ABSTRACT
The village of La Boisselle on the Somme was the scene of intense fighting during World War I, but until 2011 the former battlefield remained largely untouched. La Boisselle is known for its underground battlefield of deep tunnels and mineshafts extending over several kilometres beneath the village, while above ground the area is littered with mine craters. The La Boisselle Study Group started archaeological investigations including geophysical research in 2011, undertaken to locate potential ordnance contamination. The aerial photographs that were taken along this sector of the Western Front correlate with some of the results from geophysical survey. In 2013 a programme of geophysical survey by Cranfield University aimed to record what still survives by applying different techniques. This chapter will show some of the results to date as well as highlighting some of the problems of undertaking geophysical surveys in a contested landscape such as one that saw intensive fighting from 1914 to 1916.
