Digging for Britain (2010) s03e03 Episode Script
North
1
Hello and welcome to
Digging For Britain,
the program which brings you
this year's most
outstanding new archeology.
Once again, over the last year,
archeologists were busy
unearthing our history
in hundreds of digs
across Britain.
They've gone to
extraordinary lengths
to uncover long-lost treasures.
Retelling our story in a way
that only archeology can.
And our archeologists
have been out filming themselves
to make sure that we were there
for every moment of discovery.
Got one!
And they'll be
joining us back here
at the National
Museum of Scotland
to help us make sense of what
these new finds actually mean.
In this series, we'll
be touring Britain
and tonight we're in the north.
We discover one of the biggest
and best-preserved
Roman forts in Britain.
And we catch the very moment
when a Viking boat
burial is unearthed.
And see how rescue archeologists
are fighting the elements
to save a rare Iron Age site.
Over a million and
a half people visit
the National Museum of
Scotland every year.
They come to see some
of the 20,000 artifacts
that illustrate key
moments in our history.
From the Penicuik Jewels,
kept safe by a lowly servant
after Queen Mary's
execution in 1587.
To Bonnie Prince
Charlie's picnic set
that he brought into
combat with the English
at the Battle of Culloden.
Our first story
takes us to Orkney
and to one of the
northernmost digs in Britain.
I've had the privilege
of visiting Orkney
on numerous occasions
and I've seen some truly
astonishing archeology there.
Back in 2010, I saw
the Westray Wife
which is the earliest
depiction of a human
from the British Neolithic.
In 2011, I was
lucky enough to see
an intact Neolithic
tomb being opened
but in recent years, the
most astonishing discovery
has been at the Ness of Brodgar
which is quickly becoming
the most important
Neolithic site in Britain.
Sitting right in the heart
of the Neolithic Orkney
World Heritage Site
is the Ness of Brodgar,
along with nearby Skara
Brae and Maeshowe,
is now belongs amongst
the most famous prehistoric
sites in Britain.
Our ancestors settled
to farm, trade,
and thrive on this land
over 5000 years ago.
And because they build in stone,
their traces are still
visible all over the island
at Skara Brae, we find
elaborate stone houses.
And at Maeshowe sits a huge
chambered tomb for the dead
but the Ness of Brodgar is
becoming another vital piece
in this Neolithic puzzle.
It's offering unique insights
into how our ancestors lived.
The team filmed themselves
in this, their eighth season,
uncovering clues to the world
of our ancestors 5000 years ago.
Some of the finds
are quite prosaic.
You know, looked like
paving or fallen roof slabs.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
And I was able to see
a really pretty orange
sandstone artifact.
And some artifacts tell
of a confident trading people
who roamed the nearby seas.
Person who made this
and the people who used it
and the people who saw
it at the Ness of Brodgar
back in the Neolithic
would've recognized an object
which invited parallels
with Shetland.
In other words, this is an
object being made by somebody
and used by somebody down here
who was aware of
traditions of making tools
that stretched up through
the Northern Isles
and up to the
Shetland Archipelago.
It's clear that the
Ness of Brodgar is important
to people in Orkney but exactly
how it was used
remains a mystery.
But some of the artifacts
are pointing to something
which could be interpreted
as ritualistic,
something sacred.
What we're dealing
with here is a fragment
of a very classic,
later Neolithic artifact
called a mace head.
Like many mace heads at the
Ness, we tend to find them
in fragmentary conditions,
they're broken.
A mace head is part
of a blunt Stone
Age weapon or tool.
Now some of these
might've broken during use
but archeologists believe
that others could've been
ceremonially decommissioned.
We're getting deposits of
objects like these at the Ness.
Which suggests that perhaps
sometimes we might be dealing
with a more deliberate act
where sometimes an object,
because of its biography,
because of who it was
associated with in life,
perhaps when that person died,
that object had to be
taken out of commission,
deliberately broken in the
way that people might have,
you know, broken swords
at the end of a commission
or taking weapons out of use.
These broken mace
heads are adding
to a series of finds curated
at the National
Museum of Scotland.
So what have we got here?
Well, we have a selection
of carved stone objects,
all from Skara Brae,
which is a settlement
not too far away
from Ness of Brodgar
and there's been an
awful lot of speculation
as to what these things were,
what they were for.
I think people agree
that they were certainly
symbols of power.
They're also, they could've
been used as weapons
because you could deal
somebody a pretty painful blow
with one of these
or you could put
cord around them
and swing them around
and indeed there's
at least one skull
that's got a depressed
blunt fracture so, you know,
they could well have been used.
With something like this, you
could keep it in your fist
and deal somebody a horrible
blow with the spiky point.
One of the things that I
really love about prehistory
is finding objects like
this which are so intriguing
and so enigmatic
and I don't think
we'll ever really know
what they were used for
but we can still really
appreciate the art
and the skill that
went into making them.
Oh, exactly, and clearly they
would've selected beautiful,
aesthetically-pleasing stones,
probably cobbles from the beach
and they wouldn't have had
metal tools, obviously,
so they would've
used stone tools,
sand, water, a lot
of elbow grease
and many, many hours of
work went into making
something like this.
These objects
and the smashed pieces
of stone maces from the
Ness of Brodgar suggest
that the Ness may have
been a ritual site.
And every day, the team
find more evidence.
Here we've got quite
a nice incised stone.
You can see there's
various lines crisscrossing
each other here, forming
kind of chevrons,
zigzags patterns here.
This is a kind of piece
of Neolithic artwork
that's been built into
the main structure
of the building.
We're finding these sort
of decorated stones built
into all the walls,
internally and externally,
across the site.
The archeologists believe
that this prehistoric
artwork is further evidence
that this was a ritual complex.
And now Nick Card
and his team believe
that they have found
the spiritual center,
a Neolithic temper.
Here we're standing
next to structure 10,
the so-called
Neolithic cathedral.
It's over probably
25 meters long,
20 meters wide almost,
everything about it
would just scream
ritual, religion.
Still get a sense of what this
building must've been like
in its heyday, truly amazing.
This Neolithic
cathedral has been robbed
of its stone over
thousands of years,
making one of this year's
discoveries even more remarkable,
the entrance to it,
marked by the threshold stone.
What we're standing on here
is the original entrance.
It's about 1.8 meters wide
and almost a meter across.
We'd always been a wary
about where the entrance was
and because of the robbing,
this was just not clear at all.
'Cause we knew that it had to
be facing towards Maeshowe.
This connection to
the chambered tomb of Maeshowe
and the growing acceptance that
Orkney's Neolithic monuments
could be linked makes
the final discovery
inside the temple astounding.
A standing stone at the
center of this ritual complex.
The archeologists wonder
was this alter of central
importance in Neolithic Orkney?
Just half a mile
away, you have Maeshowe.
Few hundred meters
away, Stones of Stenness
and behind us in the
skyline, the Ring of Brodgar.
They all seem to be
clustering around the Ness
and I think 5000 years
ago, it maybe wasn't
the great stone circles
or the Ring of Brodgar
and the Stones of
Stenness which today
kind of dominate our
thinking of this landscape.
It really is, it's the Ness
of Brodgar 5000 years ago
that maybe held that kind
of very central position.
And all these other monuments
were maybe just peripheral
to what was happening here.
This important
site really is shaping
the archeological world.
Yeah, we are always kind
of a bit London-centric,
southern British-centric with
some of the great monuments
like Stonehenge and Wessex area
but this with the rest of Orkney
is really turning
the map on its head.
The scale of it,
the architecture.
It's an archeologist's
dream site.
A 5000-year-old
temple at the heart
of a sacred landscape,
built out of stone
over hundreds of years.
And what is most amazing of all
is that the digging suggests
that this entire complex was
abandoned almost overnight.
So what happens at the end
at the Ness of Brodgar?
Well, certainly
it seems as though
this huge structure 10 was
deliberately decommissioned
and they marked the occasion
by having this ginormous feast
with hundreds of cattle
and of course we'll
never know for sure
but we can say it probably
wasn't climate change.
So there wasn't a tsunami.
There wasn't a catastrophe.
They weren't invaded
by other people.
I suspect that they had
engaged in this sort of spiral
of increasing
investment of effort
so that by the time
you've built structure 10
and you've built
the Ring of Brodgar,
you've involved probably most
of the population of Orkney
and how then do you top it?
So it may well have been a
kind of social boom and bust.
You know, they couldn't trump it
so they realized that, you
know, the number was up.
But also it's got a much
more complicated story
because it seems as
though people were coming
from the Stonehenge area,
almost in a
pilgrimage kind of way
because you get houses at
Durrington Walls near Stonehenge
that look like the
houses at Skara Brae.
It does seem like a golden
age for Orkney, doesn't it?
Oh absolutely, yes, yeah.
5000 years ago,
our ancestors abandoned a
cathedral erected here in stone
and this year's archeology
is also telling another story
of the shifting
power of the gods
along the largest frontier
ever built on our shores.
One of the most obvious
footprints of the Romans in Britain
if of course Hadrian's Wall,
stretching from coast to coast,
this 75-mile-long wall
divided the wilds of the north
from the Romanized south.
And dotted along the wall
were military garrisons
where Roman soldiers lived,
trained, and worshiped.
Now, recent excavations are
changing the way we look
at religion along the wall.
In 2011, I visited the
very start of a dig
at the Roman site of
Binchester in County Durham.
The barracks sprung up
in the first century AD
when the Roman Army
was asserting its power
in Northeast England.
The first trenches
yielded just animal bone
and other refuse as the
team searched for clues
into the everyday lives
of Roman legionaries.
Three years on,
one of the biggest
and best preserved Roman
barracks in Britain has emerged,
offering insights into all
aspects of Roman occupation.
I'm standing right in the trench
of a Roman communal toilet.
Going to the toilet
was a social activity
in the Roman period.
There would've been a series
of perhaps one, two, three,
or even four toilet seats
next to each other.
There was a big
conduit coming through
and when it rained
which it does a lot up
here in County Durham.
That water would've
flushed everything through
and kept our latrine
block cleansed
and Roman Binchester,
if not sweet smelling,
it would've made it a
little less unsavory.
Near the Roman toilets,
David and his team dug
down seven feet to reveal
another incredible
discovery, a Roman bathhouse
with plaster still
clinging to its walls.
The end of our
fifth week on site
and in the last week or so,
we finished clearing out
the interior of what you can see
is an exceptionally
well-preserved Roman bathhouse.
Behind me here you can
see we have the benches
and this shows this is
probably a Roman changing room.
Then, David and his team make
an important discovery,
one that explains
the extraordinary
preservation of the bathhouse.
It was the middle of our
final week, week seven,
at Roman Binchester.
Besides me is a deep pit
and it goes down about
seven or eight courses
and you got a foundation
at the bottom.
That's much, much deeper
than we were expecting to go.
We always thought the
bathhouse survived really well
because it was partly
terraced into the hillside
and then it got filled in
with lots of Roman rubbish.
What's increasingly clear is
the building was constructed
as a free-standing building
and then the street levels
outside rose up around it
and then with the rubbish
rising up on the inside,
the entire thing became
embedded in Roman archeology,
either side of the walls.
The whole structure was
filled right up to roof height
with massive quantities
of Roman rubbish.
Which basically stopped
it falling down.
And buried within
this rubbish are
precious objects
that today hold clues for us
about religion and worship
on these walls.
This is a silver ring
with a tiny gemstone on it
and on that gemstone is a
carved early Christian symbol
and this is found
in the fort itself
so this came from
one of our barracks.
Right, so what
have we got on there?
It's absolutely tiny.
It's absolutely tiny.
You've got an anchor
and suspended from it
are a pair of fish.
In the third and fourth
century which is when
this probably dates from,
the cross wasn't yet used
as the symbol of Christianity
so instead it was other
symbols such as this one
and that's how we
know it belongs
to the early Christian faith.
So what have you got
where, what's this?
This is the carved head of a,
probably of a Roman god
which we found mixed up
with all the rubbish
in the bathhouse.
Okay, so how old is that then?
This is probably second
or third century AD
and it's beautiful 'cause
it's got the nice carved hair,
got a classical style hair
but the eyes are very
kind of Celtic looking,
the almond shape.
Kind of reminds you
of the kind of art
which the local indigenous
Britons were making.
So we've got the
early Roman head there
and the late Roman rings
so we're spanning, what,
three or four centuries
of religion in this site?
Yeah, there's a huge amount.
We've also found altars,
we've found all sorts
of other religious objects
and it would've permeated
their day-to-day existence
so the heads, the altars,
they came from a bathhouse,
they don't come from a temple
but everywhere the Romans were,
they're expressing
their beliefs.
And also there's the transition,
isn't there, to Christianity?
I mean the head is,
can we call it pagan
and then we've got the
Christian symbology on the ring.
Absolutely, Christianity becomes
a kind of legal religion
in the Roman Empire
in the fourth century.
This ring is probably some
of the earliest evidence
we have for Christianity.
And it's nice.
It shows that Binchester had
a range of different beliefs
and that people were probably
worshiping pagan gods
at the same time
others were celebrating
their Christian belief.
Almost 100 miles along the wall,
a team in Maryport has made
another important discovery
about shifting religious beliefs
on the Roman's great frontier.
So here we are at Maryport
on the Cumbrian Coast
and we're about to see the
unearthing of a monument
that was originally carved
in the second century
when Maryport was part
of the coastal defenses
linked to Hadrian's Wall
and you can see there,
some of my colleagues in action.
That's the excellent Tony
Wilmott, the site director,
one of Britain's-
- And that's lovely, I mean-
- Isn't it great?
What is that, is that an altar?
That is indeed an altar.
Takes your breath away.
We're gonna get this altar
out now, see if it's complete.
I'm gonna first of all
get these big stones out
and then John's gonna
dive in and clean it out
so get cracking.
And how close was
this site to the wall itself?
Well, Maryport is actually part
of the Cumbrian Coastal complex
so Hadrian actually extends
the line of turrets and towers
along the Cumbrian Coast
from Hadrian's Wall
so we're quite a ways
south of the actual wall.
Is it complete?
Yes, it is.
Oh gee, oh gee.
And there you can see the text,
I-O-M at the top.
That's something to do
with Jupiter, I know that.
It is indeed, it's Jupiter
the best and the greatest,
Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
And below that we can
actually see who dedicated it.
Prefect,
commanding officer, VSLM.
Set it up to fulfill a vow.
That tells us the name,
not only of the unit,
but of the man, a guy
called Attiustuto.
And we've actually got
three other dedications
by this guy from Maryport.
Heave!
This is the bit where
the guys risk a hernia.
It's a big thing.
Now all we've gotta
do is get it to the car.
Ah, you're on your own.
John Laskey, worthy of
Mr. Hutton, mercy, mercy.
What can I say?
Shattered.
Yes.
25 years ago when I started
diggin' at Bird Oswald,
I said if anyone
found an inscription,
there was malt whiskey in it.
John.
That's a fantastic find.
The inscription
just looks so crisp.
It does look crisp, doesn't it?
It does look crisp
and that's Cumbrian
red sandstone for you.
In fact, when we look
at it very closely,
you can see it has
experienced some weathering.
How many altars
did you find there?
We're actually nudging the total
of known altar fragments
from that site up
to about 22, 23 now.
- Right, okay.
- Yeah.
So why are they buried
in the ground then?
For a long time,
the assumption was
that as these altars
appeared so crisp
and as there were so many
that were obviously dedicated
in a very short space of
time in the second century,
often by the same
named individual,
well the assumption was
that each time a new altar
was put up, the one that had
been dedicated the year before
was buried on the spot.
So it was almost like they
were being ritually buried.
That was the explanation.
To make room for
the next sort of-
- To make room for the next one
but in fact the Romans
don't do things like that.
We know now they don't
do things like that.
They were being
buried much later.
They are dug to support
a massive timber
structure on the site.
So they were being
used as foundations?
They were being used
for foundations, yes.
So this is fascinating.
These Romans altars
then which obviously
had huge ritual significance
to the people that made them
and set them up
are just being used
- as foundation stones.
- They are, they are.
As objects of no
ritual significance really.
Not any more.
And Jupiter is no longer
the best and the greatest.
There's a new
landscape at Maryport.
From abandoned Roman
temples telling the death
of an empire, we
travel 160 miles south
to find ancestors
living in Britain
just after the end
of the Ice Age.
One of my favorite
prehistoric sites
has to be Star Carr
in East Yorkshire
and we covered this site
on a previous series
of Digging For
Britain where I talked
to Nicky Milner about the
astonishing discoveries
that she and her
team were making.
Now this year, she's been
excavating at a nearby site
called Flixton Island and this
one goes back even earlier.
Back beyond 11,000 years ago.
It's day seven and
we're really excited
because we're right on the edge
of what would've been the lake
and just started finding
some animal bone.
Well, we've come down
into the earliest piece.
We've come across what
looks to be horse bones.
So we've got a horse
pelvis, half of the pelvis,
and a horse scapula as well
which is really fantastic to
see the preservation of it
considering how old it is.
This site dates
back almost to the Ice Age.
Organic finds from this era
are practically unheard of
but Flixton is
rewriting the record.
11,000 years ago, this
land was an island used
by Stone Age hunter gatherers.
When the water that
surrounded the island drained,
the lake bed turned to
peat, preserving vital clues
to this lost world.
It's day 20 at Flixton
Island and I'm sitting
in front of something
very, very exciting indeed.
These are actually hoof
prints which have been made
in the mud by animals
over 11,000 years ago.
The horses were
probably walking along
the edge of the lake
in muddy conditions.
Soon afterwards, sand and
gravel gently washed over
the print, preserving
then in time.
These are quite
small but we know
that they're horse hoof prints
because we've actually find
horse hooves in the trench
and this is a half
of a horse hoof
and if I just put that in there,
you can see that it
actually fits beautifully.
Nicky, here are some
of these horse bones
from Flixton Island.
They're incredibly well
preserved, aren't they?
They are.
And we've got a
distal phalanx here,
the very end of a horse's leg.
So that's the bone that sits
just underneath the hoof.
As we saw in the film.
Yes, and that fits nicely
into the hoof prints on site.
They're actually quite
small horses, aren't they?
I mean, I'm looking
at these bones
and they are from adult horses.
The ends of the bones
are fused to the shaft
so these aren't
juveniles, they're adults,
but they're small adults.
They do seem to be very small
and probably more
like pony size.
Got this jaw as well.
I mean, this is quite small too
and you can see the
teeth in the end here
and then we've also
got a piece of a pelvis
which we know is pelvis
'cause this is the bit
where the leg bone fits in.
Yep, that's the hip socket.
So these are wild horses
on Flixton Island?
That's right, yes.
And they become
extinct quite soon
after the end of this site
and what's really
incredible is that
this is, these are
the last wild horses
that we think we've
got in Britain.
After that they die out.
We don't have any Mesolithic
sites with horses on them.
And how rare is this site?
It's incredibly rare.
We only have about 30
in the whole country
which is a really small
number if you compare
with other sites of
different periods
and most of these sites tend
to have lots of flint on them.
There's only one other site
which actually has
any bone on it at all
and so bone from this
period is incredibly rare
and it just gives us
more of an insight
into the environment
and what people are
doing at this time.
In fact, it's
really, really unique
for the whole of Europe.
It's a very, very
important site.
As the month-long
dig nears its end,
clues about human
activity also emerge.
The team begin to notice that
some of the animal skeletons
have parts missing.
We've got the middle
bit of the spine here
and it curves round
to the lower bit
and then this large bit
just here is the sacrum
which is at the
bottom of the spine
and that's where the
hips articulate at.
But what's really
interesting is that up here,
these vertebrae would have
the ribs attached to them
but they're not there
any more and the sacrum
would have the pelvis attached
but that's not there either.
The team believes
that humans slaughtered
this horse 11,000 years
ago on Flixton Island.
They must've come over
in boats to the island
and killed at least
six or seven horses
and they seem to
have just taken away
the really meaty parts.
It's like that they were here
for a very, very
short period of time,
just enough for this
to have happened
because there's no other
evidence of occupation.
There's very little flint
or anything like that.
What I love about
being an archeologist
is that you peel back
the layers of soil
to reveal a past landscape
that hasn't been seen
for thousands of years.
This is amazing for us
because it's a period of time
which we know very little about
and it gives us a real snapshot
into how people were living
just after the end
of the last Ice Age.
So we do have archeological
artifacts as well
from the island.
We do, this is a long blade.
And we only have a few of these
but this is a typical
tool of that period.
And what would it
have been used for?
Well, we actually know from
microscopic analysis exactly
what this particular
blade was used for.
It was, first of all, this
point was used for piercing
through the skin and
cutting through skin.
This side was used
for butchery of meat
and then right at
this bottom end,
there's polish which
shows that perhaps
someone was holding the blade
using a very soft cloth.
So it's definitely a
blade for butchery rather
than a projectile point
for killing an animal?
Yes, definitely, we have
proof it's for butchery.
Now, can you be absolutely sure
that the humans are
implicated in the death
of these horses because
couldn't these horses
have died naturally and this
could've just been an item
that was dropped by somebody
visiting the island?
Well, it's very rare but we
do have a few pieces of bone
which do have butchery
evidence on them.
They've got cut
marks so we are sure
that they were actually
killed by humans.
So humans killing
these wild horses towards
the end of the Ice Age,
do you actually
think that humans
were instrumental in the
local extinction of the horses
Well, there are
two possibilities,
certainly we've
got evidence here
that people are butchering them
and butchering large numbers
but there's also the question
of the changing environment.
The climate's
changing at this time.
It goes from, after
the end of the Ice Age,
a very open,
tundra-like landscape
and then it begins to get
very wooded very quickly
just within a matter of
a couple of hundred years
and the horses tend to prefer
the more open environments.
So, perhaps it was
environmental change.
Perhaps it was
humans killing them.
Perhaps it was a bit of both.
These tiny hoof
prints, frozen in time,
give us an amazing
snapshot of the world
of our hunter-gatherer forebears
as the Ice Age ended.
But such amazing
archeological discoveries
are often under
threat from erosion.
Hundreds of ancient
monuments are lost
before they're ever studied
or even known about.
But in Scotland, there's a
team working to fight the tide
and record as much
information as they can
before it's too late.
The team is the
award-winning SCAPE Trust
and they've made a
name for themselves
by getting to sites
in the nick of time.
On Sanday in Orkney sits
a precarious Bronze Age site,
uncovered by a
storm back in 2005.
It's now in danger of
being swallowed by the sea
unless it can be
rescued in time.
Tom Dawson has a
plan to save it.
The site, unfortunately,
is gonna be lost to the sea
at some point.
We don't know exactly
when but it could be
the next big storm
which will take it away
so by moving the site
and reconstructing it,
we are saving
something for people
to come and look at
so that they can share
in the exciting discoveries made
by the Sanday Archeology Group.
The team embarks
on a complete excavation,
recording each detail
for further research.
During this process,
one find takes them
by complete surprise.
A Bronze Age well
covered by the bank.
And we've just discovered
that at the bottom,
they have actually
cut into the bedrock
so the material that you
can see there is bedrock
and they've made a large hole,
build walls up on the sides,
but they've just left
the back as bedrock
and then placed that lintel
spanning the two side walls
and there is a gap,
I'll put my hand up,
between the bedroom and the wall
and presumably what happens
is the water would run
down the bedrock here
and then fill up this chamber.
This structure
is an astonishing addition
to the already impressive site.
But being so close to the sea,
it has little chance of survival
so the team carefully
dismantles it
for the move to the
heritage center.
We've had great support
from the local
community in Sanday
who've come out with their JCBs,
their tractors and trailers
and everyone's mucking in and
helping us to move the site
from here several miles to
the other side of the island.
The result is that
this 3000-year-old piece of
archeology has been saved
instead of being lost forever.
It's been an absolutely
fantastic effort
and after just a couple of weeks,
here you can see the site.
We're hoping that
people will come here
and learn about the site that's
been rescued from the sea.
So that's a lot of work to
save one archeological site.
How many sites do you have
like this across Scotland?
Well, there are hundreds
of sites which are at risk
and we're working with
communities all over the place
so although the
problem is large,
by working with these
groups, at least we're making
a small difference.
SCAPE has also been at work
in the County of Fife
recording artwork carved
into a series of coastal
caves during Pictish times.
Well, this is Jonathan's
Cave over in East Wemyss
and this is one of six
caves that survive.
These are all very
typical Pictish carvings.
That was a leaping salmon.
Not a rocket then?
That's not a rocket, no.
And this is a double disc.
And a trident.
So if you've got Pictish
engravings on the wall,
when do those date
to, do you know?
Well, they're going to be
probably somewhere between
the fifth and the
eighth century AD.
And this is actually
thought to be a Viking boat
and this might be one of
the only representations
of a Viking boat in Britain.
So there were a lot of
carvings in this cave.
There is the largest
collection of carvings
anywhere in the United Kingdom.
Well, in fact,
anywhere in the world.
And here what we're doing is
we're using both laser scanners
and photographic techniques
to make a 3D recording
both of the caves and of
the carvings themselves.
Right, so there
will be a permanent record
of these carvings for
all future researchers.
There will be
and this is the
most accurate record
that's been made to date.
This is submillimeter accuracy.
That's fantastic.
So are these engravings in this
cave actually under threat?
They are, they're under
threat from a variety of things.
There's not only
people who go in
and occasionally write
things on the cave walls.
In the past, somebody set
fire to a car in the caves
which caused a collapse
but also we have the
instability of the rock
and also coastal
erosion of course which,
there is the danger that the sea
will enter the
caves at some point.
So it's really
important to create this record.
And I think you've been up
in the Outer Hebrides as well,
haven't you, where the
sea really is a problem?
It really is yes.
We've been up in North
Uist in the Outer Hebrides.
Site had been reported
by local people
who'd be finding wooden objects
and these have now been dated
thanks to the excavation
to the Iron Age.
You're right on the beach here!
And are those
little meter-square test pits?
This is an unusual
way of digging
but we were trying
to stop the sea
from taking everything away
so the idea was that we
could backfill the test pits.
This was a problem, the
tide was covering the site
twice a day so we
had to work fast.
So you're basically
working at low tide
and then you have to just
get out at high tide.
That's right, yeah.
And then bail out.
We had to bail out.
So every day when we came down,
the site would look like this
and they would be
bailing the site out
and then we could
carry on digging
but what was frustrating
is the speed with which
the tide could come up
so you might be in the
middle of doing your drawing
and then you'd have to
abandon your trench.
Come back the next
day and it would've
filled up with sand again.
And then clean up again.
Clean up again.
Have you finished work there
or are you going back?
We're hoping to go
back in the future
but for the moment we were
just trying to work out
what might be there.
I have to say, I
love the SCAPE Project.
You seem to go from
strength to strength
and I do follow
you year on year.
It's wonderful to see
archeologists working so closely
with local communities
and literally saving archeology
from being washed away.
Rescue archeology like
this often turns up
astonishing chance discoveries.
But sometimes it's sheer
persistence by archeologists
that pays off.
Researchers in western Scotland
were in their eighth year
at Ardnamurchan as
they set out to examine
what they thought was a
pile of stones in a field.
They discovered something which
had never been found before
in mainland Britain, an
intact Viking boat burial
and they recorded the
moment of excavation
and we're joined by Hannah Cobb
who's one of the directors
of the excavation out there
on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula.
Hannah, talk us
through your dig.
Initially, we thought it
was perhaps a clearance
cairn from farming.
The moment we took the turf
off, it was a boat shape
and we felt nervous,
we didn't want to say
to ourselves this is
a Viking boat burial
but we excavated it
very slowly, carefully.
This is the point
where we lifted the ax,
taking it as carefully
and getting it in there
as securely as possible
but everyone was crowded round
and everyone was
quite excited to see
so it was a lovely
moment for the team.
Well done guys.
That deserves a
round of applause.
And at that point,
you knew it was a boat burial
that you were looking at?
Yeah, and as we got
down through the layers,
we began to find the artifacts
and the fact that it was
very clearly a boat shape.
Just wonderful,
aren't they, wow.
So there's that ax head.
There it is.
It's amazing and it's
actually got the,
some of the wood from the handle
that it would've been on
still preserved within it.
Tell us about the sword.
The sword is fantastic.
It's actually broken
but it wasn't broken
when it was put into the grave.
It's broken subsequently
because of sort of
all the things that
happen to artifacts
when they're in the soil.
But it's made up of
some amazing material.
It's got part of a sheath on it
and then on top it,
it's actually got this textile
adhered on the outside of it.
Oh that's amazing.
Which is really amazing.
All the way down there,
you can see the detail.
Oh my goodness, could
that be the clothing
of the Viking himself then?
It certainly could and
the way it was laid out
within the burial, it was
against the side of the Viking
so probably pressed
against either his clothes
or her clothes or the material
that was wrapped
around them in death.
It was a proper traditional
Viking burial then?
Inside a boat?
Yes, yes, and
unfortunately, in this case,
the wood from the boat
wasn't particularly preserved
but all of the
rivets of the boat
so over 200 rivets from the
boat were all preserved.
Did you have any skeletal
remains associated with this?
Unfortunately,
the preservation of the artifact is amazing
and the preservation of the
human remains was very poor
so we just had two teeth but
we've been able to get lots
of information from the
teeth because we've been able
to do stable isotope
analysis of them
which is fantastic.
Oh brilliant, so if you've
done isotope analysis,
do you know where
this person grew up?
It was somewhere north,
further north than here
potentially Norway.
So potentially an actual Viking.
Yes, yes indeed.
From Scandinavia.
Yes.
But what was it about this site
that made the Viking choose
to bury their chieftain here?
The team have been
working on this peninsula
for eight years now
and have identified
a pattern of burials
spanning five millennia.
First they excavated a
Neolithic chambered cairn.
Then they found evidence
of a Bronze Age cist.
They believe the Vikings
chose to be associated
with these ancient burial sites.
As well as excavating
the Viking boat burial,
the team are also
investigating the cairn
and the Bronze Age cist.
It's day one of the
Ardnamurchan Transitions Project
and we are doing an amazing job
at deturfing an enormous trench
and who knows what
it's going to be.
There's bit coming out that
might look a bit kirby.
There's bits coming out that
look like cairn material.
That's what we're expecting
but when it's from?
Who knows!
The piled rocks
of the Neolithic cairn
are familiar to
the archeologists.
But the Bronze Age cist contains
something very surprising.
Crawling into the
excavation tent.
What we've got here essentially,
we've just got a long
bone coming up there.
Long bone coming down there
so we think that's.
The foot's not really coming out
so it might have
just deteriorated.
Potentially knee
up here we think
and that kinda matches up,
that's kinda broken off a bit.
Probably the pelvis.
And skull fragments are
coming up somewhere in here
so he's kinda crouched-
- So fetal almost.
Yeah, yeah, crouched,
kinda fetal information in this.
Wow.
Individual crouched burials
in stone-lined cists were
common in the Bronze Age
but after further examination,
the researchers
conclude that this cist
contains the remains
of at least two people
and this is very rare.
The Viking boat burial,
the Bronze Age cist,
right next to a
Neolithic burial chamber
means people have been
bringing their dead
to this bay for
over five millennia.
Wow, it's incredible to think of
that being a cemetery
site for that long.
Yeah, I mean, it was obviously
a really special landscape
where people were
burying their dead
for a really long period of time
and I think the fact that the
Neolithic tomb was built there
and was obviously very
visible within the landscape
was something that then
attracted people to come back
again and again to the monument.
And just picking up
on that Bronze Age cist,
the thing which
really intrigued me
from the video was that you
found two burials in that cist.
That is unusual, isn't it?
It is, it's a
very unusual thing.
Traditionally Bronze Age tombs,
Bronze Age cists would
have a single individual
and this wasn't just
two people crouched
as you would also
expect in the Bronze Age
but it was sort of
disarticulated human remains
so bits of bodies mixed up.
Potentially people were
recalling the practices
that had occurred at
this Neolithic tomb.
Potentially this was just
the way that they venerated
their dead here.
Digs like Ardnamurchan tell us
of long spans of ancient time
with changing burial rituals.
But sometimes archeology
and British history collide
to paint a vivid snap
shot of a single event.
In the 15th century,
the aristocracy,
people like Richard the
Third and his noblemen
threw lavish feasts
and banquets complete
with grand entertainment,
music, games,
and lots and lots of drinking.
A dig in North Yorkshire has
uncovered a feasting hall
from this period with
evidence of revelry
on an epic scale.
But they've also
discovered how one night,
the feasting and laughter
came to a very abrupt end.
For the last five years,
a team of volunteers has been
digging on the former estate
of Sir John Conyers, a
15th-century nobleman.
Every day, the diggers
find new treasures
amongst the rubble.
The site has kept the team busy,
logging artifacts
pulled from the ruins
of this aristocratic
banqueting hall.
You found it?
Well done.
It's part of a latch
either from a door
or from a big piece of
furniture like a chest.
This medieval hall was massive.
It could hold upwards
of 1000 people
and in this hall, the
power and influential met.
The movers and
shakers of the day.
It was here that
Conyers rubbed shoulders
with King Edward the Fourth
and Richard the Third.
This is a site where
the important decisions
on political power in England
in the mid-15th century,
the 1460s, the 1470s are made.
The hall reflected
Conyers' high social standing.
And as the team dig further,
they find artifacts leftover
from the lavish banquets
that were thrown here.
There we go, thank you.
It appears to be part
of a serving dish.
Either a meat pancheon or
what's known as a dripping pan
which was used to serve sizzling
meat dishes at the table.
So we've got a bit of food bone.
By the size of it,
it's a hunted species.
We found a lot of evidence
of people eating venison
and boar but sometimes
other exotic species.
Being able to
afford to eat exotic foods
such as crane, peacock,
or beaver were certainly
a sign of high status.
But it wasn't just the
food that was posh.
This is the handle of
a one-gallon wine jug.
These would've been on the table
to serve a half-pint
drinking jug,
usually of red wine,
probably originating
in the Bordeaux Region
of southern France.
These feasts were integral
to maintaining
power and influence.
But for the Conyers, their
influence would not last.
In 1485, Henry Tudor
defeated Richard the Third,
seizing the crown.
So John Conyers went from
being an ally of the king
to being a real threat.
Emmett, what on Earth happened
to this feasting hall?
It was attacked, a
force, I believe acting
on the orders of the
Tudor government was sat
to the northwest of the building
and they attacked
it with cannon.
This is a piece of a cannonball.
So this is a cannonball,
you can be sure of that?
It is, oh, we certainly can.
You have a series of striations
along the leading edge of
it caused by being fired
and going through the
barrel of the gun.
So has that shattered on impact?
It did, it was fired
into the building
and it shattered, bits
flying everywhere.
Probably other
bits lying in there
that we've not been
able to identify.
Probably started the
fire that destroyed
the building and
the collapse event
which succeeded the fire
causing vast area of
rubble that we found.
So what exactly had Conyers done
to annoy the Tudors?
He was intimately associated
with the previous regime.
He carried the scepter at
Richard the Third's coronation.
He was made a
Knight of the Garter
by King Richard the Third.
He is alleged, in 1487,
to have been conspiring
with King James the
Third of Scotland
to place the Earl of
Warwick who was in prison
in the Tower of
London on the throne
in place of Henry Tudor.
So essentially he
was on the wrong side.
He was most definitely
on the wrong side.
And what about
this pottery then?
- Is this high-status pottery?
- It is,
very high-status pottery.
It was imported from
Flanders, from Belgium
and would've been
displayed prominently
at the high table
and on the buffet that
would've adjoined it.
So this little piece of pot,
I mean, what would
that have been part of?
It's a half-pint wine jug.
You can imagine the consequences
of drinking half pints
of red wine on a regular basis.
We found evidence in the
form of dislodged human,
healthy human front teeth
and other stranger things like
severed digits from statues.
We have three severed
fingers from statues clearly.
So these feasts could be
quite rowdy affairs then?
Yes, oh, yes indeed, yes.
- Beautiful pottery though.
- It is, it's a type
of pottery called lusterware
that was very popular
in the late 15th, mid
to late 15th century.
And it's still lustrous as well,
- I like that.
- 'Tis indeed, yes.
So we've got this family
led by Conyers himself
who were very influential,
very wealthy, and we're
seeing a snapshot really
of them presumably at the height
- of that wealth and influence.
- Indeed, yes.
What happens after this?
The family's influence
and power declines.
After 1513, it just disappears.
By 1580, they've
declined into obscurity.
Conyers' downfall is
documented by history
and the destruction of
his hall by archeology.
From Tudor banqueting halls
to hoof prints leading us
to Ice Age butchers to temples
and Roman gods
fallen from grace.
Well it has been
a fantastic year
so good luck to all our
archeologists in the north
as they continue
Digging For Britain.
It's goodnight from him.
And it's goodnight from her.
Hello and welcome to
Digging For Britain,
the program which brings you
this year's most
outstanding new archeology.
Once again, over the last year,
archeologists were busy
unearthing our history
in hundreds of digs
across Britain.
They've gone to
extraordinary lengths
to uncover long-lost treasures.
Retelling our story in a way
that only archeology can.
And our archeologists
have been out filming themselves
to make sure that we were there
for every moment of discovery.
Got one!
And they'll be
joining us back here
at the National
Museum of Scotland
to help us make sense of what
these new finds actually mean.
In this series, we'll
be touring Britain
and tonight we're in the north.
We discover one of the biggest
and best-preserved
Roman forts in Britain.
And we catch the very moment
when a Viking boat
burial is unearthed.
And see how rescue archeologists
are fighting the elements
to save a rare Iron Age site.
Over a million and
a half people visit
the National Museum of
Scotland every year.
They come to see some
of the 20,000 artifacts
that illustrate key
moments in our history.
From the Penicuik Jewels,
kept safe by a lowly servant
after Queen Mary's
execution in 1587.
To Bonnie Prince
Charlie's picnic set
that he brought into
combat with the English
at the Battle of Culloden.
Our first story
takes us to Orkney
and to one of the
northernmost digs in Britain.
I've had the privilege
of visiting Orkney
on numerous occasions
and I've seen some truly
astonishing archeology there.
Back in 2010, I saw
the Westray Wife
which is the earliest
depiction of a human
from the British Neolithic.
In 2011, I was
lucky enough to see
an intact Neolithic
tomb being opened
but in recent years, the
most astonishing discovery
has been at the Ness of Brodgar
which is quickly becoming
the most important
Neolithic site in Britain.
Sitting right in the heart
of the Neolithic Orkney
World Heritage Site
is the Ness of Brodgar,
along with nearby Skara
Brae and Maeshowe,
is now belongs amongst
the most famous prehistoric
sites in Britain.
Our ancestors settled
to farm, trade,
and thrive on this land
over 5000 years ago.
And because they build in stone,
their traces are still
visible all over the island
at Skara Brae, we find
elaborate stone houses.
And at Maeshowe sits a huge
chambered tomb for the dead
but the Ness of Brodgar is
becoming another vital piece
in this Neolithic puzzle.
It's offering unique insights
into how our ancestors lived.
The team filmed themselves
in this, their eighth season,
uncovering clues to the world
of our ancestors 5000 years ago.
Some of the finds
are quite prosaic.
You know, looked like
paving or fallen roof slabs.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
And I was able to see
a really pretty orange
sandstone artifact.
And some artifacts tell
of a confident trading people
who roamed the nearby seas.
Person who made this
and the people who used it
and the people who saw
it at the Ness of Brodgar
back in the Neolithic
would've recognized an object
which invited parallels
with Shetland.
In other words, this is an
object being made by somebody
and used by somebody down here
who was aware of
traditions of making tools
that stretched up through
the Northern Isles
and up to the
Shetland Archipelago.
It's clear that the
Ness of Brodgar is important
to people in Orkney but exactly
how it was used
remains a mystery.
But some of the artifacts
are pointing to something
which could be interpreted
as ritualistic,
something sacred.
What we're dealing
with here is a fragment
of a very classic,
later Neolithic artifact
called a mace head.
Like many mace heads at the
Ness, we tend to find them
in fragmentary conditions,
they're broken.
A mace head is part
of a blunt Stone
Age weapon or tool.
Now some of these
might've broken during use
but archeologists believe
that others could've been
ceremonially decommissioned.
We're getting deposits of
objects like these at the Ness.
Which suggests that perhaps
sometimes we might be dealing
with a more deliberate act
where sometimes an object,
because of its biography,
because of who it was
associated with in life,
perhaps when that person died,
that object had to be
taken out of commission,
deliberately broken in the
way that people might have,
you know, broken swords
at the end of a commission
or taking weapons out of use.
These broken mace
heads are adding
to a series of finds curated
at the National
Museum of Scotland.
So what have we got here?
Well, we have a selection
of carved stone objects,
all from Skara Brae,
which is a settlement
not too far away
from Ness of Brodgar
and there's been an
awful lot of speculation
as to what these things were,
what they were for.
I think people agree
that they were certainly
symbols of power.
They're also, they could've
been used as weapons
because you could deal
somebody a pretty painful blow
with one of these
or you could put
cord around them
and swing them around
and indeed there's
at least one skull
that's got a depressed
blunt fracture so, you know,
they could well have been used.
With something like this, you
could keep it in your fist
and deal somebody a horrible
blow with the spiky point.
One of the things that I
really love about prehistory
is finding objects like
this which are so intriguing
and so enigmatic
and I don't think
we'll ever really know
what they were used for
but we can still really
appreciate the art
and the skill that
went into making them.
Oh, exactly, and clearly they
would've selected beautiful,
aesthetically-pleasing stones,
probably cobbles from the beach
and they wouldn't have had
metal tools, obviously,
so they would've
used stone tools,
sand, water, a lot
of elbow grease
and many, many hours of
work went into making
something like this.
These objects
and the smashed pieces
of stone maces from the
Ness of Brodgar suggest
that the Ness may have
been a ritual site.
And every day, the team
find more evidence.
Here we've got quite
a nice incised stone.
You can see there's
various lines crisscrossing
each other here, forming
kind of chevrons,
zigzags patterns here.
This is a kind of piece
of Neolithic artwork
that's been built into
the main structure
of the building.
We're finding these sort
of decorated stones built
into all the walls,
internally and externally,
across the site.
The archeologists believe
that this prehistoric
artwork is further evidence
that this was a ritual complex.
And now Nick Card
and his team believe
that they have found
the spiritual center,
a Neolithic temper.
Here we're standing
next to structure 10,
the so-called
Neolithic cathedral.
It's over probably
25 meters long,
20 meters wide almost,
everything about it
would just scream
ritual, religion.
Still get a sense of what this
building must've been like
in its heyday, truly amazing.
This Neolithic
cathedral has been robbed
of its stone over
thousands of years,
making one of this year's
discoveries even more remarkable,
the entrance to it,
marked by the threshold stone.
What we're standing on here
is the original entrance.
It's about 1.8 meters wide
and almost a meter across.
We'd always been a wary
about where the entrance was
and because of the robbing,
this was just not clear at all.
'Cause we knew that it had to
be facing towards Maeshowe.
This connection to
the chambered tomb of Maeshowe
and the growing acceptance that
Orkney's Neolithic monuments
could be linked makes
the final discovery
inside the temple astounding.
A standing stone at the
center of this ritual complex.
The archeologists wonder
was this alter of central
importance in Neolithic Orkney?
Just half a mile
away, you have Maeshowe.
Few hundred meters
away, Stones of Stenness
and behind us in the
skyline, the Ring of Brodgar.
They all seem to be
clustering around the Ness
and I think 5000 years
ago, it maybe wasn't
the great stone circles
or the Ring of Brodgar
and the Stones of
Stenness which today
kind of dominate our
thinking of this landscape.
It really is, it's the Ness
of Brodgar 5000 years ago
that maybe held that kind
of very central position.
And all these other monuments
were maybe just peripheral
to what was happening here.
This important
site really is shaping
the archeological world.
Yeah, we are always kind
of a bit London-centric,
southern British-centric with
some of the great monuments
like Stonehenge and Wessex area
but this with the rest of Orkney
is really turning
the map on its head.
The scale of it,
the architecture.
It's an archeologist's
dream site.
A 5000-year-old
temple at the heart
of a sacred landscape,
built out of stone
over hundreds of years.
And what is most amazing of all
is that the digging suggests
that this entire complex was
abandoned almost overnight.
So what happens at the end
at the Ness of Brodgar?
Well, certainly
it seems as though
this huge structure 10 was
deliberately decommissioned
and they marked the occasion
by having this ginormous feast
with hundreds of cattle
and of course we'll
never know for sure
but we can say it probably
wasn't climate change.
So there wasn't a tsunami.
There wasn't a catastrophe.
They weren't invaded
by other people.
I suspect that they had
engaged in this sort of spiral
of increasing
investment of effort
so that by the time
you've built structure 10
and you've built
the Ring of Brodgar,
you've involved probably most
of the population of Orkney
and how then do you top it?
So it may well have been a
kind of social boom and bust.
You know, they couldn't trump it
so they realized that, you
know, the number was up.
But also it's got a much
more complicated story
because it seems as
though people were coming
from the Stonehenge area,
almost in a
pilgrimage kind of way
because you get houses at
Durrington Walls near Stonehenge
that look like the
houses at Skara Brae.
It does seem like a golden
age for Orkney, doesn't it?
Oh absolutely, yes, yeah.
5000 years ago,
our ancestors abandoned a
cathedral erected here in stone
and this year's archeology
is also telling another story
of the shifting
power of the gods
along the largest frontier
ever built on our shores.
One of the most obvious
footprints of the Romans in Britain
if of course Hadrian's Wall,
stretching from coast to coast,
this 75-mile-long wall
divided the wilds of the north
from the Romanized south.
And dotted along the wall
were military garrisons
where Roman soldiers lived,
trained, and worshiped.
Now, recent excavations are
changing the way we look
at religion along the wall.
In 2011, I visited the
very start of a dig
at the Roman site of
Binchester in County Durham.
The barracks sprung up
in the first century AD
when the Roman Army
was asserting its power
in Northeast England.
The first trenches
yielded just animal bone
and other refuse as the
team searched for clues
into the everyday lives
of Roman legionaries.
Three years on,
one of the biggest
and best preserved Roman
barracks in Britain has emerged,
offering insights into all
aspects of Roman occupation.
I'm standing right in the trench
of a Roman communal toilet.
Going to the toilet
was a social activity
in the Roman period.
There would've been a series
of perhaps one, two, three,
or even four toilet seats
next to each other.
There was a big
conduit coming through
and when it rained
which it does a lot up
here in County Durham.
That water would've
flushed everything through
and kept our latrine
block cleansed
and Roman Binchester,
if not sweet smelling,
it would've made it a
little less unsavory.
Near the Roman toilets,
David and his team dug
down seven feet to reveal
another incredible
discovery, a Roman bathhouse
with plaster still
clinging to its walls.
The end of our
fifth week on site
and in the last week or so,
we finished clearing out
the interior of what you can see
is an exceptionally
well-preserved Roman bathhouse.
Behind me here you can
see we have the benches
and this shows this is
probably a Roman changing room.
Then, David and his team make
an important discovery,
one that explains
the extraordinary
preservation of the bathhouse.
It was the middle of our
final week, week seven,
at Roman Binchester.
Besides me is a deep pit
and it goes down about
seven or eight courses
and you got a foundation
at the bottom.
That's much, much deeper
than we were expecting to go.
We always thought the
bathhouse survived really well
because it was partly
terraced into the hillside
and then it got filled in
with lots of Roman rubbish.
What's increasingly clear is
the building was constructed
as a free-standing building
and then the street levels
outside rose up around it
and then with the rubbish
rising up on the inside,
the entire thing became
embedded in Roman archeology,
either side of the walls.
The whole structure was
filled right up to roof height
with massive quantities
of Roman rubbish.
Which basically stopped
it falling down.
And buried within
this rubbish are
precious objects
that today hold clues for us
about religion and worship
on these walls.
This is a silver ring
with a tiny gemstone on it
and on that gemstone is a
carved early Christian symbol
and this is found
in the fort itself
so this came from
one of our barracks.
Right, so what
have we got on there?
It's absolutely tiny.
It's absolutely tiny.
You've got an anchor
and suspended from it
are a pair of fish.
In the third and fourth
century which is when
this probably dates from,
the cross wasn't yet used
as the symbol of Christianity
so instead it was other
symbols such as this one
and that's how we
know it belongs
to the early Christian faith.
So what have you got
where, what's this?
This is the carved head of a,
probably of a Roman god
which we found mixed up
with all the rubbish
in the bathhouse.
Okay, so how old is that then?
This is probably second
or third century AD
and it's beautiful 'cause
it's got the nice carved hair,
got a classical style hair
but the eyes are very
kind of Celtic looking,
the almond shape.
Kind of reminds you
of the kind of art
which the local indigenous
Britons were making.
So we've got the
early Roman head there
and the late Roman rings
so we're spanning, what,
three or four centuries
of religion in this site?
Yeah, there's a huge amount.
We've also found altars,
we've found all sorts
of other religious objects
and it would've permeated
their day-to-day existence
so the heads, the altars,
they came from a bathhouse,
they don't come from a temple
but everywhere the Romans were,
they're expressing
their beliefs.
And also there's the transition,
isn't there, to Christianity?
I mean the head is,
can we call it pagan
and then we've got the
Christian symbology on the ring.
Absolutely, Christianity becomes
a kind of legal religion
in the Roman Empire
in the fourth century.
This ring is probably some
of the earliest evidence
we have for Christianity.
And it's nice.
It shows that Binchester had
a range of different beliefs
and that people were probably
worshiping pagan gods
at the same time
others were celebrating
their Christian belief.
Almost 100 miles along the wall,
a team in Maryport has made
another important discovery
about shifting religious beliefs
on the Roman's great frontier.
So here we are at Maryport
on the Cumbrian Coast
and we're about to see the
unearthing of a monument
that was originally carved
in the second century
when Maryport was part
of the coastal defenses
linked to Hadrian's Wall
and you can see there,
some of my colleagues in action.
That's the excellent Tony
Wilmott, the site director,
one of Britain's-
- And that's lovely, I mean-
- Isn't it great?
What is that, is that an altar?
That is indeed an altar.
Takes your breath away.
We're gonna get this altar
out now, see if it's complete.
I'm gonna first of all
get these big stones out
and then John's gonna
dive in and clean it out
so get cracking.
And how close was
this site to the wall itself?
Well, Maryport is actually part
of the Cumbrian Coastal complex
so Hadrian actually extends
the line of turrets and towers
along the Cumbrian Coast
from Hadrian's Wall
so we're quite a ways
south of the actual wall.
Is it complete?
Yes, it is.
Oh gee, oh gee.
And there you can see the text,
I-O-M at the top.
That's something to do
with Jupiter, I know that.
It is indeed, it's Jupiter
the best and the greatest,
Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
And below that we can
actually see who dedicated it.
Prefect,
commanding officer, VSLM.
Set it up to fulfill a vow.
That tells us the name,
not only of the unit,
but of the man, a guy
called Attiustuto.
And we've actually got
three other dedications
by this guy from Maryport.
Heave!
This is the bit where
the guys risk a hernia.
It's a big thing.
Now all we've gotta
do is get it to the car.
Ah, you're on your own.
John Laskey, worthy of
Mr. Hutton, mercy, mercy.
What can I say?
Shattered.
Yes.
25 years ago when I started
diggin' at Bird Oswald,
I said if anyone
found an inscription,
there was malt whiskey in it.
John.
That's a fantastic find.
The inscription
just looks so crisp.
It does look crisp, doesn't it?
It does look crisp
and that's Cumbrian
red sandstone for you.
In fact, when we look
at it very closely,
you can see it has
experienced some weathering.
How many altars
did you find there?
We're actually nudging the total
of known altar fragments
from that site up
to about 22, 23 now.
- Right, okay.
- Yeah.
So why are they buried
in the ground then?
For a long time,
the assumption was
that as these altars
appeared so crisp
and as there were so many
that were obviously dedicated
in a very short space of
time in the second century,
often by the same
named individual,
well the assumption was
that each time a new altar
was put up, the one that had
been dedicated the year before
was buried on the spot.
So it was almost like they
were being ritually buried.
That was the explanation.
To make room for
the next sort of-
- To make room for the next one
but in fact the Romans
don't do things like that.
We know now they don't
do things like that.
They were being
buried much later.
They are dug to support
a massive timber
structure on the site.
So they were being
used as foundations?
They were being used
for foundations, yes.
So this is fascinating.
These Romans altars
then which obviously
had huge ritual significance
to the people that made them
and set them up
are just being used
- as foundation stones.
- They are, they are.
As objects of no
ritual significance really.
Not any more.
And Jupiter is no longer
the best and the greatest.
There's a new
landscape at Maryport.
From abandoned Roman
temples telling the death
of an empire, we
travel 160 miles south
to find ancestors
living in Britain
just after the end
of the Ice Age.
One of my favorite
prehistoric sites
has to be Star Carr
in East Yorkshire
and we covered this site
on a previous series
of Digging For
Britain where I talked
to Nicky Milner about the
astonishing discoveries
that she and her
team were making.
Now this year, she's been
excavating at a nearby site
called Flixton Island and this
one goes back even earlier.
Back beyond 11,000 years ago.
It's day seven and
we're really excited
because we're right on the edge
of what would've been the lake
and just started finding
some animal bone.
Well, we've come down
into the earliest piece.
We've come across what
looks to be horse bones.
So we've got a horse
pelvis, half of the pelvis,
and a horse scapula as well
which is really fantastic to
see the preservation of it
considering how old it is.
This site dates
back almost to the Ice Age.
Organic finds from this era
are practically unheard of
but Flixton is
rewriting the record.
11,000 years ago, this
land was an island used
by Stone Age hunter gatherers.
When the water that
surrounded the island drained,
the lake bed turned to
peat, preserving vital clues
to this lost world.
It's day 20 at Flixton
Island and I'm sitting
in front of something
very, very exciting indeed.
These are actually hoof
prints which have been made
in the mud by animals
over 11,000 years ago.
The horses were
probably walking along
the edge of the lake
in muddy conditions.
Soon afterwards, sand and
gravel gently washed over
the print, preserving
then in time.
These are quite
small but we know
that they're horse hoof prints
because we've actually find
horse hooves in the trench
and this is a half
of a horse hoof
and if I just put that in there,
you can see that it
actually fits beautifully.
Nicky, here are some
of these horse bones
from Flixton Island.
They're incredibly well
preserved, aren't they?
They are.
And we've got a
distal phalanx here,
the very end of a horse's leg.
So that's the bone that sits
just underneath the hoof.
As we saw in the film.
Yes, and that fits nicely
into the hoof prints on site.
They're actually quite
small horses, aren't they?
I mean, I'm looking
at these bones
and they are from adult horses.
The ends of the bones
are fused to the shaft
so these aren't
juveniles, they're adults,
but they're small adults.
They do seem to be very small
and probably more
like pony size.
Got this jaw as well.
I mean, this is quite small too
and you can see the
teeth in the end here
and then we've also
got a piece of a pelvis
which we know is pelvis
'cause this is the bit
where the leg bone fits in.
Yep, that's the hip socket.
So these are wild horses
on Flixton Island?
That's right, yes.
And they become
extinct quite soon
after the end of this site
and what's really
incredible is that
this is, these are
the last wild horses
that we think we've
got in Britain.
After that they die out.
We don't have any Mesolithic
sites with horses on them.
And how rare is this site?
It's incredibly rare.
We only have about 30
in the whole country
which is a really small
number if you compare
with other sites of
different periods
and most of these sites tend
to have lots of flint on them.
There's only one other site
which actually has
any bone on it at all
and so bone from this
period is incredibly rare
and it just gives us
more of an insight
into the environment
and what people are
doing at this time.
In fact, it's
really, really unique
for the whole of Europe.
It's a very, very
important site.
As the month-long
dig nears its end,
clues about human
activity also emerge.
The team begin to notice that
some of the animal skeletons
have parts missing.
We've got the middle
bit of the spine here
and it curves round
to the lower bit
and then this large bit
just here is the sacrum
which is at the
bottom of the spine
and that's where the
hips articulate at.
But what's really
interesting is that up here,
these vertebrae would have
the ribs attached to them
but they're not there
any more and the sacrum
would have the pelvis attached
but that's not there either.
The team believes
that humans slaughtered
this horse 11,000 years
ago on Flixton Island.
They must've come over
in boats to the island
and killed at least
six or seven horses
and they seem to
have just taken away
the really meaty parts.
It's like that they were here
for a very, very
short period of time,
just enough for this
to have happened
because there's no other
evidence of occupation.
There's very little flint
or anything like that.
What I love about
being an archeologist
is that you peel back
the layers of soil
to reveal a past landscape
that hasn't been seen
for thousands of years.
This is amazing for us
because it's a period of time
which we know very little about
and it gives us a real snapshot
into how people were living
just after the end
of the last Ice Age.
So we do have archeological
artifacts as well
from the island.
We do, this is a long blade.
And we only have a few of these
but this is a typical
tool of that period.
And what would it
have been used for?
Well, we actually know from
microscopic analysis exactly
what this particular
blade was used for.
It was, first of all, this
point was used for piercing
through the skin and
cutting through skin.
This side was used
for butchery of meat
and then right at
this bottom end,
there's polish which
shows that perhaps
someone was holding the blade
using a very soft cloth.
So it's definitely a
blade for butchery rather
than a projectile point
for killing an animal?
Yes, definitely, we have
proof it's for butchery.
Now, can you be absolutely sure
that the humans are
implicated in the death
of these horses because
couldn't these horses
have died naturally and this
could've just been an item
that was dropped by somebody
visiting the island?
Well, it's very rare but we
do have a few pieces of bone
which do have butchery
evidence on them.
They've got cut
marks so we are sure
that they were actually
killed by humans.
So humans killing
these wild horses towards
the end of the Ice Age,
do you actually
think that humans
were instrumental in the
local extinction of the horses
Well, there are
two possibilities,
certainly we've
got evidence here
that people are butchering them
and butchering large numbers
but there's also the question
of the changing environment.
The climate's
changing at this time.
It goes from, after
the end of the Ice Age,
a very open,
tundra-like landscape
and then it begins to get
very wooded very quickly
just within a matter of
a couple of hundred years
and the horses tend to prefer
the more open environments.
So, perhaps it was
environmental change.
Perhaps it was
humans killing them.
Perhaps it was a bit of both.
These tiny hoof
prints, frozen in time,
give us an amazing
snapshot of the world
of our hunter-gatherer forebears
as the Ice Age ended.
But such amazing
archeological discoveries
are often under
threat from erosion.
Hundreds of ancient
monuments are lost
before they're ever studied
or even known about.
But in Scotland, there's a
team working to fight the tide
and record as much
information as they can
before it's too late.
The team is the
award-winning SCAPE Trust
and they've made a
name for themselves
by getting to sites
in the nick of time.
On Sanday in Orkney sits
a precarious Bronze Age site,
uncovered by a
storm back in 2005.
It's now in danger of
being swallowed by the sea
unless it can be
rescued in time.
Tom Dawson has a
plan to save it.
The site, unfortunately,
is gonna be lost to the sea
at some point.
We don't know exactly
when but it could be
the next big storm
which will take it away
so by moving the site
and reconstructing it,
we are saving
something for people
to come and look at
so that they can share
in the exciting discoveries made
by the Sanday Archeology Group.
The team embarks
on a complete excavation,
recording each detail
for further research.
During this process,
one find takes them
by complete surprise.
A Bronze Age well
covered by the bank.
And we've just discovered
that at the bottom,
they have actually
cut into the bedrock
so the material that you
can see there is bedrock
and they've made a large hole,
build walls up on the sides,
but they've just left
the back as bedrock
and then placed that lintel
spanning the two side walls
and there is a gap,
I'll put my hand up,
between the bedroom and the wall
and presumably what happens
is the water would run
down the bedrock here
and then fill up this chamber.
This structure
is an astonishing addition
to the already impressive site.
But being so close to the sea,
it has little chance of survival
so the team carefully
dismantles it
for the move to the
heritage center.
We've had great support
from the local
community in Sanday
who've come out with their JCBs,
their tractors and trailers
and everyone's mucking in and
helping us to move the site
from here several miles to
the other side of the island.
The result is that
this 3000-year-old piece of
archeology has been saved
instead of being lost forever.
It's been an absolutely
fantastic effort
and after just a couple of weeks,
here you can see the site.
We're hoping that
people will come here
and learn about the site that's
been rescued from the sea.
So that's a lot of work to
save one archeological site.
How many sites do you have
like this across Scotland?
Well, there are hundreds
of sites which are at risk
and we're working with
communities all over the place
so although the
problem is large,
by working with these
groups, at least we're making
a small difference.
SCAPE has also been at work
in the County of Fife
recording artwork carved
into a series of coastal
caves during Pictish times.
Well, this is Jonathan's
Cave over in East Wemyss
and this is one of six
caves that survive.
These are all very
typical Pictish carvings.
That was a leaping salmon.
Not a rocket then?
That's not a rocket, no.
And this is a double disc.
And a trident.
So if you've got Pictish
engravings on the wall,
when do those date
to, do you know?
Well, they're going to be
probably somewhere between
the fifth and the
eighth century AD.
And this is actually
thought to be a Viking boat
and this might be one of
the only representations
of a Viking boat in Britain.
So there were a lot of
carvings in this cave.
There is the largest
collection of carvings
anywhere in the United Kingdom.
Well, in fact,
anywhere in the world.
And here what we're doing is
we're using both laser scanners
and photographic techniques
to make a 3D recording
both of the caves and of
the carvings themselves.
Right, so there
will be a permanent record
of these carvings for
all future researchers.
There will be
and this is the
most accurate record
that's been made to date.
This is submillimeter accuracy.
That's fantastic.
So are these engravings in this
cave actually under threat?
They are, they're under
threat from a variety of things.
There's not only
people who go in
and occasionally write
things on the cave walls.
In the past, somebody set
fire to a car in the caves
which caused a collapse
but also we have the
instability of the rock
and also coastal
erosion of course which,
there is the danger that the sea
will enter the
caves at some point.
So it's really
important to create this record.
And I think you've been up
in the Outer Hebrides as well,
haven't you, where the
sea really is a problem?
It really is yes.
We've been up in North
Uist in the Outer Hebrides.
Site had been reported
by local people
who'd be finding wooden objects
and these have now been dated
thanks to the excavation
to the Iron Age.
You're right on the beach here!
And are those
little meter-square test pits?
This is an unusual
way of digging
but we were trying
to stop the sea
from taking everything away
so the idea was that we
could backfill the test pits.
This was a problem, the
tide was covering the site
twice a day so we
had to work fast.
So you're basically
working at low tide
and then you have to just
get out at high tide.
That's right, yeah.
And then bail out.
We had to bail out.
So every day when we came down,
the site would look like this
and they would be
bailing the site out
and then we could
carry on digging
but what was frustrating
is the speed with which
the tide could come up
so you might be in the
middle of doing your drawing
and then you'd have to
abandon your trench.
Come back the next
day and it would've
filled up with sand again.
And then clean up again.
Clean up again.
Have you finished work there
or are you going back?
We're hoping to go
back in the future
but for the moment we were
just trying to work out
what might be there.
I have to say, I
love the SCAPE Project.
You seem to go from
strength to strength
and I do follow
you year on year.
It's wonderful to see
archeologists working so closely
with local communities
and literally saving archeology
from being washed away.
Rescue archeology like
this often turns up
astonishing chance discoveries.
But sometimes it's sheer
persistence by archeologists
that pays off.
Researchers in western Scotland
were in their eighth year
at Ardnamurchan as
they set out to examine
what they thought was a
pile of stones in a field.
They discovered something which
had never been found before
in mainland Britain, an
intact Viking boat burial
and they recorded the
moment of excavation
and we're joined by Hannah Cobb
who's one of the directors
of the excavation out there
on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula.
Hannah, talk us
through your dig.
Initially, we thought it
was perhaps a clearance
cairn from farming.
The moment we took the turf
off, it was a boat shape
and we felt nervous,
we didn't want to say
to ourselves this is
a Viking boat burial
but we excavated it
very slowly, carefully.
This is the point
where we lifted the ax,
taking it as carefully
and getting it in there
as securely as possible
but everyone was crowded round
and everyone was
quite excited to see
so it was a lovely
moment for the team.
Well done guys.
That deserves a
round of applause.
And at that point,
you knew it was a boat burial
that you were looking at?
Yeah, and as we got
down through the layers,
we began to find the artifacts
and the fact that it was
very clearly a boat shape.
Just wonderful,
aren't they, wow.
So there's that ax head.
There it is.
It's amazing and it's
actually got the,
some of the wood from the handle
that it would've been on
still preserved within it.
Tell us about the sword.
The sword is fantastic.
It's actually broken
but it wasn't broken
when it was put into the grave.
It's broken subsequently
because of sort of
all the things that
happen to artifacts
when they're in the soil.
But it's made up of
some amazing material.
It's got part of a sheath on it
and then on top it,
it's actually got this textile
adhered on the outside of it.
Oh that's amazing.
Which is really amazing.
All the way down there,
you can see the detail.
Oh my goodness, could
that be the clothing
of the Viking himself then?
It certainly could and
the way it was laid out
within the burial, it was
against the side of the Viking
so probably pressed
against either his clothes
or her clothes or the material
that was wrapped
around them in death.
It was a proper traditional
Viking burial then?
Inside a boat?
Yes, yes, and
unfortunately, in this case,
the wood from the boat
wasn't particularly preserved
but all of the
rivets of the boat
so over 200 rivets from the
boat were all preserved.
Did you have any skeletal
remains associated with this?
Unfortunately,
the preservation of the artifact is amazing
and the preservation of the
human remains was very poor
so we just had two teeth but
we've been able to get lots
of information from the
teeth because we've been able
to do stable isotope
analysis of them
which is fantastic.
Oh brilliant, so if you've
done isotope analysis,
do you know where
this person grew up?
It was somewhere north,
further north than here
potentially Norway.
So potentially an actual Viking.
Yes, yes indeed.
From Scandinavia.
Yes.
But what was it about this site
that made the Viking choose
to bury their chieftain here?
The team have been
working on this peninsula
for eight years now
and have identified
a pattern of burials
spanning five millennia.
First they excavated a
Neolithic chambered cairn.
Then they found evidence
of a Bronze Age cist.
They believe the Vikings
chose to be associated
with these ancient burial sites.
As well as excavating
the Viking boat burial,
the team are also
investigating the cairn
and the Bronze Age cist.
It's day one of the
Ardnamurchan Transitions Project
and we are doing an amazing job
at deturfing an enormous trench
and who knows what
it's going to be.
There's bit coming out that
might look a bit kirby.
There's bits coming out that
look like cairn material.
That's what we're expecting
but when it's from?
Who knows!
The piled rocks
of the Neolithic cairn
are familiar to
the archeologists.
But the Bronze Age cist contains
something very surprising.
Crawling into the
excavation tent.
What we've got here essentially,
we've just got a long
bone coming up there.
Long bone coming down there
so we think that's.
The foot's not really coming out
so it might have
just deteriorated.
Potentially knee
up here we think
and that kinda matches up,
that's kinda broken off a bit.
Probably the pelvis.
And skull fragments are
coming up somewhere in here
so he's kinda crouched-
- So fetal almost.
Yeah, yeah, crouched,
kinda fetal information in this.
Wow.
Individual crouched burials
in stone-lined cists were
common in the Bronze Age
but after further examination,
the researchers
conclude that this cist
contains the remains
of at least two people
and this is very rare.
The Viking boat burial,
the Bronze Age cist,
right next to a
Neolithic burial chamber
means people have been
bringing their dead
to this bay for
over five millennia.
Wow, it's incredible to think of
that being a cemetery
site for that long.
Yeah, I mean, it was obviously
a really special landscape
where people were
burying their dead
for a really long period of time
and I think the fact that the
Neolithic tomb was built there
and was obviously very
visible within the landscape
was something that then
attracted people to come back
again and again to the monument.
And just picking up
on that Bronze Age cist,
the thing which
really intrigued me
from the video was that you
found two burials in that cist.
That is unusual, isn't it?
It is, it's a
very unusual thing.
Traditionally Bronze Age tombs,
Bronze Age cists would
have a single individual
and this wasn't just
two people crouched
as you would also
expect in the Bronze Age
but it was sort of
disarticulated human remains
so bits of bodies mixed up.
Potentially people were
recalling the practices
that had occurred at
this Neolithic tomb.
Potentially this was just
the way that they venerated
their dead here.
Digs like Ardnamurchan tell us
of long spans of ancient time
with changing burial rituals.
But sometimes archeology
and British history collide
to paint a vivid snap
shot of a single event.
In the 15th century,
the aristocracy,
people like Richard the
Third and his noblemen
threw lavish feasts
and banquets complete
with grand entertainment,
music, games,
and lots and lots of drinking.
A dig in North Yorkshire has
uncovered a feasting hall
from this period with
evidence of revelry
on an epic scale.
But they've also
discovered how one night,
the feasting and laughter
came to a very abrupt end.
For the last five years,
a team of volunteers has been
digging on the former estate
of Sir John Conyers, a
15th-century nobleman.
Every day, the diggers
find new treasures
amongst the rubble.
The site has kept the team busy,
logging artifacts
pulled from the ruins
of this aristocratic
banqueting hall.
You found it?
Well done.
It's part of a latch
either from a door
or from a big piece of
furniture like a chest.
This medieval hall was massive.
It could hold upwards
of 1000 people
and in this hall, the
power and influential met.
The movers and
shakers of the day.
It was here that
Conyers rubbed shoulders
with King Edward the Fourth
and Richard the Third.
This is a site where
the important decisions
on political power in England
in the mid-15th century,
the 1460s, the 1470s are made.
The hall reflected
Conyers' high social standing.
And as the team dig further,
they find artifacts leftover
from the lavish banquets
that were thrown here.
There we go, thank you.
It appears to be part
of a serving dish.
Either a meat pancheon or
what's known as a dripping pan
which was used to serve sizzling
meat dishes at the table.
So we've got a bit of food bone.
By the size of it,
it's a hunted species.
We found a lot of evidence
of people eating venison
and boar but sometimes
other exotic species.
Being able to
afford to eat exotic foods
such as crane, peacock,
or beaver were certainly
a sign of high status.
But it wasn't just the
food that was posh.
This is the handle of
a one-gallon wine jug.
These would've been on the table
to serve a half-pint
drinking jug,
usually of red wine,
probably originating
in the Bordeaux Region
of southern France.
These feasts were integral
to maintaining
power and influence.
But for the Conyers, their
influence would not last.
In 1485, Henry Tudor
defeated Richard the Third,
seizing the crown.
So John Conyers went from
being an ally of the king
to being a real threat.
Emmett, what on Earth happened
to this feasting hall?
It was attacked, a
force, I believe acting
on the orders of the
Tudor government was sat
to the northwest of the building
and they attacked
it with cannon.
This is a piece of a cannonball.
So this is a cannonball,
you can be sure of that?
It is, oh, we certainly can.
You have a series of striations
along the leading edge of
it caused by being fired
and going through the
barrel of the gun.
So has that shattered on impact?
It did, it was fired
into the building
and it shattered, bits
flying everywhere.
Probably other
bits lying in there
that we've not been
able to identify.
Probably started the
fire that destroyed
the building and
the collapse event
which succeeded the fire
causing vast area of
rubble that we found.
So what exactly had Conyers done
to annoy the Tudors?
He was intimately associated
with the previous regime.
He carried the scepter at
Richard the Third's coronation.
He was made a
Knight of the Garter
by King Richard the Third.
He is alleged, in 1487,
to have been conspiring
with King James the
Third of Scotland
to place the Earl of
Warwick who was in prison
in the Tower of
London on the throne
in place of Henry Tudor.
So essentially he
was on the wrong side.
He was most definitely
on the wrong side.
And what about
this pottery then?
- Is this high-status pottery?
- It is,
very high-status pottery.
It was imported from
Flanders, from Belgium
and would've been
displayed prominently
at the high table
and on the buffet that
would've adjoined it.
So this little piece of pot,
I mean, what would
that have been part of?
It's a half-pint wine jug.
You can imagine the consequences
of drinking half pints
of red wine on a regular basis.
We found evidence in the
form of dislodged human,
healthy human front teeth
and other stranger things like
severed digits from statues.
We have three severed
fingers from statues clearly.
So these feasts could be
quite rowdy affairs then?
Yes, oh, yes indeed, yes.
- Beautiful pottery though.
- It is, it's a type
of pottery called lusterware
that was very popular
in the late 15th, mid
to late 15th century.
And it's still lustrous as well,
- I like that.
- 'Tis indeed, yes.
So we've got this family
led by Conyers himself
who were very influential,
very wealthy, and we're
seeing a snapshot really
of them presumably at the height
- of that wealth and influence.
- Indeed, yes.
What happens after this?
The family's influence
and power declines.
After 1513, it just disappears.
By 1580, they've
declined into obscurity.
Conyers' downfall is
documented by history
and the destruction of
his hall by archeology.
From Tudor banqueting halls
to hoof prints leading us
to Ice Age butchers to temples
and Roman gods
fallen from grace.
Well it has been
a fantastic year
so good luck to all our
archeologists in the north
as they continue
Digging For Britain.
It's goodnight from him.
And it's goodnight from her.