Created: Thursday, 12 June 2014 08:27

WEST YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND—Thousands of people participate in and observe re-enactments of the Battle of Hastings in East Sussex every year. Battlefield archaeologist Glenn Foard of the University of Huddersfield plans to remove the top layers of soil over a “substantial area” of the battlefield next year, in order to eliminate the items left behind by today’s crowds. Then his team can search for artifacts from 1066. “Now the challenge is on to find out what archaeology is there, before it suffers contamination from all the activities that are going on. Whether there is archaeology under the ground to be confused by the re-enactment activities, we don’t know yet,” he told Science Daily