Digging for Britain (2010) s03e02 Episode Script
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This is "Digging for Britain,"
the program which brings you
this year's most
outstanding new archeology.
All year, in hundreds of digs
across the UK, teams have been
uncovering new
archeological clues
which help us to tell our story.
We'll be looking at
highlights from all the digs
with in-depth analysis
from archeologists
who are going to
extraordinary lengths
to uncover our history in a
way that only archeology can.
And they've been out there
filming themselves to make sure
that we were there for
every moment of discovery.
It's in perfect mint condition.
And they'll be
joining us back here
at the Dorset County Museum,
to help us make sense of what
the new finds actually mean.
Tonight, we're in the
West of England, as we meet
army veterans on the hunt
for Anglo-Saxon warriors.
We investigate Britain's
earliest leprosy hospital,
changing what we know
about how sufferers
might have been treated.
And we reveal a lost
Roman masterpiece.
We're in Dorchester, home
to the Dorset County Museum,
established in 1845,
and famous for housing the
study and notebooks of one of
England's most
well-loved writers,
Thomas Hardy.
But it's also home to some of
our most important treasures,
like The Chickerell Rings,
these Bronze Age gold torques
discovered by
metal detectorists.
And the Langton Matravers Axes,
the largest hoard
of Bronze Age axes
ever discovered in Britain
and which some believe were
made as a gift to the gods.
In our first dig, just 50
miles away from the museum,
more extraordinary Bronze Age
remains are coming to light,
at Barrow Clump, in the
heart of Salisbury Plain.
Over the last three years,
archeologists from the
Ministry of Defense,
who owns the land,
have been excavating a
Bronze Age burial site.
This ancient site dates
back to over 5,000 years ago
but archeologists have
been called in now
because it's in danger.
Badgers are burrowing
through the soil,
destroying the archeology,
so the team must hurry
to recover and record
as much as possible.
And after only two days on
site, their work pays off
with an important discovery,
a Bronze Age burial urn
so fragile that its temporary
protection is a bucket.
There you go!
It's really, really
exciting, this.
You can see the rim of
the pot coming round here
and within it, bits
of collapsed pot
but all this burned material
which we presume is
burned human bone.
We'll lift it out as a block
and we'll excavate
that back in the lab.
It's a fantastic find.
Having gently excavated
the urn, osteoarcheologist,
Jacqueline McKinley,
carefully lifts the collar.
Voila!
Like doing a sponge cake.
If I lift that up can you
see all that lovely cord
decoration on the
inside of there?
Brilliant, isn't it?
No sooner has the
first urn been rescued
but a second vessel is found.
This much larger urn has
been buried upside down.
It is moving though,
isn't it? I'm just worried.
After a tense hour, the
urn comes out in one piece,
carefully bandaged.
It's actually a food vessel,
Bronze Aged food vessel,
which I know looks like a
bandaged head at the moment.
But the reason that
bandage is there is
because it's
slightly elasticated
so it gives support
to the vessel
and stops it falling apart
while I'm getting
things from inside it.
And Jacqui, you're
in the process
of looking at this material,
I think, from the first urn,
the urn with the
cord marking on it.
That's right, this was
actually quite badly damaged
on the site, it was only
about 10cm left so I decided,
in this case, to excavate
what was inside it on site.
And today, actually, is the
first time I've seen this,
now that it's been washed
and cleaned up again.
And at this point, what
can you tell about this bone?
Well, what I've done is I've
pulled out some very useful
pieces of bone, like, for
instance, this here, which is
part of the super-orbit,
which goes about there,
and there's a few other
pieces around there,
like, for instance, this
one, which is from there,
which is part of the
diagrammatic arch.
The skull is very useful,
one, in that you have a
very easily identifiable
piece of bone, which you only
either have one or a pair of,
so they're very useful for doing
minimum numbers of individuals,
but also a lot of the skull
is very diagnostic in terms
of sexing the individual,
the adult individual.
And what about the
sex of this individual,
is this an adult male or female?
Looking at the general
size and robusticity,
I would say it's most
likely to be male.
And do you think these
were high-status individuals
who were treated in this way
and buried in the Barrows?
Status?
Well, you know, in the past,
the antiquarians always thought
that everybody was a chief,
it was always chieftains,
it was always men,
always chieftains,
who were buried in here.
So, this would have been a King?
It would have been a
King, yes, undoubtedly,
or a prince or something,
but when you actually look
at the individuals you
find in these places, they
are a mix of individuals,
you could get males,
females, children, and one of
the things I have noticed when
I've been looking at
material from these barrows,
is that you have
quite a large number
of females with infants
or young children.
Now, if you think
about your community
and what matters to a community,
one of the important
things there is the future
and your future is your
children, so really,
the children and the mother,
the mother that
produces the children,
could be seen as very
important to the community.
So, it's not really surprising
that they're quite often chosen
to be buried in these positions.
But these urns
aren't the only things
that make this dig special.
In a unique project, known
as Operation Nightingale,
the MOD archeologists
are working closely
with injured soldiers for
whom this is vital therapy.
This pioneering
scheme is introducing
veteran Armed Forces personnel
to the practice of archeology.
Operation Nightingale's
really a recovery opportunity,
some of them will want
to, having had, maybe,
a tough operational tour,
will want to just come out
and experience some
very benign atmosphere.
You can see how
it's quite cathartic
in the broadest sense that
you can come out here,
be with your friends and just
get to understand a little
bit about the past
landscapes over
which you've trained
over many years.
For many men like former
rifleman, Kenny Kendrick,
it's been a lifesaver.
What happened to me is
I suffered a mental breakdown
while over in Germany and it's
given me a whole new lease
of life, a new career.
I left the army and I've become
an archeologist full-time
and once I start digging,
it's very hard to stop.
If I'm not told when to
take a break or have a drink
or have my dinner I'd probably
dig until it gets dark.
In fact, the
disciplines of military
and archeology are not
such strange bedfellows.
Anyone who's watched the news
footage from Afghanistan
or Iraq has seen people,
military figures,
looking for IEDs
and things like that
with a metal detector.
Critical skill in the military,
key skill on an
archeological site.
Just do that area again.
There's almost a symbiotic
relationship, in many ways,
there are so many
crossover skills
and its quite an
inspirational thing
for the archeologists
amongst us to see that
and working together as a team,
and it's a team thing
that is crucial.
As its name suggests,
Barrow Clump is a barrow,
or burial mound,
so it's no surprise
that the team uncover skeletons.
He was a very large bloke,
these femurs are truly huge,
and his feet are, the toe bones,
I've never seen anything so big.
As burial after burial appears,
they soon realize
they're unearthing
an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, dating
from the sixth century AD,
just a few meters away
from the original
Bronze Age burial site.
There's huge progress on site.
We started off with one or two
grave cuts that we could see
and over the weeks we've
now exposed at least 12.
There we go.
Like this spearhead.
And shield boss, the
metal center of a shield
which would have
protected the hand.
The original shield
could have been
up to a meter in diameter.
These are warriors' graves.
But with so many on site,
the team are beginning
to wonder, why?
One of the theories that
were put forward to me
by one of the soldiers
on the project was that
the outside of the
ditch seemed to have
quite a large concentration
of males with shields
and thought that this
was perhaps something
like an equivalent in death
of the Saxon shield wall
protecting those buried
inside the monument,
which I think is a
really lovely idea.
So, it is interesting to
have all those Anglo-Saxon
burials alongside the Bronze
Age ones, but is it unusual?
No, there's quite
a lot of evidence
that Anglo-Saxons would
choose what were obvious,
important, particularly
mortuary important,
landscape features in which
to bury their own dead.
This would have been very
obvious features at that time.
The mounds would have
been quite obvious there
and people would have recognized
that they were very important
to people in the past.
In a way, the same way
as in the Bronze Age,
they were almost staking a claim
in that landscape by
producing these mounds.
The Anglo-Saxons, by coming in
and burying their dead there,
may also have been staking
a claim to the same land.
Well, in spite of a growing
number of warrior graves
at Barrow Clump,
there's still one thing
that's eluding the team.
Chap in front of us
has between his knees,
the remnants of an
iron shield boss
and that's one of several
we've now had over the site.
To the left of the individual,
just poking out above the grave,
is the socket of a spear,
so, all those things
that you'd expect, perhaps,
to find with a warrior.
What we're missing from
that and something you see
referred to throughout
Saxon poetry is a sword.
Swords were prized by the Saxons
but are extremely rare finds.
Richard's greatest hope
is that they'll find one
but despite
unearthing 75 graves,
the prize is proving elusive.
However, the badgers
burrowing on this site have
left a trail that leads the team
right to this year's prize find.
As we were going down,
we had a lot of badger
packing material
so we weren't sure whether
they would have disturbed
any remains that were there.
As it happens, we do have a
badger run that does run right
alongside and has
damaged the skeleton.
But the rest of it is
very well preserved.
And, we're very lucky,
the fact that we've got a
sword lying alongside it.
So, this one's got the big
three, really, in that it's got
the spearhead, the shield boss
and then a sword alongside.
Now all they have to
do is get the sword out,
an extremely delicate task,
carried out by Lynn Wootton,
conservator with
Wessex Archeology.
So, a sword, which is
sitting right on
the top arm bone,
which is coming
out in fragments.
I'm going to try to get
the whole lot up in one go.
If the sword
survives excavation,
the trick will be to find
out if it's pattern welded.
This was a complicated
method of forging a blade
to produce a top-class sword.
A clue, perhaps, to the
man who was buried with it.
We're thrilled to
be joined by Richard
and some of his colleagues
from the Medical squadron
here this evening.
And we're especially lucky
because we're going to x-ray
the sword in real time,
right here, in the museum.
But before we do that, Richard,
what can you tell us about it?
We're really excited about this
because this was the
only sword we had, it was
found by one of the
soldiers of the project,
so really, really exciting.
And what we really
want to know is to see
whether it is one of those
fabulous, high-status weapons
that's pattern welded and really
part of the whole mythology
of Anglo-Saxon England,
of the sword with its name
and that sort of thing,
it's a powerful item.
And this came out of the
ground in one piece, didn't it?
It did and it was
a nervous moment,
having this thing lifted,
Excalibur-like, from the ground.
There you go.
Oh, that's mineralized wood.
So yes, a real thing of beauty
and then the sword being
such an important artifact
in the sixth century,
this was really quite
a thrill to find it.
So what have we got here?
This is the handle end and
bits of copper along here?
Right, you've got the
remnants of the scabbard,
perhaps you can make out
little traces of mineralized
wood, which is the
fabric of the scabbard,
and these are the gilded
copper alloy mounts
at the side of the scabbard,
same with the top area,
might have some decoration,
x-ray will hopefully
show us that.
And then perhaps you
can see some elements
of the horn handle
that was here in its
sixth century guise.
So that's been mineralized.
So is there an iron core running
through the middle of that?
I think so. We can pick
that up on the x-ray.
And have you cleaned
it up at all or
is this just as it
came out of the ground?
This is subject to
immediate stabilization
so it doesn't deteriorate,
and then the full conservation
will happen after the event.
Brilliant, well, I think
we should probably let
Sergeant McDowell
and Sergeant Barnet
get on with the x-rays.
We need to clear
while they do that.
That's a good idea.
Wow, look at that.
That's come up beautifully,
hasn't it, Richard?
Well, this is fantastic
'cause you can see all the
things we really wanted to see.
Course, the thing you really
think of a sword in this period
is whether it's
pattern welded or not.
And that was the real
question we wanted to answer.
And the answer is, yes,
it is, which is fantastic.
How can you tell that?
Can you see all these little
sort of zigzags in here?
Can you see there's a
sort of crisscross element
right in the middle
of the blade, up here?
That's really indicative of
these three bars of iron that've
been twisted and
twisted to form
Well, there's a
debate at the moment
as to whether that's for
strength or for decoration
but it certainly would've
been very beautiful.
A bit like a herring
or one of these fish,
beautiful, decorated thing.
You see that in
samurai swords as well.
It's exactly the same thing,
'cause it's a
strengthening thing
and you can see how, perhaps,
making out the white lines
going down the sword,
can you all see that?
See that?
That's the actual
edge of the sword
where this pattern
welding goes on.
And then the hardened steel
edges are on the side there.
So, that's when it
starts to bevel out
towards the cutting edge.
That's right, and so
you've got a thing of beauty
but a thing with a
real purpose to it,
these aren't just prestigious
objects for no reason,
they're also things
that can actually kill.
It was great to be
able to see all that
without actually having to
start taking that soil off.
It's fabulous,
it's a non-intrusive
way of finding an awful
lot of data and information
about the artifact without
rendering it fragile
and vulnerable, really.
OK, so, who was the man
who had this artifact then?
That's a very good question.
He had not only this, he
had a shield with him,
he had a spear and
he had a knife,
so he's got more or
less the panoply of arms
going into the grave.
He's right in the most important
part of the burial mound,
so he must have been somebody
with a degree of
power and wealth.
This isn't an everyday
item, as I said, it's
the only one we've had
out of the 75 burials,
so he's an important man.
The soldiers believe that
the owner of this sword
might have been a local
king, or warrior chief,
who was buried surrounded by
the burials of other warriors
and placed in the ground with
his spear, shield and sword.
This find, close to a Bronze
Age cemetery, contributes both
to our understanding
of Anglo-Saxon burials
and shows how they
reused earlier monuments
for their cemeteries.
But there's another
group of warrior dead
here at the Dorset Museum,
who are central to a
long-running debate.
For years, historians have
argued whether the Romans
invaded Britain or staged
a peaceful takeover.
So, Rebecca, Maiden
Castle is famous
because it's a really
beautiful hill fort
but also for the
cemetery that's up there.
Exactly.
There is what has become
known as the war cemetery
at the eastern end
of the hill fort.
And these are two of the
skeletons from that cemetery?
Yeah, these two are very,
very special young chaps
because they are the
ones that contain
the most unique
evidence that we have
that enables us to pin
this cemetery down to AD43.
So, let's have a
look at these two then.
I can immediately see something
which looks a bit suspicious.
Yes.
And it's got an arrow
pointing to it as well.
I know, it's very helpful.
Which is this bolt here.
I'm just going to
move this vertebra out
so that we can have
a good look at it.
Look at that!
- Well, that's amazing.
- It is.
It's actually embedded
into the bone,
so it's passed through
that individual
and lodged in their vertebra.
Is that a typical Roman weapon?
It is, it's a classic
Roman ballista bolt
and that's how we can
date these burials.
So, we know that
although the individuals,
the pottery they're buried
with is late-Iron Age,
that absolutely dates
them to the Roman invasion
because none of those
weapons are here
before the Romans get here.
So, it's coming in like
this, right through the guts,
through the kidney, in fact,
and grazing the vertebra
and coming right
to the back, here.
So that's enough
to kill somebody?
Yeah, absolutely,
but there is more.
So, very obviously,
this young chap here
has got a rather large
hole in his head.
So that's where he's
been bashed on the head.
Yeah.
Then these lines, you
only get the fracture lines
running off in these
directions if it's something
that's happened at
the time of death.
And then it kind of
gets worse for this guy
because then this
very little nick here
and that's out of the
back of his mandible
and that's where
someone with a sword
then tried to cut his head off.
Right, OK.
Then they've had another go
because he's then got this blow,
which has actually peeled off
the bone on his mandible here.
Nasty.
Yeah, so they've tried
to cut his head off twice.
He's really been
hacked, hasn't he?
This is vicious,
this is violent.
And it's not just one piece
of evidence of violence,
I mean, shock and
awe at its worst.
It is very, very shocking.
So, the Roman army are
going above and beyond
what is necessary
to kill someone.
But we know that when they
are conquering new territories
they really did go
and decimate people.
These skeletons graphically
reveal one side of the story
of the Romans'
arrival in Britain.
But in 2011, I visited
a site in North Dorset
which told a different story,
the Durotriges Big Dig Project.
For several years,
archeologists have been digging
at Winterborne Kingston.
The dig was originally started
as an Iron Age exploration
looking back almost 2,000
years to when members
of the Durotriges tribe
lived and farmed here
before the Romans arrived.
Well, this survey of the site,
which is a magnetic survey,
shows us the Iron-Age
ditched enclosure
we call the banjo enclosure,
that's because it
superficially resembles a banjo
with the body and the neck.
Do you think this was
a defensive enclosure?
Not at all, not at all.
This is effectively an
undefended farmstead.
But as the team continue the
dig, they started to turn up
more and more signs
of Romanization,
influencing the lives of
the local inhabitants.
So, you've also
got pieces of chicken
and, of course, we're
familiar with chicken today
but in the late Iron Age
this is an exotic animal,
this is coming in
from the Roman world.
Presumably, they're selling
their produce and their grain
and they're getting these
luxury food items in return.
This particular fragment
is a handle of an amphora,
a large storage vessel
that would've stood up
to the height of an adult.
We can tell by the fabric
and by the shape
that it's from Spain
and it would have
probably held wine.
That's lovely.
It is, so we can imagine
that they're eating chicken,
they're drinking wine,
they're sort of plugged in
to the Mediterranean world.
So, for these Iron-Age
farmers, life with the Romans
appears to have been
a peaceful coexistence
in stark contrast to the
massacre at Maiden Castle.
You don't see evidence
of a really abrupt transition
at your site, do you?
No, you can't really tell
when the Romans arrived
because there's small amounts
of Roman material coming in
in the 1st century BC.
As we go on to the 1st,
2nd, 3rd century AD
there's still equivalent
amounts of Roman pottery.
It's all very low-level stuff,
there's no sudden break
when the Romans arrived,
there's no change,
there's no dramatic
increase in Roman artifacts.
And we're seeing that right
the way across Dorset.
I think like Native American
societies, they're picking
and choosing a few things that
facilitate their lifestyle,
but there's no major
change in settlement
or religion going on.
It takes 300 years after the
invasion before we start seeing
real significant Roman
material like villas
and temples being created.
There's a big time-lag between
the arrival of the Romans
and their final evolution
of Roman culture.
I think the main thing is
the picture that we're used to
is too simple, isn't it?
It's much more complex.
It is, you get this
black and white idea,
the Romans arrive, those
who they don't kill
end up living in villas
and towns straight away.
It takes three centuries for
that kind of Roman culture
to really take a hold
in this part of Britain.
You've been digging
at this site now, Miles,
for quite a few seasons.
How's the picture been
changing over the years?
It's been changing quite a lot
because we started out with
an Iron-Age settlement,
we were looking at that
transition from Iron Age to Roman
and what we're
finding is evidence
going on a good three
centuries afterwards.
So, we're doing a geophysical
survey around the whole area.
But we're finding more evidence
of later Roman material.
I think a couple of your
more plucky students filmed
this year's dig for
us, didn't they?
Absolutely, yes.
We're in day three
in trench one at the
top end of the site
and the cleaning
back has revealed
exactly what we were hoping
to find really, which is,
we've got this large, it's
about 15 meters across,
square enclosure defined
by a very thin ditch.
And the interior of which,
there's a whole series
of small pits and
other features.
It could be a shrine,
it could be a temple,
it could be none of the above.
It could be some sort of
animal agriculture enclosure.
But until we start
going down into it
we're not going to know.
It's a very nice
distinct feature
and it fits beautifully
in the trench.
And, once again, because
it's dug down in the chalk,
it shows up fantastically.
Miles and his students
are hoping that this find
will yield clues about
the people who lived here.
Were they farmers who
adopted Roman ways?
Or were they Romans from
elsewhere in the Empire?
OK, so it's the
beginning of day seven
and we're quite excited
that inside the square
enclosure, in trench one,
there's four rectangular cuts
which look extremely
like graves.
This is the team's
first major clue
as to who might have lived here.
We've started cleaning
up these rectangular cuts
and they have, actually,
thankfully started
turning up into graves.
We were wondering to begin with,
'cause these are
east-west aligned,
whether they were going to turn
out to be Christian burials.
But the heads are
at the eastern end.
If they were Christians
you'd expect them
to be at the other end,
so facing the sunrise
on the Day Of Judgment.
We've got a skull coming up here
and we've got just part
of a pottery vessel
coming up at the other end.
So these are unlikely
to be Christian graves,
and neither do they appear to
be Iron Age, as in this area
those tend to take the
form of a crouched burial.
The expectation is that they
are Roman because in 2013,
just in the next field,
they excavated a late
4th-century Roman villa.
After another day's digging,
the team begin to find
strong evidence of a connection,
as more skeletons
start to appear.
You can see just here
in this particular grave
we've got one coffin
nail coming out here.
So we know that these
individuals are all in coffins,
which is probably
another indication
that they're not
early Christian,
which tends to be
buried in shrouds.
We've also got a spindle whorl
which is another
little nice object
they're taking with them into
the afterlife and quite a lot
of late Roman female burials
have spindle whorls
buried with them.
I don't know if
that's an activity
they would have done in life.
One of the other cuts
that's been excavated,
we've had hobnails coming
up, the little nails
that are hammered into sandals
in Roman footwear, suggesting
that they're going
into the grave
wearing almost
military-style boots.
At the moment, we can
say that these are Roman,
they are almost
certainly late Roman,
and the provisional
evidence at present suggests
they are contemporary
with the villa.
Which is what we're hoping
for, to try and find a link
with villa occupants and the
house they actually occupied.
Just a day later, Miles and
the team uncover three female
and two male skeletons.
That was the end of day nine,
things are going extremely well.
The square barrow in trench
one is turning out rapidly
to become what appears
to be a family mausoleum.
We've now got at least
five graves in there,
what looks like one immature,
one juvenile character
and four adults,
none of which appear
to be Christian,
all of which, at the moment,
seem to have indication
of grave goods.
It was traditional
for Romans to bury goods
with their dead like
footwear or pottery.
Like this bowl they found
in one of the female graves.
Hopefully, we'll start
to get all those out
and get a better
idea of their date.
Still hoping they
are the occupiers
of the villa we
excavated last year.
If they can get an
accurate date for the pot,
it will give the team
an even better idea
of who these people were.
Miles, when do these burials
that you've just
been finding date to?
Well, that's the question.
The pot that comes
out with them,
this particular vessel, we
know is made sometime around
370, 380 AD but the question is,
how old is it at the time
it's gone into the grave?
That's lovely, it's got
imprinted pattern on it.
It's got this rosette
pattern all the way around,
but you can see it's very worn,
the slip's worn off and
it originally had a base,
it had a foot on it
which has been broken off
and it's been worn smooth.
And given it may have
taken 40, 50, 60 years
before it's actually
ended up in the grave.
So we're seeing people
who have been buried
in Roman-style tradition
but they haven't got access
to high status Roman goods.
I suspect given that we've
only got a few spindle whorls,
we've got fragments of pottery,
there's not a lot of
Roman status goods
going in with these graves.
I think we're dealing with
a sub-Roman population.
This is the people who
are, sort of, traditionally
grubbing around in the
remains of their Roman world.
So, do you think this
is after the collapse
of the Roman Empire, then?
I think it is.
I think we are dealing
with the last people
who still have a remembrance
of a Roman world.
They're still clinging
on to one or two items
that link them
back to that past.
But they're no longer working
within a functioning
Roman administration.
So, I think we are
dealing with people
who are probably
dying and being buried
probably sometime in
the mid-5th century,
so we've probably got 450 AD
as, probably, our cut-off point
for the time these people
are going into their graves.
There is a theory that
the bodies at Maiden Castle
are the natives
who were taking one last
stand against the Romans.
Is it possible that
the bodies you've got,
or you're excavating,
are their descendants,
hundreds of years later?
That'll be fantastic, if we
could prove that, obviously.
But if we got good
DNA samples from both,
then, we might be able to say
that these are the descendants
from the iron age inhabitants
and that would be something
rather spectacular.
Because we still
don't know, yet,
whether the people
who live in the villas
are the descendants of
the indigenous population,
or whether they
are 1st generation
or 2nd generation migrants
from another part
of the Roman Empire.
The Romano-Britons, who
lived and died in the villa,
offer clues to the poverty
of the twilight world
after the Roman army
left, in 410 AD.
But less than 100 miles
away, at Chedworth,
another dig is unexpectedly
revealing the glories
of Roman Britain in its heyday.
First discovered by the
Victorians 150 years ago,
Chedworth is a late 4th century
courtyard villa complex.
In August, a team of
archeologists from the National Trust
started a two week
dig to find out more
about the villa layout.
Unfortunately, they
had very little
recorded information to go on.
The last person to dig
here was Sir Ian Richmond,
Professor of Archeology
at Oxford University,
whose notes were lost,
after his death in 1965.
All that remains of his work
are some modern
concrete path borders,
which the team believe
Richmond laid down to outline
a 2nd century Roman bathhouse.
But they were in for a surprise,
as Martin Papworth explains.
When we started
our excavation here,
we really thought
that Ian Richmond
had dug everything,
including the wall lines,
where he put his concrete,
and also the bits in between,
which we call the "islands".
So, we were quite surprised
when we lifted a turf
and we found bits of
tesserae coming up,
bits of mosaic coming up.
And there were no
records of any mosaics
in any of these areas,
between the walls.
The tesserae, or tile pieces,
are revealing what might be
a border in red, cream and blue,
but whether anything
else survives,
of the central
pattern, is unclear.
There are areas, there are
going to be big holes in it,
there's going to be areas
where the mosaic could be lost
and Carol's working over here.
She's got an edge
against the wall,
but lots of loose tesserae
there, in a worn area,
away from the wall.
So we just need to
gradually uncover
and show what lies
within these walls.
There's also something
else puzzling the team.
They had thought they were
working on a series of baths
in separate rooms.
The other strange
thing is that we've taken
the concrete up, we've cleaned
underneath the concrete
and we're not finding walls,
yet, which is quite peculiar.
Pretty soon, it becomes clear
they're no longer
dealing with a bathhouse.
We knew from the beginning,
when we first lifted the turf,
that there was going to
be mosaic underneath here,
but now we can see it's part
of one great, long mosaic.
In fact, we now believe
it's part of the grand
reception hall of the villa.
So, rather than
having five or six
little bits of different
rooms of mosaic,
all this mosaic joins
up into one big pattern.
The team make other finds,
which give more of an idea of
the decoration of the villa.
We found bits of broad
plaster on top of the top soil
and, in that, we've got patterns
in red, blue and white, green.
And, so, we must
think of this floor
as being part of
something really grand.
Emerging from the rubble,
an extraordinary, huge artwork
and an insight into the wealth
and power of the Romano-British.
So, if we were
looking at, in terms of,
did this person consider
themselves Roman?
Were they presenting their
life as being part of
the Great Roman Empire
and the whole link
to classical civilization,
well, this, surely,
must be someone really
showing off their wealth
and their link to Rome
and, really, presenting
themselves as Roman.
The team had started the
dig thinking they were looking
for a 2nd century bathhouse
and they've finished up
with a show-stopping
grand reception hall.
I think it's amazing how much
you can find by going back
and revisiting existing
archeological sites,
where you think you
know everything already.
Yep.
And find some
incredible mosaics.
Jon, how do those mosaics
compare to these incredible
mosaics that we're, literally,
sitting on, right here?
Well, we're very
lucky, in Dorset,
that we have an
awful lot of mosaics.
Over 60 have been
found in the county.
But, in the county
museum here, we have 12
that have been relocated
from around the county,
including this one
from Durngate Street,
in the middle of Dorchester.
And what have we got here?
Is that a serpent over there?
Yeah, we've got serpents and
we've got drinking vessels.
The serpents represent rebirth
and that's Bacchus's
drinking vessel,
so it's good luck
and celebration.
What can these mosaics tell us
about the people who owned them,
or who owned the
villas where they were?
Well, the complexity of
them, and their intricacy,
suggests they were
extremely wealthy.
Also, there are things
in them that tells us
that they want to be part
of the wider Roman culture.
Their use of mythology,
the imagery for the
Roman gods and legends
all suggest that they really
want to identify with Rome.
So were they locals made good,
or were they Roman
officials who'd moved in?
That's going to be the million
dollar question, isn't it?
I think it's
My own instinct would
be it's going to be
a combination of the local
population who have done well
from Roman occupation, from
trading with the Romans,
and, also, those officials,
from Rome, who want
very grand houses
in what was a very important
part of Roman Britain.
So these beautiful
and intricate mosaics
tell us of a vanished
Romano-British world
when at least some in the west,
enjoyed the riches of empire.
For the past seven years,
a team has been excavating
one of the earliest leprosy
hospitals, near Winchester,
dating back almost
a thousand years.
And what they have been
finding at St Mary Magdalen
is really helping to change
our ideas about leprosy
in the Middle Ages.
Just a mile from Winchester
city center, St Mary Magdalen
was, once, a busy
complex of buildings,
but, now, nothing
remains above ground.
The last recorded medieval
building on this site
was a late 15th
century almshouse.
But archeologists from the
University of Winchester
have been slowly peeling back
an extremely rare
medical history.
As the dig unfolds, the team
is filming it themselves
and in charge is chief
investigator Simon Roffey.
This is the north
wall of that infirmary,
running across the site,
so I'm inside the
medieval infirmary now
and as I step outside,
into this area here,
we have evidence of
what we think may be
the wall of a possible cloister.
Last year we found whole
pots and metal objects
evidence for, perhaps,
medical practice.
But more importantly, the
team have uncovered 20 graves.
The condition of the skeletons
leads them to believe
that there was a leprosy
hospital here dating back to 1070.
It's the earliest excavated
leprosy hospital in Britain.
The cemetery holds about 85%
of individuals with leprosy,
men, women, children and babies.
It's the highest sample we've
had from any British site.
In the Middle Ages, it was
thought that those with leprosy
were unclean and sinful
and that the disease was
a punishment from God.
In 2011, I went to
look at the skeletons
they'd uncovered, for myself,
and see the full, shocking
extent of the disease
with osteologist
Dr Katie Tucker.
Now, this is extreme, isn't it?
Yeah, this is
erm Suppose you
don't know if it's
the wrong word to use,
the best example of leprosy,
that we have on the site.
Yeah, you can see
the massive amounts
- Goodness me!
- Of bone loss.
Yeah.
Totally lost the
front of the nose.
And you actually see, these
are the sockets, here,
for the first molars, so
all the bone has been lost,
back to the first molars.
All the way back
to the first molars?
Yeah.
That is just horrific, isn't it?
I mean, look at that.
You've lost all of the
front of the upper jaw here.
And the bottom of
the nasal cavity.
And the hard palate,
of course, has gone.
Yeah, yeah.
It probably would have been
difficult for this individual
to eat, without choking.
Yeah.
It's quite a shocking
disease, isn't it?
- It is, yeah.
- I find it shocking
to look at it in a
skeleton and, I think,
it's not surprising that it was,
it carried such
a stigma with it.
I mean, they would have
looked alien, really.
Mm.
Especially with
the facial lesions,
as well, in the soft tissue.
Mm.
And probably would
have needed help
eating, maybe, because
Well, they may have even had
difficulty picking things up,
because they'd started to get
loss of feeling in their hands.
Yeah.
I think they probably
would have needed quite a lot
of help, during the last
few years of their life.
Some accounts suggest that
those suffering from leprosy
would have been outcasts and
not given the same treatment
as ordinary citizens in life,
or in death.
But back at St Mary Magdalen,
the team believes that
the graves themselves
reveal a very different story.
What we can see here is,
a grave that's been
well-cut, cut into the chalk.
Anthropomorphicm it's tapered
down towards the feet end.
There's a head niche there,
to hold the head
of the individual.
And around the grave,
you can see the lip,
which would hold a lid,
or a ledger, on top of it.
You can see that all these
graves are well-separated,
they've been marked, as well.
So, what we're seeing here
is a certain level of care
and attention that's gone
into building these graves.
It's clear that these
were no hasty burials.
In this religious hospital,
people with leprosy seem to
have been treated with respect
and buried with care.
The archeologists also believe
that one particular
grave they uncovered,
back in 2011,
supports this idea.
This skeleton of a man
was discovered buried
with a scallop shell,
a traditional pilgrim badge,
that he may have carried back
from one of the most famous
pilgrimage sites in the world,
Santiago de
Compostela, in Spain.
Simon believes that this man
proves that medieval
leprosy sufferers
could be treated with
respect and dignity
and not always with revulsion.
This is the shell
we just saw in the VT?
- The pilgrim's shell?
- That's right.
This wonderful artifact
was from an individual
with mature years, he
had early stage leprosy.
Clearly took this
with him to grave,
as a, sort of, way of proving
that he had done this
arduous pilgrimage,
to Santiago de Compostela.
But I think, more widely,
this badge tells us
about the status
of the hospital.
I mean, here was a man
of religious sensitivity,
wealth, perhaps, and the
means to go on a pilgrimage
and here he is, buried in a
community of leprosy sufferers,
so this really challenges
this view that we have that
leprosy hospitals were
somehow excluded from society,
the community were outcasts,
this sort of thing.
But do you think he
could he have been excluded
when he developed the
outward signs of leprosy?
I mean, he's there
in the hospital,
he's buried within
the hospital cemetery,
and not with his own community.
I think, when we look at
the archeology as a whole,
what we have is well-appointed
timber buildings, originally,
got substantial
postholes on the side,
we have a chapel, we have
a well-ordered cemetery.
We've also got evidence
for medical provision,
on one example.
All this put together,
I think, tells us
this site wasn't a site
of outcasts, it was,
these were people who
had a certain level
of status, I think.
'Cause there is the traditional view,
the medieval view,
that leprosy was,
somehow, a sinful disease,
but this doesn't
appear to be the case.
It's a very complex
issue, I think,
where we have this,
perhaps, belief today
that leprosy sufferers
were sinful, were outcasts.
This has only recently
been challenged
by certain
revisionist historians
and, also, our work at St
Mary Magdalen, in Winchester.
So it's really important, then,
because it's showing these
people were looked after?
Certainly, and
leprosy is a disease
that affects people today,
in places such as
India and Brazil,
among many other countries.
There's only about a
quarter of a million
new cases of leprosy
identified every year.
And leprosy is still
stigmatized in these countries,
so part of what we're doing
is really challenging
this stigma.
For the Romans, the Far
West was frontier country.
And, in the past,
we believed that they got
no further than Exeter.
But, a dig at Ipplepen, in
Devon, is literally pushing
the boundaries of Roman
Britain in the West.
I visited this site
three years ago,
when it was just a tiny
collection of graves
and a Roman road.
Now it's turning into
something much more intriguing.
It looks like it's
an adult female.
You can see it's got quite
a high, straight forehead,
which is a feature on females
and quite small arches.
You can feel, on yourself here,
you've got quite low
ridges, supraorbital ridge.
So I think it's an adult female.
Got half of the mandible
here, which is this part,
we've got this side
and all of her teeth
and you can see
they're very worn.
So all the enamel
has actually come off
and we've got the
dentine exposed.
The team finds no evidence
of the cause of death
in this skeleton, but
this woman was probably
about 30-years-old
when she died.
After some careful excavation,
the first Ipplepen resident
is off to the University of
Exeter for radio carbon dating.
So it's the end of day eight
and, kind of, quite
an emotional moment,
lifting the first
skull of the site.
And, always, you've
got to remember,
you've got to be
really respectful,
that these people
were real human beings
and it's just quite amazing
to think that they lived here,
on this site, 2,000 years ago
and how different the
world must have been then.
By day 12, the team have
uncovered another nine burials
and over 2,000 small finds,
all adding evidence
to their theory
that this was a
Roman settlement.
Although, some of the objects
are a bit of a mystery.
I've got quite an
interesting find here.
Not sure exactly what it is,
but I've got a feeling that
it might be a cosmetic case,
with make-up inside.
We immediately
wrapped it in bandages
and packaged it up to be
conserved and looked at,
so we'll know more,
at a later date,
exactly, precisely, what it is.
But what's, perhaps,
the team's biggest clue
to a Roman presence is the
position of the graves.
Even though it's partially
cut in to the edge of the road,
it is still respecting,
generally, the line of the road.
- Yeah.
- It's a roadside burial.
It's deliberately placed
at the side of the road.
As burials were
forbidden in Roman cities,
the dead were buried
on the outskirts,
often along the roadside,
just as the team
is finding here.
So it's day 18 on our
excavations at Ipplepen.
We've now got a total
of 16 skeletons.
So it's quite clear that
what we're dealing with here
is a Romano-British Cemetery,
which is very exciting.
It's amazing to see the
way this site is developing,
because when I visited,
and we stood on that
hill in Ipplepen,
all there was, was a road and
a couple of roadside burials
and, now, you've got
a whole cemetery,
but what about the road itself?
Where does it go?
Don't know yet.
I suspect probably from Exeter
and out towards south Devon.
But it's just
really fascinating.
We really didn't expect to find
such a well-preserved Roman
road, so far west of Exeter.
We're still only
scratching the surface
but this year's excavations
have been a real revelation.
Here's just an example
of the absolutely lovely
stuff that we had.
This is what was being
excavated in the VT.
And is it a powder compact?
We don't know.
We still don't know?
Come on.
This is a real mystery
artifact, actually.
Experts have looked at
it, at the British Museum,
and there's the possibility
that it might be a lead weight
that's been set into a case,
into a copper alloy case.
How strange!
But I'm not sure
why you would do that.
Unless, perhaps, it was a weight
that maybe belonged
to your grandfather
and it was a kind of
keepsake, or something.
So the jury's still out
on this mystery artifact.
We had hoped that it
would be a ladies compact,
because its really nice to see
the female side
of Roman Britain.
Yeah. And a beautiful brooch.
A beautiful brooch.
And, you can see here,
it's got amazing enamel
set into the cells there
and it's even intact,
with its catch plating,
its pin and its spring, I mean,
it's such a lovely example,
which dates from
probably 75 to 175 AD.
And is that a tiny bead there?
Yeah.
We've got beads, we've got
coins, we've got hair pins,
we got mystery objects.
And, Danni, you came in,
to our studio here,
in Dorchester Museum.
Incredibly exciting.
You told us you've got
a radio carbon date.
Yes, we took the latest burial,
which is dug into the roadside
ditch of the Roman road,
so it's the latest one
we've excavated so far,
and the radio carbon
results have come back
as 7th to 8th century.
Really?
Yeah!
So it's a long-running
cemetery, then?
- Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
It's just absolutely stunning.
So we're not just dealing
with 1st century Roman stuff
going through to the 4th
century Romano-British,
it's carrying on well
into the post-Roman period
and this is so important
for Devon and Cornwall.
That is fascinating.
And just remember that
you heard it here first.
We are rewriting the
history of the Romans
and the Dark Ages
in the south west,
here on Digging for Britain.
From the Saxon sword
to the cemetery rewriting
the history of leprosy,
the West has provided us
with a richly-woven tapestry
of our past.
This is "Digging for Britain,"
the program which brings you
this year's most
outstanding new archeology.
All year, in hundreds of digs
across the UK, teams have been
uncovering new
archeological clues
which help us to tell our story.
We'll be looking at
highlights from all the digs
with in-depth analysis
from archeologists
who are going to
extraordinary lengths
to uncover our history in a
way that only archeology can.
And they've been out there
filming themselves to make sure
that we were there for
every moment of discovery.
It's in perfect mint condition.
And they'll be
joining us back here
at the Dorset County Museum,
to help us make sense of what
the new finds actually mean.
Tonight, we're in the
West of England, as we meet
army veterans on the hunt
for Anglo-Saxon warriors.
We investigate Britain's
earliest leprosy hospital,
changing what we know
about how sufferers
might have been treated.
And we reveal a lost
Roman masterpiece.
We're in Dorchester, home
to the Dorset County Museum,
established in 1845,
and famous for housing the
study and notebooks of one of
England's most
well-loved writers,
Thomas Hardy.
But it's also home to some of
our most important treasures,
like The Chickerell Rings,
these Bronze Age gold torques
discovered by
metal detectorists.
And the Langton Matravers Axes,
the largest hoard
of Bronze Age axes
ever discovered in Britain
and which some believe were
made as a gift to the gods.
In our first dig, just 50
miles away from the museum,
more extraordinary Bronze Age
remains are coming to light,
at Barrow Clump, in the
heart of Salisbury Plain.
Over the last three years,
archeologists from the
Ministry of Defense,
who owns the land,
have been excavating a
Bronze Age burial site.
This ancient site dates
back to over 5,000 years ago
but archeologists have
been called in now
because it's in danger.
Badgers are burrowing
through the soil,
destroying the archeology,
so the team must hurry
to recover and record
as much as possible.
And after only two days on
site, their work pays off
with an important discovery,
a Bronze Age burial urn
so fragile that its temporary
protection is a bucket.
There you go!
It's really, really
exciting, this.
You can see the rim of
the pot coming round here
and within it, bits
of collapsed pot
but all this burned material
which we presume is
burned human bone.
We'll lift it out as a block
and we'll excavate
that back in the lab.
It's a fantastic find.
Having gently excavated
the urn, osteoarcheologist,
Jacqueline McKinley,
carefully lifts the collar.
Voila!
Like doing a sponge cake.
If I lift that up can you
see all that lovely cord
decoration on the
inside of there?
Brilliant, isn't it?
No sooner has the
first urn been rescued
but a second vessel is found.
This much larger urn has
been buried upside down.
It is moving though,
isn't it? I'm just worried.
After a tense hour, the
urn comes out in one piece,
carefully bandaged.
It's actually a food vessel,
Bronze Aged food vessel,
which I know looks like a
bandaged head at the moment.
But the reason that
bandage is there is
because it's
slightly elasticated
so it gives support
to the vessel
and stops it falling apart
while I'm getting
things from inside it.
And Jacqui, you're
in the process
of looking at this material,
I think, from the first urn,
the urn with the
cord marking on it.
That's right, this was
actually quite badly damaged
on the site, it was only
about 10cm left so I decided,
in this case, to excavate
what was inside it on site.
And today, actually, is the
first time I've seen this,
now that it's been washed
and cleaned up again.
And at this point, what
can you tell about this bone?
Well, what I've done is I've
pulled out some very useful
pieces of bone, like, for
instance, this here, which is
part of the super-orbit,
which goes about there,
and there's a few other
pieces around there,
like, for instance, this
one, which is from there,
which is part of the
diagrammatic arch.
The skull is very useful,
one, in that you have a
very easily identifiable
piece of bone, which you only
either have one or a pair of,
so they're very useful for doing
minimum numbers of individuals,
but also a lot of the skull
is very diagnostic in terms
of sexing the individual,
the adult individual.
And what about the
sex of this individual,
is this an adult male or female?
Looking at the general
size and robusticity,
I would say it's most
likely to be male.
And do you think these
were high-status individuals
who were treated in this way
and buried in the Barrows?
Status?
Well, you know, in the past,
the antiquarians always thought
that everybody was a chief,
it was always chieftains,
it was always men,
always chieftains,
who were buried in here.
So, this would have been a King?
It would have been a
King, yes, undoubtedly,
or a prince or something,
but when you actually look
at the individuals you
find in these places, they
are a mix of individuals,
you could get males,
females, children, and one of
the things I have noticed when
I've been looking at
material from these barrows,
is that you have
quite a large number
of females with infants
or young children.
Now, if you think
about your community
and what matters to a community,
one of the important
things there is the future
and your future is your
children, so really,
the children and the mother,
the mother that
produces the children,
could be seen as very
important to the community.
So, it's not really surprising
that they're quite often chosen
to be buried in these positions.
But these urns
aren't the only things
that make this dig special.
In a unique project, known
as Operation Nightingale,
the MOD archeologists
are working closely
with injured soldiers for
whom this is vital therapy.
This pioneering
scheme is introducing
veteran Armed Forces personnel
to the practice of archeology.
Operation Nightingale's
really a recovery opportunity,
some of them will want
to, having had, maybe,
a tough operational tour,
will want to just come out
and experience some
very benign atmosphere.
You can see how
it's quite cathartic
in the broadest sense that
you can come out here,
be with your friends and just
get to understand a little
bit about the past
landscapes over
which you've trained
over many years.
For many men like former
rifleman, Kenny Kendrick,
it's been a lifesaver.
What happened to me is
I suffered a mental breakdown
while over in Germany and it's
given me a whole new lease
of life, a new career.
I left the army and I've become
an archeologist full-time
and once I start digging,
it's very hard to stop.
If I'm not told when to
take a break or have a drink
or have my dinner I'd probably
dig until it gets dark.
In fact, the
disciplines of military
and archeology are not
such strange bedfellows.
Anyone who's watched the news
footage from Afghanistan
or Iraq has seen people,
military figures,
looking for IEDs
and things like that
with a metal detector.
Critical skill in the military,
key skill on an
archeological site.
Just do that area again.
There's almost a symbiotic
relationship, in many ways,
there are so many
crossover skills
and its quite an
inspirational thing
for the archeologists
amongst us to see that
and working together as a team,
and it's a team thing
that is crucial.
As its name suggests,
Barrow Clump is a barrow,
or burial mound,
so it's no surprise
that the team uncover skeletons.
He was a very large bloke,
these femurs are truly huge,
and his feet are, the toe bones,
I've never seen anything so big.
As burial after burial appears,
they soon realize
they're unearthing
an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, dating
from the sixth century AD,
just a few meters away
from the original
Bronze Age burial site.
There's huge progress on site.
We started off with one or two
grave cuts that we could see
and over the weeks we've
now exposed at least 12.
There we go.
Like this spearhead.
And shield boss, the
metal center of a shield
which would have
protected the hand.
The original shield
could have been
up to a meter in diameter.
These are warriors' graves.
But with so many on site,
the team are beginning
to wonder, why?
One of the theories that
were put forward to me
by one of the soldiers
on the project was that
the outside of the
ditch seemed to have
quite a large concentration
of males with shields
and thought that this
was perhaps something
like an equivalent in death
of the Saxon shield wall
protecting those buried
inside the monument,
which I think is a
really lovely idea.
So, it is interesting to
have all those Anglo-Saxon
burials alongside the Bronze
Age ones, but is it unusual?
No, there's quite
a lot of evidence
that Anglo-Saxons would
choose what were obvious,
important, particularly
mortuary important,
landscape features in which
to bury their own dead.
This would have been very
obvious features at that time.
The mounds would have
been quite obvious there
and people would have recognized
that they were very important
to people in the past.
In a way, the same way
as in the Bronze Age,
they were almost staking a claim
in that landscape by
producing these mounds.
The Anglo-Saxons, by coming in
and burying their dead there,
may also have been staking
a claim to the same land.
Well, in spite of a growing
number of warrior graves
at Barrow Clump,
there's still one thing
that's eluding the team.
Chap in front of us
has between his knees,
the remnants of an
iron shield boss
and that's one of several
we've now had over the site.
To the left of the individual,
just poking out above the grave,
is the socket of a spear,
so, all those things
that you'd expect, perhaps,
to find with a warrior.
What we're missing from
that and something you see
referred to throughout
Saxon poetry is a sword.
Swords were prized by the Saxons
but are extremely rare finds.
Richard's greatest hope
is that they'll find one
but despite
unearthing 75 graves,
the prize is proving elusive.
However, the badgers
burrowing on this site have
left a trail that leads the team
right to this year's prize find.
As we were going down,
we had a lot of badger
packing material
so we weren't sure whether
they would have disturbed
any remains that were there.
As it happens, we do have a
badger run that does run right
alongside and has
damaged the skeleton.
But the rest of it is
very well preserved.
And, we're very lucky,
the fact that we've got a
sword lying alongside it.
So, this one's got the big
three, really, in that it's got
the spearhead, the shield boss
and then a sword alongside.
Now all they have to
do is get the sword out,
an extremely delicate task,
carried out by Lynn Wootton,
conservator with
Wessex Archeology.
So, a sword, which is
sitting right on
the top arm bone,
which is coming
out in fragments.
I'm going to try to get
the whole lot up in one go.
If the sword
survives excavation,
the trick will be to find
out if it's pattern welded.
This was a complicated
method of forging a blade
to produce a top-class sword.
A clue, perhaps, to the
man who was buried with it.
We're thrilled to
be joined by Richard
and some of his colleagues
from the Medical squadron
here this evening.
And we're especially lucky
because we're going to x-ray
the sword in real time,
right here, in the museum.
But before we do that, Richard,
what can you tell us about it?
We're really excited about this
because this was the
only sword we had, it was
found by one of the
soldiers of the project,
so really, really exciting.
And what we really
want to know is to see
whether it is one of those
fabulous, high-status weapons
that's pattern welded and really
part of the whole mythology
of Anglo-Saxon England,
of the sword with its name
and that sort of thing,
it's a powerful item.
And this came out of the
ground in one piece, didn't it?
It did and it was
a nervous moment,
having this thing lifted,
Excalibur-like, from the ground.
There you go.
Oh, that's mineralized wood.
So yes, a real thing of beauty
and then the sword being
such an important artifact
in the sixth century,
this was really quite
a thrill to find it.
So what have we got here?
This is the handle end and
bits of copper along here?
Right, you've got the
remnants of the scabbard,
perhaps you can make out
little traces of mineralized
wood, which is the
fabric of the scabbard,
and these are the gilded
copper alloy mounts
at the side of the scabbard,
same with the top area,
might have some decoration,
x-ray will hopefully
show us that.
And then perhaps you
can see some elements
of the horn handle
that was here in its
sixth century guise.
So that's been mineralized.
So is there an iron core running
through the middle of that?
I think so. We can pick
that up on the x-ray.
And have you cleaned
it up at all or
is this just as it
came out of the ground?
This is subject to
immediate stabilization
so it doesn't deteriorate,
and then the full conservation
will happen after the event.
Brilliant, well, I think
we should probably let
Sergeant McDowell
and Sergeant Barnet
get on with the x-rays.
We need to clear
while they do that.
That's a good idea.
Wow, look at that.
That's come up beautifully,
hasn't it, Richard?
Well, this is fantastic
'cause you can see all the
things we really wanted to see.
Course, the thing you really
think of a sword in this period
is whether it's
pattern welded or not.
And that was the real
question we wanted to answer.
And the answer is, yes,
it is, which is fantastic.
How can you tell that?
Can you see all these little
sort of zigzags in here?
Can you see there's a
sort of crisscross element
right in the middle
of the blade, up here?
That's really indicative of
these three bars of iron that've
been twisted and
twisted to form
Well, there's a
debate at the moment
as to whether that's for
strength or for decoration
but it certainly would've
been very beautiful.
A bit like a herring
or one of these fish,
beautiful, decorated thing.
You see that in
samurai swords as well.
It's exactly the same thing,
'cause it's a
strengthening thing
and you can see how, perhaps,
making out the white lines
going down the sword,
can you all see that?
See that?
That's the actual
edge of the sword
where this pattern
welding goes on.
And then the hardened steel
edges are on the side there.
So, that's when it
starts to bevel out
towards the cutting edge.
That's right, and so
you've got a thing of beauty
but a thing with a
real purpose to it,
these aren't just prestigious
objects for no reason,
they're also things
that can actually kill.
It was great to be
able to see all that
without actually having to
start taking that soil off.
It's fabulous,
it's a non-intrusive
way of finding an awful
lot of data and information
about the artifact without
rendering it fragile
and vulnerable, really.
OK, so, who was the man
who had this artifact then?
That's a very good question.
He had not only this, he
had a shield with him,
he had a spear and
he had a knife,
so he's got more or
less the panoply of arms
going into the grave.
He's right in the most important
part of the burial mound,
so he must have been somebody
with a degree of
power and wealth.
This isn't an everyday
item, as I said, it's
the only one we've had
out of the 75 burials,
so he's an important man.
The soldiers believe that
the owner of this sword
might have been a local
king, or warrior chief,
who was buried surrounded by
the burials of other warriors
and placed in the ground with
his spear, shield and sword.
This find, close to a Bronze
Age cemetery, contributes both
to our understanding
of Anglo-Saxon burials
and shows how they
reused earlier monuments
for their cemeteries.
But there's another
group of warrior dead
here at the Dorset Museum,
who are central to a
long-running debate.
For years, historians have
argued whether the Romans
invaded Britain or staged
a peaceful takeover.
So, Rebecca, Maiden
Castle is famous
because it's a really
beautiful hill fort
but also for the
cemetery that's up there.
Exactly.
There is what has become
known as the war cemetery
at the eastern end
of the hill fort.
And these are two of the
skeletons from that cemetery?
Yeah, these two are very,
very special young chaps
because they are the
ones that contain
the most unique
evidence that we have
that enables us to pin
this cemetery down to AD43.
So, let's have a
look at these two then.
I can immediately see something
which looks a bit suspicious.
Yes.
And it's got an arrow
pointing to it as well.
I know, it's very helpful.
Which is this bolt here.
I'm just going to
move this vertebra out
so that we can have
a good look at it.
Look at that!
- Well, that's amazing.
- It is.
It's actually embedded
into the bone,
so it's passed through
that individual
and lodged in their vertebra.
Is that a typical Roman weapon?
It is, it's a classic
Roman ballista bolt
and that's how we can
date these burials.
So, we know that
although the individuals,
the pottery they're buried
with is late-Iron Age,
that absolutely dates
them to the Roman invasion
because none of those
weapons are here
before the Romans get here.
So, it's coming in like
this, right through the guts,
through the kidney, in fact,
and grazing the vertebra
and coming right
to the back, here.
So that's enough
to kill somebody?
Yeah, absolutely,
but there is more.
So, very obviously,
this young chap here
has got a rather large
hole in his head.
So that's where he's
been bashed on the head.
Yeah.
Then these lines, you
only get the fracture lines
running off in these
directions if it's something
that's happened at
the time of death.
And then it kind of
gets worse for this guy
because then this
very little nick here
and that's out of the
back of his mandible
and that's where
someone with a sword
then tried to cut his head off.
Right, OK.
Then they've had another go
because he's then got this blow,
which has actually peeled off
the bone on his mandible here.
Nasty.
Yeah, so they've tried
to cut his head off twice.
He's really been
hacked, hasn't he?
This is vicious,
this is violent.
And it's not just one piece
of evidence of violence,
I mean, shock and
awe at its worst.
It is very, very shocking.
So, the Roman army are
going above and beyond
what is necessary
to kill someone.
But we know that when they
are conquering new territories
they really did go
and decimate people.
These skeletons graphically
reveal one side of the story
of the Romans'
arrival in Britain.
But in 2011, I visited
a site in North Dorset
which told a different story,
the Durotriges Big Dig Project.
For several years,
archeologists have been digging
at Winterborne Kingston.
The dig was originally started
as an Iron Age exploration
looking back almost 2,000
years to when members
of the Durotriges tribe
lived and farmed here
before the Romans arrived.
Well, this survey of the site,
which is a magnetic survey,
shows us the Iron-Age
ditched enclosure
we call the banjo enclosure,
that's because it
superficially resembles a banjo
with the body and the neck.
Do you think this was
a defensive enclosure?
Not at all, not at all.
This is effectively an
undefended farmstead.
But as the team continue the
dig, they started to turn up
more and more signs
of Romanization,
influencing the lives of
the local inhabitants.
So, you've also
got pieces of chicken
and, of course, we're
familiar with chicken today
but in the late Iron Age
this is an exotic animal,
this is coming in
from the Roman world.
Presumably, they're selling
their produce and their grain
and they're getting these
luxury food items in return.
This particular fragment
is a handle of an amphora,
a large storage vessel
that would've stood up
to the height of an adult.
We can tell by the fabric
and by the shape
that it's from Spain
and it would have
probably held wine.
That's lovely.
It is, so we can imagine
that they're eating chicken,
they're drinking wine,
they're sort of plugged in
to the Mediterranean world.
So, for these Iron-Age
farmers, life with the Romans
appears to have been
a peaceful coexistence
in stark contrast to the
massacre at Maiden Castle.
You don't see evidence
of a really abrupt transition
at your site, do you?
No, you can't really tell
when the Romans arrived
because there's small amounts
of Roman material coming in
in the 1st century BC.
As we go on to the 1st,
2nd, 3rd century AD
there's still equivalent
amounts of Roman pottery.
It's all very low-level stuff,
there's no sudden break
when the Romans arrived,
there's no change,
there's no dramatic
increase in Roman artifacts.
And we're seeing that right
the way across Dorset.
I think like Native American
societies, they're picking
and choosing a few things that
facilitate their lifestyle,
but there's no major
change in settlement
or religion going on.
It takes 300 years after the
invasion before we start seeing
real significant Roman
material like villas
and temples being created.
There's a big time-lag between
the arrival of the Romans
and their final evolution
of Roman culture.
I think the main thing is
the picture that we're used to
is too simple, isn't it?
It's much more complex.
It is, you get this
black and white idea,
the Romans arrive, those
who they don't kill
end up living in villas
and towns straight away.
It takes three centuries for
that kind of Roman culture
to really take a hold
in this part of Britain.
You've been digging
at this site now, Miles,
for quite a few seasons.
How's the picture been
changing over the years?
It's been changing quite a lot
because we started out with
an Iron-Age settlement,
we were looking at that
transition from Iron Age to Roman
and what we're
finding is evidence
going on a good three
centuries afterwards.
So, we're doing a geophysical
survey around the whole area.
But we're finding more evidence
of later Roman material.
I think a couple of your
more plucky students filmed
this year's dig for
us, didn't they?
Absolutely, yes.
We're in day three
in trench one at the
top end of the site
and the cleaning
back has revealed
exactly what we were hoping
to find really, which is,
we've got this large, it's
about 15 meters across,
square enclosure defined
by a very thin ditch.
And the interior of which,
there's a whole series
of small pits and
other features.
It could be a shrine,
it could be a temple,
it could be none of the above.
It could be some sort of
animal agriculture enclosure.
But until we start
going down into it
we're not going to know.
It's a very nice
distinct feature
and it fits beautifully
in the trench.
And, once again, because
it's dug down in the chalk,
it shows up fantastically.
Miles and his students
are hoping that this find
will yield clues about
the people who lived here.
Were they farmers who
adopted Roman ways?
Or were they Romans from
elsewhere in the Empire?
OK, so it's the
beginning of day seven
and we're quite excited
that inside the square
enclosure, in trench one,
there's four rectangular cuts
which look extremely
like graves.
This is the team's
first major clue
as to who might have lived here.
We've started cleaning
up these rectangular cuts
and they have, actually,
thankfully started
turning up into graves.
We were wondering to begin with,
'cause these are
east-west aligned,
whether they were going to turn
out to be Christian burials.
But the heads are
at the eastern end.
If they were Christians
you'd expect them
to be at the other end,
so facing the sunrise
on the Day Of Judgment.
We've got a skull coming up here
and we've got just part
of a pottery vessel
coming up at the other end.
So these are unlikely
to be Christian graves,
and neither do they appear to
be Iron Age, as in this area
those tend to take the
form of a crouched burial.
The expectation is that they
are Roman because in 2013,
just in the next field,
they excavated a late
4th-century Roman villa.
After another day's digging,
the team begin to find
strong evidence of a connection,
as more skeletons
start to appear.
You can see just here
in this particular grave
we've got one coffin
nail coming out here.
So we know that these
individuals are all in coffins,
which is probably
another indication
that they're not
early Christian,
which tends to be
buried in shrouds.
We've also got a spindle whorl
which is another
little nice object
they're taking with them into
the afterlife and quite a lot
of late Roman female burials
have spindle whorls
buried with them.
I don't know if
that's an activity
they would have done in life.
One of the other cuts
that's been excavated,
we've had hobnails coming
up, the little nails
that are hammered into sandals
in Roman footwear, suggesting
that they're going
into the grave
wearing almost
military-style boots.
At the moment, we can
say that these are Roman,
they are almost
certainly late Roman,
and the provisional
evidence at present suggests
they are contemporary
with the villa.
Which is what we're hoping
for, to try and find a link
with villa occupants and the
house they actually occupied.
Just a day later, Miles and
the team uncover three female
and two male skeletons.
That was the end of day nine,
things are going extremely well.
The square barrow in trench
one is turning out rapidly
to become what appears
to be a family mausoleum.
We've now got at least
five graves in there,
what looks like one immature,
one juvenile character
and four adults,
none of which appear
to be Christian,
all of which, at the moment,
seem to have indication
of grave goods.
It was traditional
for Romans to bury goods
with their dead like
footwear or pottery.
Like this bowl they found
in one of the female graves.
Hopefully, we'll start
to get all those out
and get a better
idea of their date.
Still hoping they
are the occupiers
of the villa we
excavated last year.
If they can get an
accurate date for the pot,
it will give the team
an even better idea
of who these people were.
Miles, when do these burials
that you've just
been finding date to?
Well, that's the question.
The pot that comes
out with them,
this particular vessel, we
know is made sometime around
370, 380 AD but the question is,
how old is it at the time
it's gone into the grave?
That's lovely, it's got
imprinted pattern on it.
It's got this rosette
pattern all the way around,
but you can see it's very worn,
the slip's worn off and
it originally had a base,
it had a foot on it
which has been broken off
and it's been worn smooth.
And given it may have
taken 40, 50, 60 years
before it's actually
ended up in the grave.
So we're seeing people
who have been buried
in Roman-style tradition
but they haven't got access
to high status Roman goods.
I suspect given that we've
only got a few spindle whorls,
we've got fragments of pottery,
there's not a lot of
Roman status goods
going in with these graves.
I think we're dealing with
a sub-Roman population.
This is the people who
are, sort of, traditionally
grubbing around in the
remains of their Roman world.
So, do you think this
is after the collapse
of the Roman Empire, then?
I think it is.
I think we are dealing
with the last people
who still have a remembrance
of a Roman world.
They're still clinging
on to one or two items
that link them
back to that past.
But they're no longer working
within a functioning
Roman administration.
So, I think we are
dealing with people
who are probably
dying and being buried
probably sometime in
the mid-5th century,
so we've probably got 450 AD
as, probably, our cut-off point
for the time these people
are going into their graves.
There is a theory that
the bodies at Maiden Castle
are the natives
who were taking one last
stand against the Romans.
Is it possible that
the bodies you've got,
or you're excavating,
are their descendants,
hundreds of years later?
That'll be fantastic, if we
could prove that, obviously.
But if we got good
DNA samples from both,
then, we might be able to say
that these are the descendants
from the iron age inhabitants
and that would be something
rather spectacular.
Because we still
don't know, yet,
whether the people
who live in the villas
are the descendants of
the indigenous population,
or whether they
are 1st generation
or 2nd generation migrants
from another part
of the Roman Empire.
The Romano-Britons, who
lived and died in the villa,
offer clues to the poverty
of the twilight world
after the Roman army
left, in 410 AD.
But less than 100 miles
away, at Chedworth,
another dig is unexpectedly
revealing the glories
of Roman Britain in its heyday.
First discovered by the
Victorians 150 years ago,
Chedworth is a late 4th century
courtyard villa complex.
In August, a team of
archeologists from the National Trust
started a two week
dig to find out more
about the villa layout.
Unfortunately, they
had very little
recorded information to go on.
The last person to dig
here was Sir Ian Richmond,
Professor of Archeology
at Oxford University,
whose notes were lost,
after his death in 1965.
All that remains of his work
are some modern
concrete path borders,
which the team believe
Richmond laid down to outline
a 2nd century Roman bathhouse.
But they were in for a surprise,
as Martin Papworth explains.
When we started
our excavation here,
we really thought
that Ian Richmond
had dug everything,
including the wall lines,
where he put his concrete,
and also the bits in between,
which we call the "islands".
So, we were quite surprised
when we lifted a turf
and we found bits of
tesserae coming up,
bits of mosaic coming up.
And there were no
records of any mosaics
in any of these areas,
between the walls.
The tesserae, or tile pieces,
are revealing what might be
a border in red, cream and blue,
but whether anything
else survives,
of the central
pattern, is unclear.
There are areas, there are
going to be big holes in it,
there's going to be areas
where the mosaic could be lost
and Carol's working over here.
She's got an edge
against the wall,
but lots of loose tesserae
there, in a worn area,
away from the wall.
So we just need to
gradually uncover
and show what lies
within these walls.
There's also something
else puzzling the team.
They had thought they were
working on a series of baths
in separate rooms.
The other strange
thing is that we've taken
the concrete up, we've cleaned
underneath the concrete
and we're not finding walls,
yet, which is quite peculiar.
Pretty soon, it becomes clear
they're no longer
dealing with a bathhouse.
We knew from the beginning,
when we first lifted the turf,
that there was going to
be mosaic underneath here,
but now we can see it's part
of one great, long mosaic.
In fact, we now believe
it's part of the grand
reception hall of the villa.
So, rather than
having five or six
little bits of different
rooms of mosaic,
all this mosaic joins
up into one big pattern.
The team make other finds,
which give more of an idea of
the decoration of the villa.
We found bits of broad
plaster on top of the top soil
and, in that, we've got patterns
in red, blue and white, green.
And, so, we must
think of this floor
as being part of
something really grand.
Emerging from the rubble,
an extraordinary, huge artwork
and an insight into the wealth
and power of the Romano-British.
So, if we were
looking at, in terms of,
did this person consider
themselves Roman?
Were they presenting their
life as being part of
the Great Roman Empire
and the whole link
to classical civilization,
well, this, surely,
must be someone really
showing off their wealth
and their link to Rome
and, really, presenting
themselves as Roman.
The team had started the
dig thinking they were looking
for a 2nd century bathhouse
and they've finished up
with a show-stopping
grand reception hall.
I think it's amazing how much
you can find by going back
and revisiting existing
archeological sites,
where you think you
know everything already.
Yep.
And find some
incredible mosaics.
Jon, how do those mosaics
compare to these incredible
mosaics that we're, literally,
sitting on, right here?
Well, we're very
lucky, in Dorset,
that we have an
awful lot of mosaics.
Over 60 have been
found in the county.
But, in the county
museum here, we have 12
that have been relocated
from around the county,
including this one
from Durngate Street,
in the middle of Dorchester.
And what have we got here?
Is that a serpent over there?
Yeah, we've got serpents and
we've got drinking vessels.
The serpents represent rebirth
and that's Bacchus's
drinking vessel,
so it's good luck
and celebration.
What can these mosaics tell us
about the people who owned them,
or who owned the
villas where they were?
Well, the complexity of
them, and their intricacy,
suggests they were
extremely wealthy.
Also, there are things
in them that tells us
that they want to be part
of the wider Roman culture.
Their use of mythology,
the imagery for the
Roman gods and legends
all suggest that they really
want to identify with Rome.
So were they locals made good,
or were they Roman
officials who'd moved in?
That's going to be the million
dollar question, isn't it?
I think it's
My own instinct would
be it's going to be
a combination of the local
population who have done well
from Roman occupation, from
trading with the Romans,
and, also, those officials,
from Rome, who want
very grand houses
in what was a very important
part of Roman Britain.
So these beautiful
and intricate mosaics
tell us of a vanished
Romano-British world
when at least some in the west,
enjoyed the riches of empire.
For the past seven years,
a team has been excavating
one of the earliest leprosy
hospitals, near Winchester,
dating back almost
a thousand years.
And what they have been
finding at St Mary Magdalen
is really helping to change
our ideas about leprosy
in the Middle Ages.
Just a mile from Winchester
city center, St Mary Magdalen
was, once, a busy
complex of buildings,
but, now, nothing
remains above ground.
The last recorded medieval
building on this site
was a late 15th
century almshouse.
But archeologists from the
University of Winchester
have been slowly peeling back
an extremely rare
medical history.
As the dig unfolds, the team
is filming it themselves
and in charge is chief
investigator Simon Roffey.
This is the north
wall of that infirmary,
running across the site,
so I'm inside the
medieval infirmary now
and as I step outside,
into this area here,
we have evidence of
what we think may be
the wall of a possible cloister.
Last year we found whole
pots and metal objects
evidence for, perhaps,
medical practice.
But more importantly, the
team have uncovered 20 graves.
The condition of the skeletons
leads them to believe
that there was a leprosy
hospital here dating back to 1070.
It's the earliest excavated
leprosy hospital in Britain.
The cemetery holds about 85%
of individuals with leprosy,
men, women, children and babies.
It's the highest sample we've
had from any British site.
In the Middle Ages, it was
thought that those with leprosy
were unclean and sinful
and that the disease was
a punishment from God.
In 2011, I went to
look at the skeletons
they'd uncovered, for myself,
and see the full, shocking
extent of the disease
with osteologist
Dr Katie Tucker.
Now, this is extreme, isn't it?
Yeah, this is
erm Suppose you
don't know if it's
the wrong word to use,
the best example of leprosy,
that we have on the site.
Yeah, you can see
the massive amounts
- Goodness me!
- Of bone loss.
Yeah.
Totally lost the
front of the nose.
And you actually see, these
are the sockets, here,
for the first molars, so
all the bone has been lost,
back to the first molars.
All the way back
to the first molars?
Yeah.
That is just horrific, isn't it?
I mean, look at that.
You've lost all of the
front of the upper jaw here.
And the bottom of
the nasal cavity.
And the hard palate,
of course, has gone.
Yeah, yeah.
It probably would have been
difficult for this individual
to eat, without choking.
Yeah.
It's quite a shocking
disease, isn't it?
- It is, yeah.
- I find it shocking
to look at it in a
skeleton and, I think,
it's not surprising that it was,
it carried such
a stigma with it.
I mean, they would have
looked alien, really.
Mm.
Especially with
the facial lesions,
as well, in the soft tissue.
Mm.
And probably would
have needed help
eating, maybe, because
Well, they may have even had
difficulty picking things up,
because they'd started to get
loss of feeling in their hands.
Yeah.
I think they probably
would have needed quite a lot
of help, during the last
few years of their life.
Some accounts suggest that
those suffering from leprosy
would have been outcasts and
not given the same treatment
as ordinary citizens in life,
or in death.
But back at St Mary Magdalen,
the team believes that
the graves themselves
reveal a very different story.
What we can see here is,
a grave that's been
well-cut, cut into the chalk.
Anthropomorphicm it's tapered
down towards the feet end.
There's a head niche there,
to hold the head
of the individual.
And around the grave,
you can see the lip,
which would hold a lid,
or a ledger, on top of it.
You can see that all these
graves are well-separated,
they've been marked, as well.
So, what we're seeing here
is a certain level of care
and attention that's gone
into building these graves.
It's clear that these
were no hasty burials.
In this religious hospital,
people with leprosy seem to
have been treated with respect
and buried with care.
The archeologists also believe
that one particular
grave they uncovered,
back in 2011,
supports this idea.
This skeleton of a man
was discovered buried
with a scallop shell,
a traditional pilgrim badge,
that he may have carried back
from one of the most famous
pilgrimage sites in the world,
Santiago de
Compostela, in Spain.
Simon believes that this man
proves that medieval
leprosy sufferers
could be treated with
respect and dignity
and not always with revulsion.
This is the shell
we just saw in the VT?
- The pilgrim's shell?
- That's right.
This wonderful artifact
was from an individual
with mature years, he
had early stage leprosy.
Clearly took this
with him to grave,
as a, sort of, way of proving
that he had done this
arduous pilgrimage,
to Santiago de Compostela.
But I think, more widely,
this badge tells us
about the status
of the hospital.
I mean, here was a man
of religious sensitivity,
wealth, perhaps, and the
means to go on a pilgrimage
and here he is, buried in a
community of leprosy sufferers,
so this really challenges
this view that we have that
leprosy hospitals were
somehow excluded from society,
the community were outcasts,
this sort of thing.
But do you think he
could he have been excluded
when he developed the
outward signs of leprosy?
I mean, he's there
in the hospital,
he's buried within
the hospital cemetery,
and not with his own community.
I think, when we look at
the archeology as a whole,
what we have is well-appointed
timber buildings, originally,
got substantial
postholes on the side,
we have a chapel, we have
a well-ordered cemetery.
We've also got evidence
for medical provision,
on one example.
All this put together,
I think, tells us
this site wasn't a site
of outcasts, it was,
these were people who
had a certain level
of status, I think.
'Cause there is the traditional view,
the medieval view,
that leprosy was,
somehow, a sinful disease,
but this doesn't
appear to be the case.
It's a very complex
issue, I think,
where we have this,
perhaps, belief today
that leprosy sufferers
were sinful, were outcasts.
This has only recently
been challenged
by certain
revisionist historians
and, also, our work at St
Mary Magdalen, in Winchester.
So it's really important, then,
because it's showing these
people were looked after?
Certainly, and
leprosy is a disease
that affects people today,
in places such as
India and Brazil,
among many other countries.
There's only about a
quarter of a million
new cases of leprosy
identified every year.
And leprosy is still
stigmatized in these countries,
so part of what we're doing
is really challenging
this stigma.
For the Romans, the Far
West was frontier country.
And, in the past,
we believed that they got
no further than Exeter.
But, a dig at Ipplepen, in
Devon, is literally pushing
the boundaries of Roman
Britain in the West.
I visited this site
three years ago,
when it was just a tiny
collection of graves
and a Roman road.
Now it's turning into
something much more intriguing.
It looks like it's
an adult female.
You can see it's got quite
a high, straight forehead,
which is a feature on females
and quite small arches.
You can feel, on yourself here,
you've got quite low
ridges, supraorbital ridge.
So I think it's an adult female.
Got half of the mandible
here, which is this part,
we've got this side
and all of her teeth
and you can see
they're very worn.
So all the enamel
has actually come off
and we've got the
dentine exposed.
The team finds no evidence
of the cause of death
in this skeleton, but
this woman was probably
about 30-years-old
when she died.
After some careful excavation,
the first Ipplepen resident
is off to the University of
Exeter for radio carbon dating.
So it's the end of day eight
and, kind of, quite
an emotional moment,
lifting the first
skull of the site.
And, always, you've
got to remember,
you've got to be
really respectful,
that these people
were real human beings
and it's just quite amazing
to think that they lived here,
on this site, 2,000 years ago
and how different the
world must have been then.
By day 12, the team have
uncovered another nine burials
and over 2,000 small finds,
all adding evidence
to their theory
that this was a
Roman settlement.
Although, some of the objects
are a bit of a mystery.
I've got quite an
interesting find here.
Not sure exactly what it is,
but I've got a feeling that
it might be a cosmetic case,
with make-up inside.
We immediately
wrapped it in bandages
and packaged it up to be
conserved and looked at,
so we'll know more,
at a later date,
exactly, precisely, what it is.
But what's, perhaps,
the team's biggest clue
to a Roman presence is the
position of the graves.
Even though it's partially
cut in to the edge of the road,
it is still respecting,
generally, the line of the road.
- Yeah.
- It's a roadside burial.
It's deliberately placed
at the side of the road.
As burials were
forbidden in Roman cities,
the dead were buried
on the outskirts,
often along the roadside,
just as the team
is finding here.
So it's day 18 on our
excavations at Ipplepen.
We've now got a total
of 16 skeletons.
So it's quite clear that
what we're dealing with here
is a Romano-British Cemetery,
which is very exciting.
It's amazing to see the
way this site is developing,
because when I visited,
and we stood on that
hill in Ipplepen,
all there was, was a road and
a couple of roadside burials
and, now, you've got
a whole cemetery,
but what about the road itself?
Where does it go?
Don't know yet.
I suspect probably from Exeter
and out towards south Devon.
But it's just
really fascinating.
We really didn't expect to find
such a well-preserved Roman
road, so far west of Exeter.
We're still only
scratching the surface
but this year's excavations
have been a real revelation.
Here's just an example
of the absolutely lovely
stuff that we had.
This is what was being
excavated in the VT.
And is it a powder compact?
We don't know.
We still don't know?
Come on.
This is a real mystery
artifact, actually.
Experts have looked at
it, at the British Museum,
and there's the possibility
that it might be a lead weight
that's been set into a case,
into a copper alloy case.
How strange!
But I'm not sure
why you would do that.
Unless, perhaps, it was a weight
that maybe belonged
to your grandfather
and it was a kind of
keepsake, or something.
So the jury's still out
on this mystery artifact.
We had hoped that it
would be a ladies compact,
because its really nice to see
the female side
of Roman Britain.
Yeah. And a beautiful brooch.
A beautiful brooch.
And, you can see here,
it's got amazing enamel
set into the cells there
and it's even intact,
with its catch plating,
its pin and its spring, I mean,
it's such a lovely example,
which dates from
probably 75 to 175 AD.
And is that a tiny bead there?
Yeah.
We've got beads, we've got
coins, we've got hair pins,
we got mystery objects.
And, Danni, you came in,
to our studio here,
in Dorchester Museum.
Incredibly exciting.
You told us you've got
a radio carbon date.
Yes, we took the latest burial,
which is dug into the roadside
ditch of the Roman road,
so it's the latest one
we've excavated so far,
and the radio carbon
results have come back
as 7th to 8th century.
Really?
Yeah!
So it's a long-running
cemetery, then?
- Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
It's just absolutely stunning.
So we're not just dealing
with 1st century Roman stuff
going through to the 4th
century Romano-British,
it's carrying on well
into the post-Roman period
and this is so important
for Devon and Cornwall.
That is fascinating.
And just remember that
you heard it here first.
We are rewriting the
history of the Romans
and the Dark Ages
in the south west,
here on Digging for Britain.
From the Saxon sword
to the cemetery rewriting
the history of leprosy,
the West has provided us
with a richly-woven tapestry
of our past.