 Dw i'r cwm MR, IE a ddecheg ddangos deithas gwychion i'r ystod o'r cwm yn dweud. Efallai, rydyn ni'n bwysig mewn rai arall, eu gofio ddechau'r esgawdd gyda llyfriddolwl i ddweudwch i ddweud yr arladdau. Felly mae'n gweithio, wrth gwrs, i ddweud o ysgawdd, yr oferfodol. Rydyn ni'n oes fawr bod mae'r bwysig yn eich bod ni'n fawr. Rydyn ni'n byw'n rhai bwysig yn mynd i fyny. Rydyn ni'n portbêr bod yn fawr o'r dynol, maen nhw'n defnyddio'n ddweud nad wrth gynnwys iawn, sy'n gweithio'r rhai a'n gobl mwyllfaan iddynt yn argyffen i'r ffaith, oedd ar y pwylltad o'r hreding mewn mynd i lapr. Felly mae'r hynny'n gweithio'n ddod. Oed yn gennym, mae arfoth o'r trefwyr crell, I want to start by providing a little bit of a sort of socio historical context in terms of the care of veterans in the UK before I move on to the rehabilitation archaeology initiatives. For a long time obviously there was no social support at all for service personnel and perhaps not unrelated to the English Civil War in the mid 17th century. King Charles II recognised perhaps a political as much as a moral dimension in supporting army veterans. And there's an interesting line from the warrant that established the Greenwich Hospital veterans recognising the plight of those broken by age or war and the social responsibility or state responsibility to provide care and support. And this was followed a few years later by the naval equivalent established by William III and Mary II at the Greenwich Hospital. For a long time that was more or less the extent of formal support for former service personnel. There are lots of stories and accounts of informal support through local village activities and church support but nothing on a formal wide scale or state level really for a long time. And then you come into the mid 19th century in the UK and obviously the Crimean War and you're now into an age where you have a mass print media and stories of the huge losses, the terrible conditions in the Crimean War are reaching the public back home. And it's also coincides with that point in the mid 19th century where Victorian industrialists initially perhaps starting to focus on philanthropy as a way of giving back and of course a very church focused morality coming into play as well. So it's around this time perhaps all these things coming together around this time that you see schools established for the children of service personnel who were killed in conflict initially from Crimea but from that word onwards. And then you have the sailors rest which was temperance, alcohol free bars and hotels in effect established by Agnes Weston which is still running to this day. And it starts to develop but not really at a great rate of knots. It's obviously the First World War which is the big game changer in all sorts of respects. Now not only have you got a modern mechanised war, you've also got improvements in healthcare perhaps so that you have huge numbers of men losing limbs but also surviving those injuries and returning home. Almost probably every family in Britain is in some way affected by a loss during the First World War. What's interesting though is that you also start to see the veterans themselves coming together to form their own what we would call now peer to peer support groups. So you have things like the Limlas Exhibitions Association which was initially a regional thing with regional offices. It comes together later on to become a British Blesma, a British organisation which again is also still running and very successful, very important. And then you have the self-help groups in different contexts in a sense. So you have the Comrades of the Great War, the National Association of Dischards, Saliers and Soldiers etc. And actually these come together in 1921 to form the Royal British Legion which certainly in the UK is probably what most people would think of as the archetypal service charity. But actually formed from other groups coming together. Importantly, shortly after the First World War as well, you've also got the mental health impact becoming far more or far better understood perhaps. Now although you've got guys being executed at the front for failing to follow orders because of Shell Shop, there was a recognition back home that these guys weren't cowards. They were, had been in some way mentally affected, mentally stroke physically affected by what they'd been through. And you have established the ex-servicemen's welfare society which takes a very different approach from the others. So up to this point it's been about care for military veterans and all their families. And now with this, the welfare society, they set about creating work programmes, recuperation homes, where the guys that are recovering from Shell Shop, what we now call PTSD, are able to engage in work activities. Again we've come back to the phrase that's come up in all three of the previous papers, the sense of belonging, a community, a sense of value perhaps. But of course it's, you know, it's limited in scope but it's a very, very important step forward in terms of social support for military veterans. This challenge I should say is actually still working as a now known as combat stress and again is one of the very important providers of support for British veterans. So needless to say there are a number of other charities established throughout the 20th century, obviously folks around the Second War in particular. But I want to sort of skip ahead to the recent past. In the UK, I think, you know, I'm speaking as a, I'm not a veteran of my invisible pack guard up. I'm, as a member of the public, I remember becoming very aware in around 2007 maybe, people take it in a way, of the scale of the losses and the casualties resulted from the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, and you've got to remember as well, this is the first time in perhaps generation where the British military has been deployed in four years of sustained, sustained major conflicts. And our army isn't the size it used to be and the NHS, which is a wonderful, you know, the National Health Service in the UK, which is a wonderful institution, doesn't have the capacity to cope with the sorts of casualties that were coming back to the UK. And then at the same time as all that was becoming apparent, I think, on a social level, you have things like Wood and Basset where you had, it was just on the root between the RAF base and where the coffins were being taken to. And the local British Legion members used to come out and started off just by showing their respects, showing that respect. And they were joined by members of the community in that group and it became, as you can see from the photos, a massive affair. And this was just people wanting to show their respect, their support, their grief, whatever. And this was all, this was around 2007, it was a really important display of social support for the military, military veterans in particular, casualties. So, you know, the seeds were sown, I think, around that time. So, by the end of 2007, you have the Chatti Health Heroes established, which gained support of major national newspapers, raised a phenomenal amount of money in a very short period of time and was a big supporter, a big provider of funds for all sorts of charities providing support and care for military veterans. Operation Nightingale, named after the nurse Florence Nightingale from Crimea, was established initially into late 2011, initially focused on currently serving personnel as a way of measuring the effectiveness of archaeology in helping guys recover from a recent deployment, a decompression effect. And then the focus shifted from around 2012 on to more of the veteran community. Operation Nightingale is still active from current, it's more of an overseeing ephemeral body. But perhaps its biggest success was spawning its children, if you like, at least of which, of course, great ground heritage, which we've heard about earlier. The American Veterans Archaeological Recovery in the Middle, which began life as Operation Nightingale USA, very much following the same model as Operation Nightingale. And, of course, Warcliff Uncovered is a big veteran archaeology project focused specifically on the battlefield at Waterloo. So, between Operation Nightingale and its offspring, hundreds of veterans have been given opportunities to engage with archaeology and hopefully benefit from it. So, why is archaeology so effective? Psychologists, such as Nick Haddock at Anglia Ruskin, has written about the effectiveness of surfing and physical activity generally for veterans. You know, anecdotally, we describe archaeology, perhaps by its defining characteristic, which is field work. And that's, you know, Dickie and Driffy, sorry, I forgot your name. Andrews. Andrews described, you know, it's that physical activity, it's being outdoors and being active, working as a team. Success on an optical project naturally depends on teamwork. If you don't have a good team, the project doesn't work, or at least doesn't work as well as it should. And camaraderie, particularly in the UK, I have to say, the weather means you need a good team spirit, otherwise it's a pretty miserable affair. Field work includes naturally hard physical outdoor work. It's task and role orientating which suits the guys. And it's naturally hierarchical as well, even if, you know, even if it's just by virtue of involving different levels of skills and experience. And I think finally again, you know, in terms of the mindfulness thing which has come through, you know, I've had students on my projects and they talk about, you know, traveling is boring, hate it, you know. But actually for some of these guys coming through EGH or other initiatives, actually there's a sense of mindfulness that might come from traveling. What one person might find boring, someone else might find usually distracting from what's going on. So just to, you know, I think there's some, there were some sort of flags that we need to be aware of though. As I said, it is becoming increasingly popular, but it's so important to make sure that the right people are doing it. You know, what Dickie described at BGH is an example of the very best level that's being done in this area. But there are examples of shoddy work, and that doesn't benefit anybody. You have to wander, and again, you know, this is something that we need data for. But you have to wonder if projects focused on battlefield sites are helping the guys move forward, or whether it's keeping them actually in a position of defining themselves as a veteran or a soldier. You know, do we need to think about prior screening? Does there need to be a greater assessment of, you know, people's issues in terms of being able to care for them appropriately on these projects? And also, you know, on a project, it's great. You're on there, you're distracted from the real world. There's a cliff edge that happens at the end of that, which needs thinking about. I'm just going to have to skip ahead slightly, because I'm running out of time. But it's about rehabilitation. This is, you know, we're talking about enabling and supporting individuals to achieve their full potential. And for some guys, that's sufficient. That's all they want from it. Others actually want to move on and look at archaeology as a profession. So I was very fortunate one of the few times I've been proud of my management and my university when they agreed to fund fee waiver student ships. We have horrific fees in the UK. And the university has offered to fund up to five fee waiver student ships for military veterans studying archaeology with us. We had an initial cohort of four of which one unfortunately dropped out in the first year because of ongoing medical issues. But the other three, despite being told by their military careers advisors, archaeology is not for you. You need a degree for that. Why not try gardening? They're getting very good marks high to one, the occasional first, because they don't have the score qualifications, but they work bloody hard and they are incredibly enthusiastic. And you cannot buy that, you know, if all of our students felt the same. But these guys are role models for the normal route students around them and you see their marks going up as well. It's most definitely a win-win. I think I'm pointing to wrap up there. Except just to add finally, I was very fortunate to take three of our students at the University of Georgia summer before last at 2017 and we were able to get some Georgian military veterans to join us as well. So it was a fantastic opportunity to introduce this idea of support for veterans and the benefits that they achieved. And that's now sort of starting to grow into something bigger out in Georgia. So that was a fantastic experience. Thank you very much.