were less interested in sheep farming, but saw their new possessions as country estates. Ironically, however, it was these families that were able to benefit from the industrial revolution when it eventually happened. Typical perhaps were the Leverson-Gowers, who acquired a minor abbey at Lilleshall in Shropshire. They stripped the lead off the abbey roof, and left the building a ruin.

The family built a deer park on the estates, under which, it was eventually discovered, lay incredible reserves of coal and iron. The estates lay near Coalbrookdale, and here the family found a ready market for their coal and iron. Soon they were building their own furnaces and canals, the deer park became a huge coal mine (it now lies under the modern town of Telford), and the Leverson-Gowers made their fortune.

The ramifications from all this were widespread. In the case of the Leverson-Gowers, the head of the family was ennobled as the Marquis of Stafford, and his eldest son married the Countess of Sutherland in 1785. The Countess had inherited large areas of north east Scotland, but much of this was either barren or occupied by traditional highland clansmen.

On inheriting the title in 1803, however, the new Lord Stafford decided to 'improve' the highlands, using his industrial fortune. There followed the notorious highland clearances, during which the beleaguered clansmen were evicted to the rugged Scottish coastline, and were expected to eke out a living there. Huge distress followed, with the destruction of an ancient way of life, and with a mass emigration out of the highlands to the new colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The archaeology of war

Modern warfare, like industry, has also left its mark upon our landscapes, and again the documentary evidence is often incomplete. There is of course no shortage of documentation for the campaigns or for the conditions of trench life on the Western Front during World War One, but archaeological evidence can provide a fresh insight. Some of the landscapes of the battles survive, with their trench systems and numerous shell holes, and excavating the area can add detail about the actual conditions for the soldiers.

Unfortunately human remains are still found on a regular basis at these battle sites, but they are now frequently excavated under archaeological conditions that provide information about the identity of the person found, and the small rituals that often accompanied their hasty burial. Other sites of interest in relation to World War One are found closer to home. A newly discovered set of practice trenches can be seen at Hallam Moor, near Sheffield, for example. These remain a poignant monument to the Sheffield City Battalion, whose soldiers were largely wiped out on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

During World War Two a group of British illusionists, some of whom had worked in the film industry, set about deceiving the Germans into bombing decoy sites - thus sparing cities, ports and airfields from attack. Such sites are all over the country, on hills, moors or river estuaries, and have often been confused with ancient settlements - but were actually built between 1940 and 1945. Strangely we know very little about them, as few records were made - the best information is the actual physical evidence of the decoys themselves, as recorded by archaeologists, and the testimony of those few survivors who knew of the sites during the war.

Over the last ten years, there has also been a major study of the fortifications put up during the two world wars. The Defence of Britain project has compiled a major archive of many sites, from pillboxes to anti-aircraft installations. Many of these were put up in great haste, and many are not documented in any detail, so the remains provide a key insight into the planning and strategic thinking of the time.

The archaeology of history

The past is all around us, in the physical remains of buildings, landscapes and artefacts. This 'physical history' provides richness to our understanding of the recent past that cannot be gleaned from documents alone. It provides us with the context, the relationships, and in many cases the reality of what went on.

There is no reason why archaeology cannot make as important a contribution to the study of the origins of the modern world as other more traditional document and archive-based disciplines. Archaeologists are now regularly used by the police in crime and forensic investigations, and have played a major part in the UN war crimes investigations in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Soon, probably, we will be excavating the most unlikely sites - not Roman villas, but motorway service stations! And we should also remember that, in the years to come, our own lives may well be investigated by the archaeologists of the future.

Find out more

Books

Ironbridge Gorge by C M Clark (Batsford, for English Heritage, 1993)

Industrial England by M Stratton and B Trinder (Batsford, for English Heritage, 1997)

Industrial Archaeology, Principles and Practice by M Palmer and P Neaverson (Routledge, 1998)

The BP Book of Industrial Archaeology by N Cossons (David and Charles, 1987)

20th-Century Defences in Britain: An Introductory Guide by I Brown (Council for British Archaeology, 1995)

Fields of Deceptions, Britain's Bombing Decoys of World War II by C Dobinson (Methuen, for English Heritage, 2000)

About the author

Mark Horton is a presenter of 'Time Flyers', head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Bristol, and has worked on archaeological projects throughout the world. He has had two books, and many articles, published, and he is currently working on the industrial archaeology of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose papers are held at the University of Bristol.