An Archaeological Evaluation at Hougoumont
18th – 31st July 2015
To download the report click here.
This report provides an overview of the results obtained from a 2-week intensive evaluation focused on the locality of Hougoumont Farm on the Waterloo battle- feld. This feldwork follows from an earlier shorter campaign conducted in April 2015. For further background to the project and detailed results of the April evaluation, please see the interim report1. The work reported in this docu- ment represents the continuing collaboration between a number of academic in- stitutions and specialist consultants to archaeologically investigate the battlefeld of Waterloo, and is fully supported by the Walloon government on behalf of his Patrimony Minister, Maxime Prévot.
A key aspiration of Waterloo Uncovered is to provide information on its work to the wider public as it progresses, in the frst instance via the web and social me- dia, with the ethos of open access underpinning the entire exercise. Therefore this report should be read alongside the additional information and detailed site records available on the project website, and the associated online database.
In addition to evaluating the archaeology at Hougoumont, this exercise also en- abled us to consolidate our approach to the inter-personal dynamics within a di- verse team made up from professional archaeologists, students and volunteers. An important motivation for the project is to provide wounded service person- nel the opportunity to take part in an archaeological project as part of their re- habilitation from both physical injury and combat stress. Accordingly, some of those on the team took part under the auspices of Operation Nightingale, which now has a well-established track record in this area, while others volunteered as serving members of the Coldstream Guards. It is gratifying to report that the two groups continued to work very well together with the professional archaeol- ogists on the team (a number of those from Nightingale had previous archaeo- logical experience and training was provided for those without).
