The physical and imagined connection between digging archaeological trenches
and those for use in war was certainly not lost on some of those who had
experience of digging both. The idea of labour as a trigger for memory is
encapsulated in a 1934 letter to his client, the antiquarian Henderson
Bishop, on who's behalf he excavated a shell midden on a Scotish island, WWI
veteran Keith MacKewan writes:
'...my memory of detail is very vivid and oddly enough never more so than in
respect to digging or anything related with labour on land. I do not pretend
to account for it but think it liely that trench experiences - still as
vivid in my memory as ever - reflect their vividness through any similar
work, one thing recalling the other - through association of ideas. Thus if
I dig I recall Flanders. If I recall Flanders I recall incidents connected
with digging I have done for you.'
Tony Pollard
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