VALE COMMONS, GUERNSEY—According to a report in the Guernsey Press, archaeologists Laurie Waite and Donovan Hawley of the Clifton Antiquarian Club found a Napoleonic-era field kitchen in a mound on the island of Guernsey that had long been expected to hold a Bronze Age burial. However, a clay pipe recovered at the site was only manufactured between 1803 and 1815, Waite explained. The excavation also uncovered a decorated button manufactured in the early 1800s. Built in the standard design of the British Army, the field kitchen had 12 stone-lined hearths and would have produced food for 120 soldiers. As many as 3,000 British, Prussian, and Dutch soldiers are thought to have been garrisoned on the island, which is located in the English Channel, in preparation for a possible Napoleonic invasion from France. The mound also contained golf balls, a lead weight from an old wooden golf driver, and World War II-era ammunition cartridges manufactured in Leipzig, Germany. The mound itself is thought to have been formed from kitchen refuse. To read about a fourteenth-century porpoise burial found on the island, go to "World Roundup: Guernsey."
