Operation Nightingale
Channel: Golden Idol Films
Date: 2014-03-05

This short film is about Operation Nightingale, an award winning archaeology program which helps injured service personnel recover from trauma. 

Shot at Barrow Clump, an Iron Age bell barrow and Anglo Saxon burial mound on Salisbury Plain in the summer of 2013, it asks what Operation Nightingale is? How it came about and if and why archaeology works as a medium to help injured service personnel recover?     

Operation Nightingale raises questions about community archaeology and the future of archaeology in the UK and elsewhere. The archaeology community has raised concerns about the quality of archaeology undertaken by untrained soldiers. This film examines those issues and puts those questions to the professionals in charge of the project.

Paul Wilson (Halo Films/Golden Idol Films) made this film as a dissertation film for an MA in Archaeology Screen Media at the University of Bristol.