Digging for Britain (2010) s08e01 Episode Script
West
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The United Kingdom
has an epic history
and a wealth of secrets
still to uncover.
Every year, hundreds of
archaeologists dig,
dive,
and sieve to find clues
to add to the great historical
jigsaw of our ancestors' lives.
You know when people say, "What's
the best thing you've ever found?"
Guys, this.
I'm Professor Alice Roberts.
This year, we've uncovered
some astonishing finds
and made some truly ground-breaking
discoveries.
Wow, look at that!
Each team of archeologists has been
armed with a dig diary camera
so they can record their discoveries
as they happen.
That is brilliant.
Dave, I love you.
Our roving archaeologist,
Dr Naoise Mac Sweeney,
is out on the digs.
Who are we looking at? It's royal.
And I'll be inviting the teams
to bring in their finds
for closer analysis.
That is absolutely beautiful.
This time, we explore
Britain's west.
I've come to the edge of Dartmoor,
where traces of the ancient
past are all around,
from castles to rows and circles
of Bronze Age standing stones.
In fact, all of the west
is rich in archaeology.
Join us to delve into
an Ice Age cave
We have found this beautiful
woolly rhinoceros tooth.
follow up on reported sightings
of unexpected human bones
Across the top of the cliff,
we've got human remains
eroding out of it.
and bid an emotional farewell
to a very long-running site.
It's unique to be able to tell this
story of ourselves in one place.
Welcome to Digging for Britain.
Our first dig takes us
to the Cotswolds,
an area with a rich seam
of Anglo-Saxon archaeology,
and the name itself is thought to
relate to an Anglo-Saxon chieftain
called Cod and his control of
this territory of the high lands
or "wolds", so "Cod's wolds".
This dig takes us back to around
the early sixth century.
The exact location has been
kept secret to protect it.
A team of volunteers led by
MoD archaeologist Richard Osgood
is following up on the discovery
of high-status Anglo-Saxon
artefacts in a field.
There's a chap called Chris,
who's a local metal detector.
He's got permission from the farmer
to come and have a look
at this field.
No-one knew anything
about this field.
There was nothing on the
historic environment record.
He was pretty shocked to find,
not only a lot of Roman material,
but he found two really,
really beautiful Saxon items.
There was a sword pommel mount
from the top of a Saxon blade,
which was made of silver gilt,
and then a silver buckle as well,
so these things are what
are called treasure.
Treasure is legally classified
as any piece of metal
over 300 years old
containing over 10% gold or silver,
and it has to be reported.
Tell about your thoughts when
you got that out of the ground.
I was totally stunned cos
I knew exactly what it was.
You've not had anything
like that before?
No, no, no. It's a detectorist's
dream, really, isn't it?
Chris made his finds in 2016
and reported them to
Gloucestershire Council.
It soon became clear
that he'd stumbled on
a sixth-century Anglo-Saxon
burial ground.
This prompted a swift call
to Richard and his team
to formally excavate the site.
So we've got what we believe to
be a nice skeleton over here.
So we've got a nice skull
coming through.
The cranium coming up in that way,
and then we've got the jaw
here with the individual teeth
just poking through at this point,
jaw bone just there.
As we come down, we've got
what is the right arm here.
Just the top with just the humerus,
and then we come into where
the rib section will be
once we clean those down.
The finds date to a time when
history and material culture
show strong links with the
Netherlands and Scandinavia.
Most Britons at this time
are thought to have been pagan,
and their burial practices
involved interring the dead
with plenty of grave goods.
And this cemetery is starting to
yield some very intriguing finds.
It's a nice, massive, big piece
of a rim of a bowl.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
What is it, Janine, pottery? Glass.
Glass?! Nice piece of glass.
Just a few days into the dig
and they unearth
a very rare artefact.
Oh, wow. Well done!
Oh, that is wonderful. Beautiful.
You know when people say what's
the best thing you've ever found?
Guys, this.
The raw material for this bowl
may well have come from
the eastern Mediterranean,
a major focus for glass
production at this time.
This exciting archaeological
find is unusual,
as glass is so fragile,
it rarely survives.
A bowl like this would
have been precious -
another indication of high status.
Brilliant.
What really amazes me is that
this has been in the ground
since the sixth century.
It's really, really
shallow up there.
There's not much topsoil.
It's been ploughed for hundreds
and hundreds of years.
And yes, OK, it's broken,
but it still survived.
Elsewhere on site,
the archaeologists are making
more extraordinary finds,
Imagine that you're holding a sword
there. You've got the handle there.
That would sit on the handle right
there, so that's your guard. Right.
Wow. That is fantastic.
It looks like a bead.
The Anglo-Saxons are well-known
for their incredibly intricate
jewellery and decorative metalwork.
We're thinking it could be anything
from a helmet to a drinking vessel
to part of a scabbard.
It is indicative of
a high-status burial.
It's made of silver, but
it's got this gild again,
which is why it looks like gold,
and it shines beautifully.
After 1,500 years,
it's still shiny when
you put it in the sun,
and that's a really magical item.
In early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries,
the dead were typically
buried fully-dressed
with other objects
included in the grave
that still speak to us of
their identity and status.
What have you got now?
We've got a knife!
Yeah, I think that
we've got a knife,
which is just sat over
the pelvis area here,
but it's just sat on
what is the left hip,
so probably a dagger.
Looks too small to be a spear.
Yeah, it's certainly
all happening here.
I think we've got a very,
very high-status burial
with a lot going on.
This unassuming field has proven
an extremely rewarding site.
Richard has joined me to delve
deeper into a couple of the burials
which seem to challenge
our expectations.
This is photogrammetry of
this individual, is it?
That's right. Yeah.
The quality's that good
you can actually see some of
the finds in the burial itself.
You've got the See this
circular item just here?
Yeah. Now, that's that's this.
Ah, is that a spindle whorl?
Yep, that's right.
It's really, really
nice and tactile.
Big solid stone spindle whorl.
And then just further up Yeah.
That's this thing.
Ah, what's that?
It looks like a toggle.
Yeah, it's what we call
an antler prong,
but it's something we think probably
used within textile working.
It's got a suspension loop Yeah.
for wearing just round your neck
as part of the weaving process.
And then what about those?
They're beautiful.
Are they beads? These are
polished pieces of amethyst.
And then you can see
they've also been pierced
all the way through the middle
for incorporation in jewellery.
These are objects that you would
associate with an Anglo-Saxon woman,
but I'm a bit dubious, actually,
whether this is a woman
that we're looking at.
So the first thing is that
the bones are quite robust.
There's chunky areas
of muscle attachment,
And then the pelvis,
it's frustrating that
it's so fragmentary,
but we are getting, at the very top
of that great sciatic notch
at the back of the pelvis.
I'm saying kind of probable
male with that.
This is what's really
interesting is the jaw,
cos that's an incredibly
prominent chin.
And then on the other side,
we've got the angle of the jaw,
which is flared out.
That tends to push me
more in the direction
of this being a male skeleton.
That's right.
So, yeah, so the sort
of drinking vessels,
swords, shields, spears,
things that give you this real
kind of macho and machismo feel.
Yes, you expect them to be
potentially male burials.
But this one, if it's a male burial
with female grave goods,
really does sort of tip
that on its head.
And this is the other burial that
we saw quite clearly in your film.
I was really intrigued
by particularly that.
Can I pick it up? Yeah, if
you do it very carefully.
That's really light.
It's so thin and fine, isn't it?
We're wondering whether
that is a Saxon dish or bowl
or, in fact, maybe a Roman
piece of glass as an heirloom.
Really? Wow.
And what's this here?
This is an iron object,
isn't it?
That's the knife that
we were excavating.
It looked really good
in the ground all intact,
but it was held together by the
soil, so that is the knife,
and it had a leather belt,
which had a little bronze studs
and fittings that went with it
round the waist of the individual.
So this is what's astonishing
about these Saxon graves
is you're looking at somebody
who's buried fully clothed,
and then with lots of
other items around them
which speak about their
identity and their status.
So, yeah, all the attributes
of a warrior burial -
sword, shields, spear and
all this extra equipment.
And then what's amazing about that
is that this is a warrior burial.
The individual in it
was about ten years old.
So there's the top of the shin bone.
And, in fact, the very top of it
is still completely separate.
And then, eventually, when
it reaches its full length,
it will fuse and those two bits
of bone come together.
So, yeah, a growing individual.
We're seeing exactly the same
when we look at the teeth.
These are the milk teeth.
So those are the two baby molars,
and they're about to be knocked
out very soon by the premolars.
So those two-cusped teeth.
You have to do all this objective
archaeological science,
but you can't help thinking
about the people
that laid that little body to rest.
When you're excavating, you are
the first people to see this
since those that are grieving
are putting them into ground,
and it's impossible not to
project your own feelings
and emotions into this.
An amazing pair of burials that
tell us interesting things
about identity in this period,
but will yield up more secrets
as we apply more science.
The Saxons were originally pagan,
but then they converted
to Christianity,
and they built the first
monasteries in Britain.
In Shaftesbury, Alfred the Great
founded an abbey
with a nunnery alongside it with his
daughter Aethelgifu as the abbess.
Archaeologist Naoise Mac Sweeney
went along to see the excavations
at the site.
The market town of Shaftesbury
dominates the landscape of Dorset.
It was once the home
of Shaftesbury Abbey,
the first nunnery in Britain
that became one of the most powerful
and prominent in the land.
But the abbey,
like so many during the 16th
century English Reformation,
was plundered and destroyed
by command of Henry VIII.
I've come along to help
archaeologist Julian Richards
look for any remnants of
this important historic site.
We're trying to find out
whether what's laid out here
is the actual truth.
Most of what Julian
knows about the abbey
is from the findings of
the last big excavations
completed back in the 1930s.
Following these,
a plan was drawn up,
mapping what was thought to be the
footprint of the original abbey.
Julian has pored over these plans,
but, for him, something
just doesn't add up.
This is a site that has been dug
before, you said, in the 1930s.
What made you come back to it now?
We want to see just what survived
and whether we believed elements
of this plan, because,
just simply from an architectural
and engineering point of view,
you look at some elements of it,
and you think,
"I don't believe that.
That's not in the right place."
The original Saxon abbey was rebuilt
through the 11th and 12th centuries,
and subsequent modifications
included a rich refurbishment
in the 14th century.
The cloister of the abbey was
supposedly on the southern front,
commanding the view from
the top of the hill,
but Julian suspects
it was never there.
Well, this is where the cloister
wall's supposed to be,
but when we excavated it,
we found absolutely nothing.
The cloister is the beating
heart of an abbey,
not just a place of
contemplation and prayer,
but the structure around which
an abbey's principal
buildings were arranged.
Back in 1954,
historian Laura Sydenham
created architectural drawings
for her extensive study
of the abbey.
But these drawings were based
on the 1930s excavation,
speculating where the cloister
may have been.
Locating the whereabouts
of the cloister is critical
to establishing where
the rest of the abbey lay.
So the last thing we're doing
is a couple of slots
across the line of the cloister wall
to try and see if that cloister
exists on the southern side.
So, come on, I'll show you what
we're doing. Fab. Thank you!
Unearthing the foundations
of the lost abbey
has proved a challenge in itself.
There's a modern rockery garden
which needs dismantling for
the team to dig beneath.
So this is our next little problem
is removing a half-tonne
block of stone.
Well, it's the end of the first week
of digging and it's been very hot
and we've moved enormous
quantities of soil,
but we're starting to get
to grips, I think,
with the layout of the abbey
and what survives underneath
these remains
that were laid out in the 1930s.
This is potentially
where the wall is.
It's not looking promising.
As we dig, Julian is becoming
increasingly puzzled.
Have you found a wall?
What does it look like?!
It doesn't look like a wall to me.
Bizarrely, it's basically
like a shallow ditch.
So, we've got no wall here,
no wall there. A shallow ditch.
Three metres beyond that,
we have got a wall.
But this isn't the continuous
structure that we were expecting
to find here, marking the edge
of the cloister.
It's just a ditch!
Trying to dig another trench
over there!
Julian's suspicions about the plans
are becoming more compelling.
The trenches they've dug
are not giving him the answers
he's looking for, so he decides
to expand his initial dig outline.
In pursuit of the cloister,
the team have come across some
telling features along the way.
So, these cracked and worn tiles
are part of the 14th century floor
of this part of the church,
worn by the feet of hundreds,
thousands of people who've
walked over them.
And, also, you can see here,
they dip down.
This is because they're sinking
into a grave that runs
in this direction, because this
part of the church will be where
important people were buried.
The abbey, profiting from royal
patronage,
as well as being the site of
St Edward's shrine,
became very prosperous.
Over the centuries,
it acquired huge estates
in the surrounding area.
It was said that if the Abbess
of Shaftesbury married the Abbot
of Glastonbury, they would be
richer than the King himself.
This made it a prime target
during the dissolution
of the monasteries, and, in 1539,
on the order of Henry VIII,
the last abbess signed the
deed of surrender.
The lands were sold off and this
great symbol of Roman Catholic
power was demolished.
Julian's keen to show me the spot
where, just the week before,
there was a surprise find
that paints a vivid picture
of the abbey's tragic demise.
The end of the abbey -
what evidence have you got for
what happened here on the ground?
Well, this is the bit, really, that
I suppose gives you a very graphic
idea of what happened,
because this is where one
of the massive pillars stood
that supported the central crossing
tower, but they've taken out every
last bit of usable stone.
But what amazes me is that what
came out of that in this corner
they didn't want that.
This! Who we are looking at?
We don't know who it is.
We don't we can't work out
which king or queen. Male, female?
Well, we don't even work
out Because the hairstyles
are very similar.
It was an amazingly exciting find.
You know, not just from the point of
view of it being a beautiful object,
but it does tell us something
about how this part of the church,
which was the junction between
the nuns' private part of the church
and the more public part,
looked like.
This excavation first opened up
this year, and they thought
they knew what they were doing.
They were just confirming
a few things.
And, actually, what's been really
interesting to see,
actually, our expectations
being confounded and the whole kind
of thing being blown wide open.
We thought we knew where this
giant church was.
We thought we knew where
the cloister was.
Because of the kind of huge scale
of the demolition that went on
with the dissolution of
the monasteries, I mean, this entire
complex was just completely
flattened,
almost nothing left of it.
That's quite a sobering thought,
too, in terms
of what that would have meant
for the wider community
and the kind of
They were economically dependent.
They were socially dependent
on this place
and it just kind of makes you think
about the wider social effects
of this change.
Despite digging all summer
and discovering large sections
of the abbey, the puzzle over the
cloister is yet to be solved.
Julian, tell me about the site
that you've been digging.
What was the big mystery?
Our efforts at the moment
have been concentrated
on excavating in the abbey church.
So, the abbey church, I think
this is drone footage
that you've taken this summer.
Yes, so this is the area.
In fact, you can
see our excavation trenches here.
But we've always had slight
doubts about elements of it
because it just doesn't
seem quite right
and I've always felt that there's
an element of imagination in this.
Right. Like there really isn't room
enough for a southern
cloister before you
go off the edge of the slope.
So, do you think those cloisters
are entirely imagined, then?
I'm beginning to think that there
isn't a cloister on the south of it at all.
Yeah. I think it's probably on the
north. And what about the finds?
You've brought some wonderful things in. Yes. I
mean, we found some amazingly fresh-looking tiles,
beautiful little things, but still
with all their glaze on them,
which implies that whatever was
there wasn't being walked
on much, so you know, the tiles
tell a story, but then this one
That's so lovely.
It's absolutely fantastic, isn't it?
This was just in the demolition
period rubble.
So, 1539, the place
They start smashing the place up.
And clearly, this, if you
look at it, it's three-dimensional,
it's got a back to it.
Lovely! It's not a tomb figure,
it's a standing statue. Yeah.
And it's royal as well,
because you've got a crown and also,
these are representing
jewels on the crown.
We think it's male.
It looks a bit like some
statues of Edward II,
but we need to research
this a bit more. Yeah.
So, that was a fantastic find.
What about this lovely bead?
One of our volunteers was digging and said,
"I've found a plastic bead."
And I said, "No, you haven't,
"because you're digging
a medieval deposit."
So, is this jet? It's jet.
But it's such a big bead.
If it was part of a rosary, to me,
the story that, you know,
that object might be able to tell,
you know,
was this a nun being
ejected from there?
You know, her rosary broke? Yeah.
Because this obviously just
sort of fell into a corner
and then has ended up in the rubble.
But, to me, it's the story that
an object like that could tell,
you know, if only it could talk.
As we go right back into prehistory,
archaeological evidence can become
very thin on the ground.
And that's because our prehistoric
ancestors
were nomadic hunter-gatherers,
they just didn't settle
in one place for very long at all.
Our next dig comes from a site
in North Wales which contains
precious, tantalising glimpses of
very early modern humans in Britain.
Hidden away in a ravine
east of the Vale of Clwyd lies
the entrance to Ffynnon Beuno Cave.
The first excavations here
were carried
out by the Geologists Association
back in the 1880s.
They found stone tools
and plenty of ancient animal bones.
Over the decades,
this site has attracted
a lot of archaeological attention.
This year, Dr Rob Dinnis
and a team from the University
of Edinburgh are investigating
the cave
and they're filming a dig
diary along the way.
This is the first week we've opened
up the trenches now,
so we've started to work in earnest.
And the cave's up there,
so let's take a wander up and see.
There are two trenches, one inside
the cave and one just outside.
What we're digging here is
a spoil heap,
so that is material that's come
from inside the cave that's been
re-deposited out the front, as part
of earlier excavations in the 1880s.
Some of the earlier
finds in the cave take us
right back to a time when
Neanderthals were living in Britain.
The Victorian dig found these
beautiful flint spear points,
characteristic of late
Northern European Neanderthals.
Another find was a type of stone
tool thought to have been
made by early modern
humans around 35,000 years ago.
It's thought there is
a hiatus between Neanderthals
and modern humans in Britain
that spans several millennia.
As well as evidence of early humans,
that first dig also turned up animal
bones of 16 different species,
including cave lion and mammoth.
The reason why we're digging this
is to look for material that was
missed in those earlier excavations
and that appears to be the case.
We've already found some
bits of Ice Age animal bones,
some animal teeth, as well as some
small bits of stone tools.
The team is looking in the spoil
heap outside the cave for good
reason. Early excavations
often missed key finds.
Back in 2014, a human tooth
was found in the spoil.
It was radiocarbon dated to around
2,300 BC, during the late Neolithic.
Inside the cave, Rob is
digging down through the muddy
sediment on the floor,
hoping to find untouched layers.
Most of the Ice Age
sediments were actually
removed during the dig in the 1880s,
but we have been doing some work
and we found quite a lot of intact
sediments that contain Ice Age
animal bones.
We found a bank of intact sediments
that contain rhino,
contain hyena, contain intact
Ice Age material and fingers
crossed, we'll be able to find some
archaeological material in there.
As well as Neanderthals and early
modern humans, the archaeologists
are searching for evidence as to
who else may have used the cave.
They've previously found
a coprolite, or fossilised faeces,
belonging to a hyena thought
to be at least 35,000 years old.
The 19th century researchers
also found coprolites
and noted a number of gnawed bones.
They concluded that hyenas must have
been living in the cave as a den
and were probably
responsible for bringing
the bulk of the animal
bones into it.
The team continue to dig
down into the untouched sediments.
Here we are in the pit,
having a wonderful time.
We are down to intact cave earth
here, intact deposit.
We have found this beautiful woolly
rhinoceros tooth.
Woolly rhinoceros went
extinct in Britain 35,000 years ago,
so this means that we are in
deposit that is at least that old,
which is significant
because around that time is
when we think there were last
Neanderthals
and the earliest modern humans
in Britain, so we're in the right
time period, on track
potentially for finding archaeology.
The assemblage from this cave
is incredibly rare.
In fact, Ffynnon Beuno Cave is only
one of three places in Britain
to have evidence of both late
Neanderthal
and early modern
humans in the same site.
It appears that this cave still
contains a rich seam of archaeology.
Its secrets will keep
archaeologists like Rob
and his team coming back
here for many years into the future.
Most archaeological excavations
tend to take place over a single
block of time, particularly
if they're related to construction
and development.
University excavations, on the other
hand, usually take place over just
a few weeks in the summer,
but the archaeologists will keep
coming back
if there's plenty to find.
One such dig near Bristol has
turned into a real labour of love.
It's been going on for well
over a decade
and is now just coming to a close.
Just north of Bristol, close to
the mouth of the Severn Estuary,
sits beautiful Berkeley Castle.
It's the oldest building in England
still inhabited by the same
family, whose ancestors began
building it in the 11th century.
In 2010, Digging For Britain
was on site with Bristol University
archaeologists who wanted
to understand what was happening
here before the castle was built.
This year, we returned to Berkeley
with Professor Mark Horton
and Dr Stuart Prior,
who are searching for more evidence
of the origins of this site.
It's unique to be able to tell this
story of ourselves in one place
and here in Berkeley encapsulates
that, that idea.
When they first started their dig,
they suspected the site had been
home to an 8th century Saxon
minster, but the scale
of the monastic settlement proved
much greater than they imagined.
The amount of archaeology exceeded
expectations and has brought them
back year after year to explore the
minster buildings and boundaries.
So, this is the famous
Berkeley excavation
and it is a veritable slice
through history.
But the real interest of Berkeley
is the period before the conquest.
This is a time in which Berkeley
was a minster or a monastery.
We found huge quantities of material
associated with this
Anglo-Saxon monastery.
A minster is an important church,
often accompanied by a collection
of monastic buildings,
a place of prayer,
but also a place to live
and work for monks and nuns.
Over the years, eight trenches have
been dug around the estate to
assess the scale of the monastery.
The team are currently digging in a
paddock to the north of the castle.
According to records, the Saxon
minster here was demolished in 1043.
After the Norman Conquest, the stone
was used to build later structures
in Berkeley, including part
of the existing church and castle.
As well as the monastery,
the team have unearthed multiple
layers of history.
We've got at least 1,000 years
of history in one trench.
Starting at the top, we had 17th
and 18th century garden features.
Below that, we had
burials from the 17th century.
Below that, we had
an English Civil War ditch.
Underneath that, we found
Anglo-Saxon structures
and that's the most
important find for us.
One exceptionally rare piece
found at Berkeley is this exquisite
gold ring, a fine example of just
how skilled the Anglo-Saxons
were with intricate metalwork.
But the team has found evidence
of human activity even earlier
than the Saxons.
They haven't found buildings,
but there are definite
traces of Roman activity.
We've had a Roman roadway
cutting across here
and this very curious
ditch-like feature
and in the thin of that, we
found a piece of broken up silver,
a great big piece of what
we call hack silver.
Now, that's what the Romans
paid their Barbarian mercenaries
to defend their villa estates.
Literally,
chopping up the family silver.
And maybe what we've actually got is
a little bit of family silver that
one of those mercenaries dropped
and just left there in the ditch.
The Berkeley project has been
an emotional
rollercoaster of a journey,
both on and offsite.
For Stuart, there was
a time when he thought he wouldn't
even live to see the dig through.
I had a serious brain injury
three years ago.
Following an illness,
Stuart's prognosis was dire.
They thought I was going to die.
If I did survive,
they thought I'd be hospitalised
for the rest of my life.
But Stuart fought hard.
Despite the seemingly impossible
physical challenges
and against all the odds,
he was determined to get back out
into the field, to return to the job
he loved and the dig at Berkeley.
Fortunately, for me,
I'm a bit of a fighter
and I wasn't going to give up.
Basically, fought my way
back from being on my death bed
to being back at work again.
At the end of the dig,
with heavy hearts,
they've made the difficult
decision to call it a day.
Why it's ending, I'm retiring
from Bristol University and you've
got to draw a line somewhere and
kind of that's the end of an era.
In its closing year,
the dig here has not disappointed.
A find late in the day provides
yet more evidence of the lost
Berkeley minster.
So, perhaps our most important
find this season is this ditch.
It's not a defensive arrangement,
it's a boundary ditch.
It was a way of delimitating the
edge of the Anglo-Saxon monastery.
And we know it's Anglo-Saxon
because actually just last night,
this came out and it's
part of an Anglo-Saxon buckle
and what's remarkable, it's still
got traces of the gilding,
we haven't cleaned it up yet.
We're pretty happy that this
is evidence of, you know,
what one of those high-status
nuns would have been
wearing in the 8th
and early 9th centuries.
Since 2005, this project has
delivered year after year,
but now, it's time to say goodbye.
I will be sad to leave Berkeley.
A part of me
will always remain at Berkeley
because I've loved my time
working here.
So, tell me what you've found, then.
Summarise this
kind of 15 years of digging.
So, essentially,
we were looking to
prove that there was actually
a minster at Berkeley,
because nobody even knew just
when we started that there was
actually the minster at Berkeley.
What do the finds tell you
and why do they make you think
that this was actually a minster?
So, you know, we've got
evidence for maybe a scriptorium,
so if you were a king and you wanted
to get any writing done, you would
go to a monastery, a nunnery,
and get your Anglo-Saxon
documents drawn up.
And so we've got evidence for that
in the finds.
So we've got this lovely little
thing here, which is the astle.
So, an astle is a pointer
for keeping your place in a book,
isn't it? That's right.
You can see there's a little
Celtic cross in there.
So, here it would have attached
onto a bone pin. Yeah.
And then when you get to the
end of your page, you use the little
round bit to turn over your medieval
vellum parchment, or the page.
So that's a beautiful object
in its own right,
but it's telling us something really
important about Berkeley.
It's telling us that there
were people reading and writing.
Reading and writing. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's a longstanding,
powerful, religious community.
What kept you going back?
We just didn't get to
the end of all
I mean, you keep going down
and keep going down normally
until you run out of archaeology.
Mm. And we haven't.
We've got pottery, we've got
metal artefacts, we've got
all sorts of things
that are Roman in origin, we've got
a tiny little scalpel here.
Oh, yeah. Can I have a look? Yeah.
So, would that have been used
surgically, do you think?
I think surgically, or at least
in some sort of bathroom kit,
so if you're chopping up your
make up, that sort of thing,
or herbs and spices. Lovely.
What about that pin? Is that a?
I think that's almost certainly
a clothes pin.
But you can see under
the camera there Mm.
The head of that is really ornate.
Yes, it's for holding
your clothing together.
Before buttons were invented.
And then you've got strap ends,
yeah? Can I have a look at that one?
That's one of my favourite finds.
It's like a little dragon set.
You can just see where the strap
would have fitted. That's amazing.
Oh, yeah. Yeah?
The Anglo-Saxons did love hiding
little animals and faces and things.
That's it, yeah. And next is one
of my favourite finds,
which my students gave
the name of the Berkeley Gnome,
and if you put it under the camera,
you can see it's a little face.
It does look like a gnome. Yeah.
So, imagine the cross guard
on a dagger. Yeah.
On either end of it, you've got
one of those little terminals.
Right. Yeah.
Then we've got an arrow head.
Yeah, that's almost
certainly 15th century, I think.
You can imagine being shot from
the castle walls from one of those.
Mm. So, you've got find specialists
looking at all of these,
poring over them, trying to work
out what they all are.
That's it, exactly. So, we've got
15 years of research findings,
trying to work out exactly what they all
are. Yeah. You know, for our final report.
And then it brings us right up
to our 1980s builder's Casio watch,
gardener's Casio watch. A very
precious archaeological item, that.
Well, we do total collections,
so our students pick up
everything they find.
So if it's in the trench
and it's buried, it's a find. Yeah.
It was in the ground. It was in the ground
and somebody lost their digital watch
and one of my students found it.
Very beautiful thing, Stuart!
Well, you know, in 200 years' time,
when they've never seen
one before, and they're
mystified as to what it was, yeah?
They'll be able to get it out of the
collection at Berkeley Castle. Absolutely.
It can be very difficult
to come up with
names for groups of people
in prehistory.
We have absolutely no idea
what they called themselves.
Often, we look at their culture,
at the objects they made,
and use that as a label for them.
On our next dig, we're joining MoD
archaeologist Richard Osgood
and his team of ex-military
personnel in Wiltshire
and they're excavating a Bronze Age
burial mound of a type that is
linked to the mysterious
Beaker people.
This burial mound lies just
five miles from Stonehenge,
on Salisbury Plain,
and is known as Barrow Clump.
We're now at the site of the
last of the protected burial
mounds in this part
of Salisbury Plain.
What I'm hoping to find in this
trench is anything that is
put into it that will
relate to the early Bronze Age.
This site never fails to deliver.
Each year, there's been one really
incredible story that's emerged.
I'm really optimistic that we
might in this instance be
privileged enough to
see a Beaker grave.
This type of burial mound is
typical of the early Bronze Age,
around 2000 BC.
This is the time when the last
stones of nearby Stonehenge
were set in place.
Although there's still so much
about Stonehenge that mystifies us
to this day, we know it was
built in stages, from the Neolithic
through to the early Bronze Age,
the time of the Beaker people.
The Beaker people, it's a name
that's been given
because the burials
are of a particular type.
They are usually accompanied with
a pot, the eponymous beaker.
It's a little drinking vessel that's
found in the grave with them,
sometimes with other grave
goods as well.
Most of our knowledge of these
Bronze Age people
comes from their graves, which often
contain these distinctive beakers.
Particular styles of vessels
help with dating
and show how traditions spread.
The earliest known bell-shaped
beaker pottery
comes from Portugal and Spain,
but then the style spreads north.
Within 100 years,
these beakers appear in Britain.
Two beaker burials have previously
been found at Barrow Clump,
but Richard thinks there
may be more.
And it's not long before the team
starts to uncover human remains.
Well, the jumble of bones is
a jumble of bones, but it appears
quite likely that this jumble
of bones is a secondary feature.
Beaker burials are typically found
under the centre of a mound,
often surrounded by a large
ring ditch.
This would have been dug
out by hand,
using tools such as antler picks
and cow shoulder blade shovels,
tools often found
left behind in the ditches.
Some mounds would be
re-used for secondary burials.
These bones are most likely to
be from a later time,
not a Beaker burial,
as they're so shallow.
That's the trouble with it, because,
ordinarily,
if you're just dealing
with a single skeleton,
or even a couple of skeletons,
you know what's attached to what.
So you know what you're going to
expect when you're cleaning them up.
With this being a total jumble,
you've just got to be very
careful because you don't know
exactly what you're going to find.
As they dig deeper into the mound,
the team find a barbed
and tanged flint,
typical of the Bronze Age.
It's a roughout for an arrowhead,
so it's not complete, somebody's
started work on it, and they decided
not to go any further with it.
It's a really nice find
and it's definitely Bronze Age.
Barrow Clump is officially
protected as a scheduled monument.
Despite this, it's also today
part of an agricultural landscape
and an area of intensive
military training.
There's loads of things that
could threaten
archaeology on a military training
area. A tank is 60 tonnes.
It's a really, really heavy thing.
That driving over a burial mound
could potentially do
a lot of damage, so what we're
looking at here is just
evaluating precisely how damaging
those entities are.
Measures have been
put in place to remind
the Army of the important
heritage here,
but there are some local residents
who are harder to control.
We put signs up just to make it
extra clear, big spade,
sign saying "no digging".
What it doesn't do is tell
badgers how to read.
The really big problems
are burrowing animals
and over the years, we've been
finding a lot of archaeology
that's been brought
out from the badger setts.
Meanwhile, the team has
worked their way down to what
they believe is
the centre of the burial mound.
They've just come across a set
of human remains.
I can see from here the femur
and the pelvis of an individual.
Bones looking in really good
condition.
So we're really excited because
you've got what we've been looking
for for the whole three weeks
in one small hole in this burrow.
Archaeologist Dorothy Griffiths
was first to find the bones.
Truth be told, I was about to give
up because we kept seeing
so much flint and so many rocks.
I have had a chance to make
a snapshot to send and boast to
my friends back in America and those
in Jamaica, so I'll be excited.
Having not done archaeology for over
17 years,
I am, as I said, overjoyed.
As the rest of the remains
are revealed,
the team are confident that this
is a Beaker burial,
but they have yet to find
an actual beaker.
The real hope is that there's going
to be a beaker at one end.
That would be the real
triumph of this dig.
Now the dig has finished, the finds,
including the bones,
have been carefully packaged up
and taken off site
and our roving archaeologist,
Naoise Mac Sweeney, has been
along to the labs at
Wessex Archaeology to find out more.
At the Wessex post-excavation, I'm
hoping project manager Phil Andrews
has been able to establish whether
it was a Beaker burial they found.
Is this beaker from the burial?
This unfortunately isn't.
This was found probably about a
couple of hundred metres away,
but the burial we had
didn't have a vessel.
In fact, it didn't have any
grave goods with it.
And do we need to have a beaker
for it to be a Beaker period burial?
We don't, but we know from other
evidence, particularly
the size of the graves, which are
very substantial chambered graves,
with timber linings,
evidence of timber lining, that they
are of that period.
We're very certain that it
is a Beaker burial,
and we will confirm this through
radiocarbon dating in due course.
I'm curious to know what
Phil has found
out about the impact of the military
presence at Barrow Clump.
We're investigating the site,
we've been looking at the impact of
military vehicles passing
over some of the remains
and this is a classic example
of the weight of vehicles has just
crushed what may have once been
a complete vessel.
Overall, the damage being
caused by vehicles is very slight,
certainly the damage from badgers
is much more significant.
But military vehicles, they're not
causing a significant impact at all,
which is good news. Which is great
news for the archaeology, then.
Badgers are worse than tanks.
Tanks, yeah.
Senior osteoarchaeologist
Kirsten Egging Dinwiddy is examining
the remains for the first time.
So we've got a little
bit of the skull there.
What bit of the skull is that? If I hold it
like that Oh, is it? Not quite, no.
It's actually this bit here. Oh,
wow! OK. Yeah. That's quite chunky.
I mean, if I feel mine,
mine's very small.
Serious cheek bones. Yeah. So, are
we thinking "he"? I'm thinking he.
The size of this individual
and some of the traits
and things on the skull. If we look
at some of the other bones,
the size of the head on the humerus
there, that's quite large,
so I'm pretty happy with
this being a male.
What's exciting
about post-excavation is what it
can reveal - the age, the sex, so
much more about who this person was.
So, that's really nice,
strong muscle attachments there.
Not massively long,
so not necessarily a very, you know,
hugely tall person,
but certainly quite robust.
And, again, these slightly strange
muscle attachments there.
An anchoring point for your muscles
and attachments.
Bigger muscles need bigger
anchoring points. Yeah.
What about the age, then? OK.
So we've got the ends of the bones
are completely fused on.
Not only is it fused, it's started
to get these osteophytes,
these boney growths at the edges,
which is a sign of wear and tear.
It's not just an adult, then. It's an adult
who's then lived longer and seen wear and tear.
Yes, certainly into the 40s,
possibly up to mid-50s.
So, does Kirsten think
the environment at Barrow Clump
is causing any damage
to these bones?
You can see that's quite eroded.
You've lost most of
the surface there.
What would have done that? Could be
water flowing through the grave.
There are many, many things that
affect the burial environment.
Even putting fertiliser on the soil,
that can leach in and change
the chemical make-up of the soil
and the burial environment,
which may adversely affect the bone.
Meeting Phil and Kirsten today
has given me a real insight
into the research that is being done
into the preservation on this site.
And it seems as
though their findings are positive.
Military vehicles, tanks,
rolling over these graves,
actually it's been really good to
see that's not so much of a problem.
That actually, it's funny, it's
the badgers, it's the soil chemistry
and those more natural things,
so that's quite good to know.
Our next dig takes us to the
coast of South Wales,
where strange things are afoot -
quite literally, in this case.
Around 20 miles west of Cardiff,
along the coast, near the
village of Monknash, there's a cliff
proving to be a cause for concern.
After public reaction to what
appeared to be human bones sticking
out of the cliff face, the police
were called in to investigate.
The bones were identified as
archaeological remains and Professor
Jacqui Mulville from Cardiff
University was drafted in to help.
In this case, this is what
we call rescue archaeology.
We get reports from the public
and obviously, people are slightly
concerned at the idea you can see
bits of legs eroding out.
Previously rescued bones
from this site have been
dated to the 15th century,
during the early Tudor period.
On this occasion,
there's been a report of a skeleton
in urgent need of attention.
It sits right next to the
coastal footpath,
a popular walk for
the general public.
A bit of human bone here.
This sort of flat section here
and there's a human bone here,
which you can't
It's very hard to see.
As the excavation progresses,
it's clear the lower
part of the skeleton is missing.
Half the pelvis has gone,
so we don't actually have it with
us today, and the bit we've got
left, probably,
isn't as diagnostic as it should be.
With storm swells from the Atlantic
often battering the coastline,
the cliff face is eroding backwards.
Coastal officer Paul Huckfield works
closely with the police
and Cardiff University.
He's very familiar with
this stretch of coast.
Across the top of the cliff,
as you can see now, we've got one,
two, three, maybe four grave cuts,
with human remains
eroding out of it.
Over time, as the cliffs have
eroded more and more,
burials have just been exposed
by natural erosion of the cliff
face, as it moves backwards.
The team know that the cliff
is full of bones
and eventually plan to excavate
the other visible remains,
but, for the moment, their focus has
to be on the ones they can reach.
Jacqui hopes these will divulge
more of the wider story.
We'll be able to work out more
accurately who they were,
what age they were, what sex
they were, and bits about their life
histories and by reuniting them and
then reinterring them, we're
actually treating them, I suppose,
in a much better way than them
sort of falling piecemeal
out of the cliff.
As the team dig on,
there's an unanticipated twist.
So far,
we have the elbow joint right here,
the humerus pointing that way,
which is the opposite way to what
we'd expect it,
given that the legs are down there.
And then you have the ulna,
so that's the lower arm,
coming this way,
so we think maybe something
The hand's behind the head.
So, we're all a bit perplexed.
Jacqui's unsure why the body is
contorted in the way it is.
The burial has thrown up
a few surprises.
What we appear to have here is
somebody who's been
buried in a slightly
sort of haphazard manner
and this suggests that possibly
they were buried in a hurry,
or by somebody who didn't
actually care.
It could be that they're actually
compressed in a grave that's
too small because the person didn't
have time, or perhaps didn't want to
make the investment to make a grave
that was the right size for them.
So it is unusual.
The coastal location and unorthodox
positioning of the bodies has
given rise to a number of theories,
as to who these people might be.
One theory suggests they could have
been victims of shipwrecks
and local legends tell of wreckers.
These people would put
lights around the necks of sheep,
walking them along the clifftop,
to lure ships onto the rocks.
For centuries, wrecking ships to
loot cargo was a very profitable activity.
Over the course of the day,
the archaeologists begin to reveal
the rest of the skeleton.
We're making really good progress,
we can now see most of the head,
we've got the mandible exposed.
We can also see sort of the ribs,
the pelvis and the lower back, so we
can see we've got the full
torso of an individual who's
sort of slightly twisted.
Just before the bones are lifted
for further examination,
the team gather some final evidence.
By taking a number of images,
we can stitch them together,
using a photographic programme,
and then that will allow us
to actually have accurate record
of the articulation of the bones
when we get back to the lab.
These burials seem to be
part of an unknown graveyard,
or at least there are no marked
graves up on the top of the cliff.
No, so there's no marked graves,
but people have been
found for decades, really. OK.
Since the 1980s,
and some of the graves are aligned.
There's even some graves which have
sort of disarticulated human
remains and are a little bit
further back from the cliff.
So we're kind of like, who are they?
Why are they there?
And you've got a lovely 3-D
photogrammetry of the skeleton
as you were excavating it. Yeah.
What you've got is somebody whose
arms appear to be above their head. Yeah.
And then their head is turned
sort of to one side,
so the other burials that have been
found further along the cliff,
they're all interred with their
hands sort of down their sides.
So this is an anomaly.
Right. OK.
And then we're missing the entire
bottom half of this individual.
Presumably, that has just
eroded out of the cliff.
Well, we know it was there
because a member of the public
sent in a photo and you could see
sort of the bottom of the legs.
Yeah. Ethically, you kind of want to
reassemble them. Yeah, you do.
So you think this is a young
individual, isn't it? Yeah.
The top of the humerus here,
the epiphysis is completely unfused.
So that was still growing.
And then if I look at the teeth,
first molar's through,
that comes through on average
age six.
Second molar come through,
around 12.
And I can see down in there,
the wisdom teeth still
nestled in their crypts.
So you are probably looking
at somebody who is a young teenager.
Yeah, but around that time,
young teenagers,
you could be treated as an adult,
really. Yeah.
You would have been in employment
around that time.
Yeah, it is tricky, isn't it?
Because with young men, or boys,
they haven't developed
the kind of robusticity
of the skull that we see later on,
but that is quite
a squared-off chin,
but this is quite a feminine face.
Yes. Sort of smooth.
With the forehead
coming down to the nose there.
We think it's a teenage boy,
who's been inserted rather
strangely in a grave.
He's at a different level
to all of the others.
Yeah. The others are all male. Yeah.
So, who are they?
And why are they all male?
So, there's obviously some fantastic
stories about smugglers
and pirates and things and, in fact,
there's a fantastic story that
the pub, which is
actually now built of part of the
sort of monastic range,
used to be a mortuary for
shipwrecked sailors. Really? Yes.
And we know there were
shipwrecks around that point.
Whether they were
caused by the wreckers,
or whether they were just natural
shipwrecks, we don't know.
I mean, there's quite a lot of,
I suppose,
accounts of shipwrecked people not
being buried in consecrated
ground, but actually being buried
quite close to the edge of the
Close to where they're found, by the sea. It's
tricky cos it's all kind of circumstantial
evidence at the moment, isn't it?
It is.
We know there were shipwrecks there.
We've got this intriguing story
about the pub being a mortuary.
Yeah. So, what about further
analyses on this skeleton?
What are you going to try? So, we're going
to try and find out sort of where they lived
and sort of what they ate, really.
Essentially,
the more sort of analyses you do,
the more sort of a complex picture
you build up of somebody's life.
Yeah. So you don't know.
I mean, Britain's an island
full of rich archaeology.
We will continue to find more
and more coastal archaeology
because of climate change,
storminess,
and all of those things,
so it's important that we
have good mechanisms
and we get the public onside
actually, cos, you know,
I always think there's these sort of lost
souls. We should be bringing them back together.
And if anyone does know
where his legs are, bring them
to Cardiff University.
Please bring them back. Yeah.
It's been a fantastic year of
exploration in the west of Britain.
From the discovery of Anglo-Saxon
treasure, to hunting for a lost
abbey and digging to the depths
of a Bronze Age burial mound.
We've shown there's still
so much to discover to
further our knowledge
and shed light on our past.
Join us next time,
as we continue Digging For Britain.
The United Kingdom
has an epic history
and a wealth of secrets
still to uncover.
Every year, hundreds of
archaeologists dig,
dive,
and sieve to find clues
to add to the great historical
jigsaw of our ancestors' lives.
You know when people say, "What's
the best thing you've ever found?"
Guys, this.
I'm Professor Alice Roberts.
This year, we've uncovered
some astonishing finds
and made some truly ground-breaking
discoveries.
Wow, look at that!
Each team of archeologists has been
armed with a dig diary camera
so they can record their discoveries
as they happen.
That is brilliant.
Dave, I love you.
Our roving archaeologist,
Dr Naoise Mac Sweeney,
is out on the digs.
Who are we looking at? It's royal.
And I'll be inviting the teams
to bring in their finds
for closer analysis.
That is absolutely beautiful.
This time, we explore
Britain's west.
I've come to the edge of Dartmoor,
where traces of the ancient
past are all around,
from castles to rows and circles
of Bronze Age standing stones.
In fact, all of the west
is rich in archaeology.
Join us to delve into
an Ice Age cave
We have found this beautiful
woolly rhinoceros tooth.
follow up on reported sightings
of unexpected human bones
Across the top of the cliff,
we've got human remains
eroding out of it.
and bid an emotional farewell
to a very long-running site.
It's unique to be able to tell this
story of ourselves in one place.
Welcome to Digging for Britain.
Our first dig takes us
to the Cotswolds,
an area with a rich seam
of Anglo-Saxon archaeology,
and the name itself is thought to
relate to an Anglo-Saxon chieftain
called Cod and his control of
this territory of the high lands
or "wolds", so "Cod's wolds".
This dig takes us back to around
the early sixth century.
The exact location has been
kept secret to protect it.
A team of volunteers led by
MoD archaeologist Richard Osgood
is following up on the discovery
of high-status Anglo-Saxon
artefacts in a field.
There's a chap called Chris,
who's a local metal detector.
He's got permission from the farmer
to come and have a look
at this field.
No-one knew anything
about this field.
There was nothing on the
historic environment record.
He was pretty shocked to find,
not only a lot of Roman material,
but he found two really,
really beautiful Saxon items.
There was a sword pommel mount
from the top of a Saxon blade,
which was made of silver gilt,
and then a silver buckle as well,
so these things are what
are called treasure.
Treasure is legally classified
as any piece of metal
over 300 years old
containing over 10% gold or silver,
and it has to be reported.
Tell about your thoughts when
you got that out of the ground.
I was totally stunned cos
I knew exactly what it was.
You've not had anything
like that before?
No, no, no. It's a detectorist's
dream, really, isn't it?
Chris made his finds in 2016
and reported them to
Gloucestershire Council.
It soon became clear
that he'd stumbled on
a sixth-century Anglo-Saxon
burial ground.
This prompted a swift call
to Richard and his team
to formally excavate the site.
So we've got what we believe to
be a nice skeleton over here.
So we've got a nice skull
coming through.
The cranium coming up in that way,
and then we've got the jaw
here with the individual teeth
just poking through at this point,
jaw bone just there.
As we come down, we've got
what is the right arm here.
Just the top with just the humerus,
and then we come into where
the rib section will be
once we clean those down.
The finds date to a time when
history and material culture
show strong links with the
Netherlands and Scandinavia.
Most Britons at this time
are thought to have been pagan,
and their burial practices
involved interring the dead
with plenty of grave goods.
And this cemetery is starting to
yield some very intriguing finds.
It's a nice, massive, big piece
of a rim of a bowl.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
What is it, Janine, pottery? Glass.
Glass?! Nice piece of glass.
Just a few days into the dig
and they unearth
a very rare artefact.
Oh, wow. Well done!
Oh, that is wonderful. Beautiful.
You know when people say what's
the best thing you've ever found?
Guys, this.
The raw material for this bowl
may well have come from
the eastern Mediterranean,
a major focus for glass
production at this time.
This exciting archaeological
find is unusual,
as glass is so fragile,
it rarely survives.
A bowl like this would
have been precious -
another indication of high status.
Brilliant.
What really amazes me is that
this has been in the ground
since the sixth century.
It's really, really
shallow up there.
There's not much topsoil.
It's been ploughed for hundreds
and hundreds of years.
And yes, OK, it's broken,
but it still survived.
Elsewhere on site,
the archaeologists are making
more extraordinary finds,
Imagine that you're holding a sword
there. You've got the handle there.
That would sit on the handle right
there, so that's your guard. Right.
Wow. That is fantastic.
It looks like a bead.
The Anglo-Saxons are well-known
for their incredibly intricate
jewellery and decorative metalwork.
We're thinking it could be anything
from a helmet to a drinking vessel
to part of a scabbard.
It is indicative of
a high-status burial.
It's made of silver, but
it's got this gild again,
which is why it looks like gold,
and it shines beautifully.
After 1,500 years,
it's still shiny when
you put it in the sun,
and that's a really magical item.
In early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries,
the dead were typically
buried fully-dressed
with other objects
included in the grave
that still speak to us of
their identity and status.
What have you got now?
We've got a knife!
Yeah, I think that
we've got a knife,
which is just sat over
the pelvis area here,
but it's just sat on
what is the left hip,
so probably a dagger.
Looks too small to be a spear.
Yeah, it's certainly
all happening here.
I think we've got a very,
very high-status burial
with a lot going on.
This unassuming field has proven
an extremely rewarding site.
Richard has joined me to delve
deeper into a couple of the burials
which seem to challenge
our expectations.
This is photogrammetry of
this individual, is it?
That's right. Yeah.
The quality's that good
you can actually see some of
the finds in the burial itself.
You've got the See this
circular item just here?
Yeah. Now, that's that's this.
Ah, is that a spindle whorl?
Yep, that's right.
It's really, really
nice and tactile.
Big solid stone spindle whorl.
And then just further up Yeah.
That's this thing.
Ah, what's that?
It looks like a toggle.
Yeah, it's what we call
an antler prong,
but it's something we think probably
used within textile working.
It's got a suspension loop Yeah.
for wearing just round your neck
as part of the weaving process.
And then what about those?
They're beautiful.
Are they beads? These are
polished pieces of amethyst.
And then you can see
they've also been pierced
all the way through the middle
for incorporation in jewellery.
These are objects that you would
associate with an Anglo-Saxon woman,
but I'm a bit dubious, actually,
whether this is a woman
that we're looking at.
So the first thing is that
the bones are quite robust.
There's chunky areas
of muscle attachment,
And then the pelvis,
it's frustrating that
it's so fragmentary,
but we are getting, at the very top
of that great sciatic notch
at the back of the pelvis.
I'm saying kind of probable
male with that.
This is what's really
interesting is the jaw,
cos that's an incredibly
prominent chin.
And then on the other side,
we've got the angle of the jaw,
which is flared out.
That tends to push me
more in the direction
of this being a male skeleton.
That's right.
So, yeah, so the sort
of drinking vessels,
swords, shields, spears,
things that give you this real
kind of macho and machismo feel.
Yes, you expect them to be
potentially male burials.
But this one, if it's a male burial
with female grave goods,
really does sort of tip
that on its head.
And this is the other burial that
we saw quite clearly in your film.
I was really intrigued
by particularly that.
Can I pick it up? Yeah, if
you do it very carefully.
That's really light.
It's so thin and fine, isn't it?
We're wondering whether
that is a Saxon dish or bowl
or, in fact, maybe a Roman
piece of glass as an heirloom.
Really? Wow.
And what's this here?
This is an iron object,
isn't it?
That's the knife that
we were excavating.
It looked really good
in the ground all intact,
but it was held together by the
soil, so that is the knife,
and it had a leather belt,
which had a little bronze studs
and fittings that went with it
round the waist of the individual.
So this is what's astonishing
about these Saxon graves
is you're looking at somebody
who's buried fully clothed,
and then with lots of
other items around them
which speak about their
identity and their status.
So, yeah, all the attributes
of a warrior burial -
sword, shields, spear and
all this extra equipment.
And then what's amazing about that
is that this is a warrior burial.
The individual in it
was about ten years old.
So there's the top of the shin bone.
And, in fact, the very top of it
is still completely separate.
And then, eventually, when
it reaches its full length,
it will fuse and those two bits
of bone come together.
So, yeah, a growing individual.
We're seeing exactly the same
when we look at the teeth.
These are the milk teeth.
So those are the two baby molars,
and they're about to be knocked
out very soon by the premolars.
So those two-cusped teeth.
You have to do all this objective
archaeological science,
but you can't help thinking
about the people
that laid that little body to rest.
When you're excavating, you are
the first people to see this
since those that are grieving
are putting them into ground,
and it's impossible not to
project your own feelings
and emotions into this.
An amazing pair of burials that
tell us interesting things
about identity in this period,
but will yield up more secrets
as we apply more science.
The Saxons were originally pagan,
but then they converted
to Christianity,
and they built the first
monasteries in Britain.
In Shaftesbury, Alfred the Great
founded an abbey
with a nunnery alongside it with his
daughter Aethelgifu as the abbess.
Archaeologist Naoise Mac Sweeney
went along to see the excavations
at the site.
The market town of Shaftesbury
dominates the landscape of Dorset.
It was once the home
of Shaftesbury Abbey,
the first nunnery in Britain
that became one of the most powerful
and prominent in the land.
But the abbey,
like so many during the 16th
century English Reformation,
was plundered and destroyed
by command of Henry VIII.
I've come along to help
archaeologist Julian Richards
look for any remnants of
this important historic site.
We're trying to find out
whether what's laid out here
is the actual truth.
Most of what Julian
knows about the abbey
is from the findings of
the last big excavations
completed back in the 1930s.
Following these,
a plan was drawn up,
mapping what was thought to be the
footprint of the original abbey.
Julian has pored over these plans,
but, for him, something
just doesn't add up.
This is a site that has been dug
before, you said, in the 1930s.
What made you come back to it now?
We want to see just what survived
and whether we believed elements
of this plan, because,
just simply from an architectural
and engineering point of view,
you look at some elements of it,
and you think,
"I don't believe that.
That's not in the right place."
The original Saxon abbey was rebuilt
through the 11th and 12th centuries,
and subsequent modifications
included a rich refurbishment
in the 14th century.
The cloister of the abbey was
supposedly on the southern front,
commanding the view from
the top of the hill,
but Julian suspects
it was never there.
Well, this is where the cloister
wall's supposed to be,
but when we excavated it,
we found absolutely nothing.
The cloister is the beating
heart of an abbey,
not just a place of
contemplation and prayer,
but the structure around which
an abbey's principal
buildings were arranged.
Back in 1954,
historian Laura Sydenham
created architectural drawings
for her extensive study
of the abbey.
But these drawings were based
on the 1930s excavation,
speculating where the cloister
may have been.
Locating the whereabouts
of the cloister is critical
to establishing where
the rest of the abbey lay.
So the last thing we're doing
is a couple of slots
across the line of the cloister wall
to try and see if that cloister
exists on the southern side.
So, come on, I'll show you what
we're doing. Fab. Thank you!
Unearthing the foundations
of the lost abbey
has proved a challenge in itself.
There's a modern rockery garden
which needs dismantling for
the team to dig beneath.
So this is our next little problem
is removing a half-tonne
block of stone.
Well, it's the end of the first week
of digging and it's been very hot
and we've moved enormous
quantities of soil,
but we're starting to get
to grips, I think,
with the layout of the abbey
and what survives underneath
these remains
that were laid out in the 1930s.
This is potentially
where the wall is.
It's not looking promising.
As we dig, Julian is becoming
increasingly puzzled.
Have you found a wall?
What does it look like?!
It doesn't look like a wall to me.
Bizarrely, it's basically
like a shallow ditch.
So, we've got no wall here,
no wall there. A shallow ditch.
Three metres beyond that,
we have got a wall.
But this isn't the continuous
structure that we were expecting
to find here, marking the edge
of the cloister.
It's just a ditch!
Trying to dig another trench
over there!
Julian's suspicions about the plans
are becoming more compelling.
The trenches they've dug
are not giving him the answers
he's looking for, so he decides
to expand his initial dig outline.
In pursuit of the cloister,
the team have come across some
telling features along the way.
So, these cracked and worn tiles
are part of the 14th century floor
of this part of the church,
worn by the feet of hundreds,
thousands of people who've
walked over them.
And, also, you can see here,
they dip down.
This is because they're sinking
into a grave that runs
in this direction, because this
part of the church will be where
important people were buried.
The abbey, profiting from royal
patronage,
as well as being the site of
St Edward's shrine,
became very prosperous.
Over the centuries,
it acquired huge estates
in the surrounding area.
It was said that if the Abbess
of Shaftesbury married the Abbot
of Glastonbury, they would be
richer than the King himself.
This made it a prime target
during the dissolution
of the monasteries, and, in 1539,
on the order of Henry VIII,
the last abbess signed the
deed of surrender.
The lands were sold off and this
great symbol of Roman Catholic
power was demolished.
Julian's keen to show me the spot
where, just the week before,
there was a surprise find
that paints a vivid picture
of the abbey's tragic demise.
The end of the abbey -
what evidence have you got for
what happened here on the ground?
Well, this is the bit, really, that
I suppose gives you a very graphic
idea of what happened,
because this is where one
of the massive pillars stood
that supported the central crossing
tower, but they've taken out every
last bit of usable stone.
But what amazes me is that what
came out of that in this corner
they didn't want that.
This! Who we are looking at?
We don't know who it is.
We don't we can't work out
which king or queen. Male, female?
Well, we don't even work
out Because the hairstyles
are very similar.
It was an amazingly exciting find.
You know, not just from the point of
view of it being a beautiful object,
but it does tell us something
about how this part of the church,
which was the junction between
the nuns' private part of the church
and the more public part,
looked like.
This excavation first opened up
this year, and they thought
they knew what they were doing.
They were just confirming
a few things.
And, actually, what's been really
interesting to see,
actually, our expectations
being confounded and the whole kind
of thing being blown wide open.
We thought we knew where this
giant church was.
We thought we knew where
the cloister was.
Because of the kind of huge scale
of the demolition that went on
with the dissolution of
the monasteries, I mean, this entire
complex was just completely
flattened,
almost nothing left of it.
That's quite a sobering thought,
too, in terms
of what that would have meant
for the wider community
and the kind of
They were economically dependent.
They were socially dependent
on this place
and it just kind of makes you think
about the wider social effects
of this change.
Despite digging all summer
and discovering large sections
of the abbey, the puzzle over the
cloister is yet to be solved.
Julian, tell me about the site
that you've been digging.
What was the big mystery?
Our efforts at the moment
have been concentrated
on excavating in the abbey church.
So, the abbey church, I think
this is drone footage
that you've taken this summer.
Yes, so this is the area.
In fact, you can
see our excavation trenches here.
But we've always had slight
doubts about elements of it
because it just doesn't
seem quite right
and I've always felt that there's
an element of imagination in this.
Right. Like there really isn't room
enough for a southern
cloister before you
go off the edge of the slope.
So, do you think those cloisters
are entirely imagined, then?
I'm beginning to think that there
isn't a cloister on the south of it at all.
Yeah. I think it's probably on the
north. And what about the finds?
You've brought some wonderful things in. Yes. I
mean, we found some amazingly fresh-looking tiles,
beautiful little things, but still
with all their glaze on them,
which implies that whatever was
there wasn't being walked
on much, so you know, the tiles
tell a story, but then this one
That's so lovely.
It's absolutely fantastic, isn't it?
This was just in the demolition
period rubble.
So, 1539, the place
They start smashing the place up.
And clearly, this, if you
look at it, it's three-dimensional,
it's got a back to it.
Lovely! It's not a tomb figure,
it's a standing statue. Yeah.
And it's royal as well,
because you've got a crown and also,
these are representing
jewels on the crown.
We think it's male.
It looks a bit like some
statues of Edward II,
but we need to research
this a bit more. Yeah.
So, that was a fantastic find.
What about this lovely bead?
One of our volunteers was digging and said,
"I've found a plastic bead."
And I said, "No, you haven't,
"because you're digging
a medieval deposit."
So, is this jet? It's jet.
But it's such a big bead.
If it was part of a rosary, to me,
the story that, you know,
that object might be able to tell,
you know,
was this a nun being
ejected from there?
You know, her rosary broke? Yeah.
Because this obviously just
sort of fell into a corner
and then has ended up in the rubble.
But, to me, it's the story that
an object like that could tell,
you know, if only it could talk.
As we go right back into prehistory,
archaeological evidence can become
very thin on the ground.
And that's because our prehistoric
ancestors
were nomadic hunter-gatherers,
they just didn't settle
in one place for very long at all.
Our next dig comes from a site
in North Wales which contains
precious, tantalising glimpses of
very early modern humans in Britain.
Hidden away in a ravine
east of the Vale of Clwyd lies
the entrance to Ffynnon Beuno Cave.
The first excavations here
were carried
out by the Geologists Association
back in the 1880s.
They found stone tools
and plenty of ancient animal bones.
Over the decades,
this site has attracted
a lot of archaeological attention.
This year, Dr Rob Dinnis
and a team from the University
of Edinburgh are investigating
the cave
and they're filming a dig
diary along the way.
This is the first week we've opened
up the trenches now,
so we've started to work in earnest.
And the cave's up there,
so let's take a wander up and see.
There are two trenches, one inside
the cave and one just outside.
What we're digging here is
a spoil heap,
so that is material that's come
from inside the cave that's been
re-deposited out the front, as part
of earlier excavations in the 1880s.
Some of the earlier
finds in the cave take us
right back to a time when
Neanderthals were living in Britain.
The Victorian dig found these
beautiful flint spear points,
characteristic of late
Northern European Neanderthals.
Another find was a type of stone
tool thought to have been
made by early modern
humans around 35,000 years ago.
It's thought there is
a hiatus between Neanderthals
and modern humans in Britain
that spans several millennia.
As well as evidence of early humans,
that first dig also turned up animal
bones of 16 different species,
including cave lion and mammoth.
The reason why we're digging this
is to look for material that was
missed in those earlier excavations
and that appears to be the case.
We've already found some
bits of Ice Age animal bones,
some animal teeth, as well as some
small bits of stone tools.
The team is looking in the spoil
heap outside the cave for good
reason. Early excavations
often missed key finds.
Back in 2014, a human tooth
was found in the spoil.
It was radiocarbon dated to around
2,300 BC, during the late Neolithic.
Inside the cave, Rob is
digging down through the muddy
sediment on the floor,
hoping to find untouched layers.
Most of the Ice Age
sediments were actually
removed during the dig in the 1880s,
but we have been doing some work
and we found quite a lot of intact
sediments that contain Ice Age
animal bones.
We found a bank of intact sediments
that contain rhino,
contain hyena, contain intact
Ice Age material and fingers
crossed, we'll be able to find some
archaeological material in there.
As well as Neanderthals and early
modern humans, the archaeologists
are searching for evidence as to
who else may have used the cave.
They've previously found
a coprolite, or fossilised faeces,
belonging to a hyena thought
to be at least 35,000 years old.
The 19th century researchers
also found coprolites
and noted a number of gnawed bones.
They concluded that hyenas must have
been living in the cave as a den
and were probably
responsible for bringing
the bulk of the animal
bones into it.
The team continue to dig
down into the untouched sediments.
Here we are in the pit,
having a wonderful time.
We are down to intact cave earth
here, intact deposit.
We have found this beautiful woolly
rhinoceros tooth.
Woolly rhinoceros went
extinct in Britain 35,000 years ago,
so this means that we are in
deposit that is at least that old,
which is significant
because around that time is
when we think there were last
Neanderthals
and the earliest modern humans
in Britain, so we're in the right
time period, on track
potentially for finding archaeology.
The assemblage from this cave
is incredibly rare.
In fact, Ffynnon Beuno Cave is only
one of three places in Britain
to have evidence of both late
Neanderthal
and early modern
humans in the same site.
It appears that this cave still
contains a rich seam of archaeology.
Its secrets will keep
archaeologists like Rob
and his team coming back
here for many years into the future.
Most archaeological excavations
tend to take place over a single
block of time, particularly
if they're related to construction
and development.
University excavations, on the other
hand, usually take place over just
a few weeks in the summer,
but the archaeologists will keep
coming back
if there's plenty to find.
One such dig near Bristol has
turned into a real labour of love.
It's been going on for well
over a decade
and is now just coming to a close.
Just north of Bristol, close to
the mouth of the Severn Estuary,
sits beautiful Berkeley Castle.
It's the oldest building in England
still inhabited by the same
family, whose ancestors began
building it in the 11th century.
In 2010, Digging For Britain
was on site with Bristol University
archaeologists who wanted
to understand what was happening
here before the castle was built.
This year, we returned to Berkeley
with Professor Mark Horton
and Dr Stuart Prior,
who are searching for more evidence
of the origins of this site.
It's unique to be able to tell this
story of ourselves in one place
and here in Berkeley encapsulates
that, that idea.
When they first started their dig,
they suspected the site had been
home to an 8th century Saxon
minster, but the scale
of the monastic settlement proved
much greater than they imagined.
The amount of archaeology exceeded
expectations and has brought them
back year after year to explore the
minster buildings and boundaries.
So, this is the famous
Berkeley excavation
and it is a veritable slice
through history.
But the real interest of Berkeley
is the period before the conquest.
This is a time in which Berkeley
was a minster or a monastery.
We found huge quantities of material
associated with this
Anglo-Saxon monastery.
A minster is an important church,
often accompanied by a collection
of monastic buildings,
a place of prayer,
but also a place to live
and work for monks and nuns.
Over the years, eight trenches have
been dug around the estate to
assess the scale of the monastery.
The team are currently digging in a
paddock to the north of the castle.
According to records, the Saxon
minster here was demolished in 1043.
After the Norman Conquest, the stone
was used to build later structures
in Berkeley, including part
of the existing church and castle.
As well as the monastery,
the team have unearthed multiple
layers of history.
We've got at least 1,000 years
of history in one trench.
Starting at the top, we had 17th
and 18th century garden features.
Below that, we had
burials from the 17th century.
Below that, we had
an English Civil War ditch.
Underneath that, we found
Anglo-Saxon structures
and that's the most
important find for us.
One exceptionally rare piece
found at Berkeley is this exquisite
gold ring, a fine example of just
how skilled the Anglo-Saxons
were with intricate metalwork.
But the team has found evidence
of human activity even earlier
than the Saxons.
They haven't found buildings,
but there are definite
traces of Roman activity.
We've had a Roman roadway
cutting across here
and this very curious
ditch-like feature
and in the thin of that, we
found a piece of broken up silver,
a great big piece of what
we call hack silver.
Now, that's what the Romans
paid their Barbarian mercenaries
to defend their villa estates.
Literally,
chopping up the family silver.
And maybe what we've actually got is
a little bit of family silver that
one of those mercenaries dropped
and just left there in the ditch.
The Berkeley project has been
an emotional
rollercoaster of a journey,
both on and offsite.
For Stuart, there was
a time when he thought he wouldn't
even live to see the dig through.
I had a serious brain injury
three years ago.
Following an illness,
Stuart's prognosis was dire.
They thought I was going to die.
If I did survive,
they thought I'd be hospitalised
for the rest of my life.
But Stuart fought hard.
Despite the seemingly impossible
physical challenges
and against all the odds,
he was determined to get back out
into the field, to return to the job
he loved and the dig at Berkeley.
Fortunately, for me,
I'm a bit of a fighter
and I wasn't going to give up.
Basically, fought my way
back from being on my death bed
to being back at work again.
At the end of the dig,
with heavy hearts,
they've made the difficult
decision to call it a day.
Why it's ending, I'm retiring
from Bristol University and you've
got to draw a line somewhere and
kind of that's the end of an era.
In its closing year,
the dig here has not disappointed.
A find late in the day provides
yet more evidence of the lost
Berkeley minster.
So, perhaps our most important
find this season is this ditch.
It's not a defensive arrangement,
it's a boundary ditch.
It was a way of delimitating the
edge of the Anglo-Saxon monastery.
And we know it's Anglo-Saxon
because actually just last night,
this came out and it's
part of an Anglo-Saxon buckle
and what's remarkable, it's still
got traces of the gilding,
we haven't cleaned it up yet.
We're pretty happy that this
is evidence of, you know,
what one of those high-status
nuns would have been
wearing in the 8th
and early 9th centuries.
Since 2005, this project has
delivered year after year,
but now, it's time to say goodbye.
I will be sad to leave Berkeley.
A part of me
will always remain at Berkeley
because I've loved my time
working here.
So, tell me what you've found, then.
Summarise this
kind of 15 years of digging.
So, essentially,
we were looking to
prove that there was actually
a minster at Berkeley,
because nobody even knew just
when we started that there was
actually the minster at Berkeley.
What do the finds tell you
and why do they make you think
that this was actually a minster?
So, you know, we've got
evidence for maybe a scriptorium,
so if you were a king and you wanted
to get any writing done, you would
go to a monastery, a nunnery,
and get your Anglo-Saxon
documents drawn up.
And so we've got evidence for that
in the finds.
So we've got this lovely little
thing here, which is the astle.
So, an astle is a pointer
for keeping your place in a book,
isn't it? That's right.
You can see there's a little
Celtic cross in there.
So, here it would have attached
onto a bone pin. Yeah.
And then when you get to the
end of your page, you use the little
round bit to turn over your medieval
vellum parchment, or the page.
So that's a beautiful object
in its own right,
but it's telling us something really
important about Berkeley.
It's telling us that there
were people reading and writing.
Reading and writing. Yeah.
Yeah, so it's a longstanding,
powerful, religious community.
What kept you going back?
We just didn't get to
the end of all
I mean, you keep going down
and keep going down normally
until you run out of archaeology.
Mm. And we haven't.
We've got pottery, we've got
metal artefacts, we've got
all sorts of things
that are Roman in origin, we've got
a tiny little scalpel here.
Oh, yeah. Can I have a look? Yeah.
So, would that have been used
surgically, do you think?
I think surgically, or at least
in some sort of bathroom kit,
so if you're chopping up your
make up, that sort of thing,
or herbs and spices. Lovely.
What about that pin? Is that a?
I think that's almost certainly
a clothes pin.
But you can see under
the camera there Mm.
The head of that is really ornate.
Yes, it's for holding
your clothing together.
Before buttons were invented.
And then you've got strap ends,
yeah? Can I have a look at that one?
That's one of my favourite finds.
It's like a little dragon set.
You can just see where the strap
would have fitted. That's amazing.
Oh, yeah. Yeah?
The Anglo-Saxons did love hiding
little animals and faces and things.
That's it, yeah. And next is one
of my favourite finds,
which my students gave
the name of the Berkeley Gnome,
and if you put it under the camera,
you can see it's a little face.
It does look like a gnome. Yeah.
So, imagine the cross guard
on a dagger. Yeah.
On either end of it, you've got
one of those little terminals.
Right. Yeah.
Then we've got an arrow head.
Yeah, that's almost
certainly 15th century, I think.
You can imagine being shot from
the castle walls from one of those.
Mm. So, you've got find specialists
looking at all of these,
poring over them, trying to work
out what they all are.
That's it, exactly. So, we've got
15 years of research findings,
trying to work out exactly what they all
are. Yeah. You know, for our final report.
And then it brings us right up
to our 1980s builder's Casio watch,
gardener's Casio watch. A very
precious archaeological item, that.
Well, we do total collections,
so our students pick up
everything they find.
So if it's in the trench
and it's buried, it's a find. Yeah.
It was in the ground. It was in the ground
and somebody lost their digital watch
and one of my students found it.
Very beautiful thing, Stuart!
Well, you know, in 200 years' time,
when they've never seen
one before, and they're
mystified as to what it was, yeah?
They'll be able to get it out of the
collection at Berkeley Castle. Absolutely.
It can be very difficult
to come up with
names for groups of people
in prehistory.
We have absolutely no idea
what they called themselves.
Often, we look at their culture,
at the objects they made,
and use that as a label for them.
On our next dig, we're joining MoD
archaeologist Richard Osgood
and his team of ex-military
personnel in Wiltshire
and they're excavating a Bronze Age
burial mound of a type that is
linked to the mysterious
Beaker people.
This burial mound lies just
five miles from Stonehenge,
on Salisbury Plain,
and is known as Barrow Clump.
We're now at the site of the
last of the protected burial
mounds in this part
of Salisbury Plain.
What I'm hoping to find in this
trench is anything that is
put into it that will
relate to the early Bronze Age.
This site never fails to deliver.
Each year, there's been one really
incredible story that's emerged.
I'm really optimistic that we
might in this instance be
privileged enough to
see a Beaker grave.
This type of burial mound is
typical of the early Bronze Age,
around 2000 BC.
This is the time when the last
stones of nearby Stonehenge
were set in place.
Although there's still so much
about Stonehenge that mystifies us
to this day, we know it was
built in stages, from the Neolithic
through to the early Bronze Age,
the time of the Beaker people.
The Beaker people, it's a name
that's been given
because the burials
are of a particular type.
They are usually accompanied with
a pot, the eponymous beaker.
It's a little drinking vessel that's
found in the grave with them,
sometimes with other grave
goods as well.
Most of our knowledge of these
Bronze Age people
comes from their graves, which often
contain these distinctive beakers.
Particular styles of vessels
help with dating
and show how traditions spread.
The earliest known bell-shaped
beaker pottery
comes from Portugal and Spain,
but then the style spreads north.
Within 100 years,
these beakers appear in Britain.
Two beaker burials have previously
been found at Barrow Clump,
but Richard thinks there
may be more.
And it's not long before the team
starts to uncover human remains.
Well, the jumble of bones is
a jumble of bones, but it appears
quite likely that this jumble
of bones is a secondary feature.
Beaker burials are typically found
under the centre of a mound,
often surrounded by a large
ring ditch.
This would have been dug
out by hand,
using tools such as antler picks
and cow shoulder blade shovels,
tools often found
left behind in the ditches.
Some mounds would be
re-used for secondary burials.
These bones are most likely to
be from a later time,
not a Beaker burial,
as they're so shallow.
That's the trouble with it, because,
ordinarily,
if you're just dealing
with a single skeleton,
or even a couple of skeletons,
you know what's attached to what.
So you know what you're going to
expect when you're cleaning them up.
With this being a total jumble,
you've just got to be very
careful because you don't know
exactly what you're going to find.
As they dig deeper into the mound,
the team find a barbed
and tanged flint,
typical of the Bronze Age.
It's a roughout for an arrowhead,
so it's not complete, somebody's
started work on it, and they decided
not to go any further with it.
It's a really nice find
and it's definitely Bronze Age.
Barrow Clump is officially
protected as a scheduled monument.
Despite this, it's also today
part of an agricultural landscape
and an area of intensive
military training.
There's loads of things that
could threaten
archaeology on a military training
area. A tank is 60 tonnes.
It's a really, really heavy thing.
That driving over a burial mound
could potentially do
a lot of damage, so what we're
looking at here is just
evaluating precisely how damaging
those entities are.
Measures have been
put in place to remind
the Army of the important
heritage here,
but there are some local residents
who are harder to control.
We put signs up just to make it
extra clear, big spade,
sign saying "no digging".
What it doesn't do is tell
badgers how to read.
The really big problems
are burrowing animals
and over the years, we've been
finding a lot of archaeology
that's been brought
out from the badger setts.
Meanwhile, the team has
worked their way down to what
they believe is
the centre of the burial mound.
They've just come across a set
of human remains.
I can see from here the femur
and the pelvis of an individual.
Bones looking in really good
condition.
So we're really excited because
you've got what we've been looking
for for the whole three weeks
in one small hole in this burrow.
Archaeologist Dorothy Griffiths
was first to find the bones.
Truth be told, I was about to give
up because we kept seeing
so much flint and so many rocks.
I have had a chance to make
a snapshot to send and boast to
my friends back in America and those
in Jamaica, so I'll be excited.
Having not done archaeology for over
17 years,
I am, as I said, overjoyed.
As the rest of the remains
are revealed,
the team are confident that this
is a Beaker burial,
but they have yet to find
an actual beaker.
The real hope is that there's going
to be a beaker at one end.
That would be the real
triumph of this dig.
Now the dig has finished, the finds,
including the bones,
have been carefully packaged up
and taken off site
and our roving archaeologist,
Naoise Mac Sweeney, has been
along to the labs at
Wessex Archaeology to find out more.
At the Wessex post-excavation, I'm
hoping project manager Phil Andrews
has been able to establish whether
it was a Beaker burial they found.
Is this beaker from the burial?
This unfortunately isn't.
This was found probably about a
couple of hundred metres away,
but the burial we had
didn't have a vessel.
In fact, it didn't have any
grave goods with it.
And do we need to have a beaker
for it to be a Beaker period burial?
We don't, but we know from other
evidence, particularly
the size of the graves, which are
very substantial chambered graves,
with timber linings,
evidence of timber lining, that they
are of that period.
We're very certain that it
is a Beaker burial,
and we will confirm this through
radiocarbon dating in due course.
I'm curious to know what
Phil has found
out about the impact of the military
presence at Barrow Clump.
We're investigating the site,
we've been looking at the impact of
military vehicles passing
over some of the remains
and this is a classic example
of the weight of vehicles has just
crushed what may have once been
a complete vessel.
Overall, the damage being
caused by vehicles is very slight,
certainly the damage from badgers
is much more significant.
But military vehicles, they're not
causing a significant impact at all,
which is good news. Which is great
news for the archaeology, then.
Badgers are worse than tanks.
Tanks, yeah.
Senior osteoarchaeologist
Kirsten Egging Dinwiddy is examining
the remains for the first time.
So we've got a little
bit of the skull there.
What bit of the skull is that? If I hold it
like that Oh, is it? Not quite, no.
It's actually this bit here. Oh,
wow! OK. Yeah. That's quite chunky.
I mean, if I feel mine,
mine's very small.
Serious cheek bones. Yeah. So, are
we thinking "he"? I'm thinking he.
The size of this individual
and some of the traits
and things on the skull. If we look
at some of the other bones,
the size of the head on the humerus
there, that's quite large,
so I'm pretty happy with
this being a male.
What's exciting
about post-excavation is what it
can reveal - the age, the sex, so
much more about who this person was.
So, that's really nice,
strong muscle attachments there.
Not massively long,
so not necessarily a very, you know,
hugely tall person,
but certainly quite robust.
And, again, these slightly strange
muscle attachments there.
An anchoring point for your muscles
and attachments.
Bigger muscles need bigger
anchoring points. Yeah.
What about the age, then? OK.
So we've got the ends of the bones
are completely fused on.
Not only is it fused, it's started
to get these osteophytes,
these boney growths at the edges,
which is a sign of wear and tear.
It's not just an adult, then. It's an adult
who's then lived longer and seen wear and tear.
Yes, certainly into the 40s,
possibly up to mid-50s.
So, does Kirsten think
the environment at Barrow Clump
is causing any damage
to these bones?
You can see that's quite eroded.
You've lost most of
the surface there.
What would have done that? Could be
water flowing through the grave.
There are many, many things that
affect the burial environment.
Even putting fertiliser on the soil,
that can leach in and change
the chemical make-up of the soil
and the burial environment,
which may adversely affect the bone.
Meeting Phil and Kirsten today
has given me a real insight
into the research that is being done
into the preservation on this site.
And it seems as
though their findings are positive.
Military vehicles, tanks,
rolling over these graves,
actually it's been really good to
see that's not so much of a problem.
That actually, it's funny, it's
the badgers, it's the soil chemistry
and those more natural things,
so that's quite good to know.
Our next dig takes us to the
coast of South Wales,
where strange things are afoot -
quite literally, in this case.
Around 20 miles west of Cardiff,
along the coast, near the
village of Monknash, there's a cliff
proving to be a cause for concern.
After public reaction to what
appeared to be human bones sticking
out of the cliff face, the police
were called in to investigate.
The bones were identified as
archaeological remains and Professor
Jacqui Mulville from Cardiff
University was drafted in to help.
In this case, this is what
we call rescue archaeology.
We get reports from the public
and obviously, people are slightly
concerned at the idea you can see
bits of legs eroding out.
Previously rescued bones
from this site have been
dated to the 15th century,
during the early Tudor period.
On this occasion,
there's been a report of a skeleton
in urgent need of attention.
It sits right next to the
coastal footpath,
a popular walk for
the general public.
A bit of human bone here.
This sort of flat section here
and there's a human bone here,
which you can't
It's very hard to see.
As the excavation progresses,
it's clear the lower
part of the skeleton is missing.
Half the pelvis has gone,
so we don't actually have it with
us today, and the bit we've got
left, probably,
isn't as diagnostic as it should be.
With storm swells from the Atlantic
often battering the coastline,
the cliff face is eroding backwards.
Coastal officer Paul Huckfield works
closely with the police
and Cardiff University.
He's very familiar with
this stretch of coast.
Across the top of the cliff,
as you can see now, we've got one,
two, three, maybe four grave cuts,
with human remains
eroding out of it.
Over time, as the cliffs have
eroded more and more,
burials have just been exposed
by natural erosion of the cliff
face, as it moves backwards.
The team know that the cliff
is full of bones
and eventually plan to excavate
the other visible remains,
but, for the moment, their focus has
to be on the ones they can reach.
Jacqui hopes these will divulge
more of the wider story.
We'll be able to work out more
accurately who they were,
what age they were, what sex
they were, and bits about their life
histories and by reuniting them and
then reinterring them, we're
actually treating them, I suppose,
in a much better way than them
sort of falling piecemeal
out of the cliff.
As the team dig on,
there's an unanticipated twist.
So far,
we have the elbow joint right here,
the humerus pointing that way,
which is the opposite way to what
we'd expect it,
given that the legs are down there.
And then you have the ulna,
so that's the lower arm,
coming this way,
so we think maybe something
The hand's behind the head.
So, we're all a bit perplexed.
Jacqui's unsure why the body is
contorted in the way it is.
The burial has thrown up
a few surprises.
What we appear to have here is
somebody who's been
buried in a slightly
sort of haphazard manner
and this suggests that possibly
they were buried in a hurry,
or by somebody who didn't
actually care.
It could be that they're actually
compressed in a grave that's
too small because the person didn't
have time, or perhaps didn't want to
make the investment to make a grave
that was the right size for them.
So it is unusual.
The coastal location and unorthodox
positioning of the bodies has
given rise to a number of theories,
as to who these people might be.
One theory suggests they could have
been victims of shipwrecks
and local legends tell of wreckers.
These people would put
lights around the necks of sheep,
walking them along the clifftop,
to lure ships onto the rocks.
For centuries, wrecking ships to
loot cargo was a very profitable activity.
Over the course of the day,
the archaeologists begin to reveal
the rest of the skeleton.
We're making really good progress,
we can now see most of the head,
we've got the mandible exposed.
We can also see sort of the ribs,
the pelvis and the lower back, so we
can see we've got the full
torso of an individual who's
sort of slightly twisted.
Just before the bones are lifted
for further examination,
the team gather some final evidence.
By taking a number of images,
we can stitch them together,
using a photographic programme,
and then that will allow us
to actually have accurate record
of the articulation of the bones
when we get back to the lab.
These burials seem to be
part of an unknown graveyard,
or at least there are no marked
graves up on the top of the cliff.
No, so there's no marked graves,
but people have been
found for decades, really. OK.
Since the 1980s,
and some of the graves are aligned.
There's even some graves which have
sort of disarticulated human
remains and are a little bit
further back from the cliff.
So we're kind of like, who are they?
Why are they there?
And you've got a lovely 3-D
photogrammetry of the skeleton
as you were excavating it. Yeah.
What you've got is somebody whose
arms appear to be above their head. Yeah.
And then their head is turned
sort of to one side,
so the other burials that have been
found further along the cliff,
they're all interred with their
hands sort of down their sides.
So this is an anomaly.
Right. OK.
And then we're missing the entire
bottom half of this individual.
Presumably, that has just
eroded out of the cliff.
Well, we know it was there
because a member of the public
sent in a photo and you could see
sort of the bottom of the legs.
Yeah. Ethically, you kind of want to
reassemble them. Yeah, you do.
So you think this is a young
individual, isn't it? Yeah.
The top of the humerus here,
the epiphysis is completely unfused.
So that was still growing.
And then if I look at the teeth,
first molar's through,
that comes through on average
age six.
Second molar come through,
around 12.
And I can see down in there,
the wisdom teeth still
nestled in their crypts.
So you are probably looking
at somebody who is a young teenager.
Yeah, but around that time,
young teenagers,
you could be treated as an adult,
really. Yeah.
You would have been in employment
around that time.
Yeah, it is tricky, isn't it?
Because with young men, or boys,
they haven't developed
the kind of robusticity
of the skull that we see later on,
but that is quite
a squared-off chin,
but this is quite a feminine face.
Yes. Sort of smooth.
With the forehead
coming down to the nose there.
We think it's a teenage boy,
who's been inserted rather
strangely in a grave.
He's at a different level
to all of the others.
Yeah. The others are all male. Yeah.
So, who are they?
And why are they all male?
So, there's obviously some fantastic
stories about smugglers
and pirates and things and, in fact,
there's a fantastic story that
the pub, which is
actually now built of part of the
sort of monastic range,
used to be a mortuary for
shipwrecked sailors. Really? Yes.
And we know there were
shipwrecks around that point.
Whether they were
caused by the wreckers,
or whether they were just natural
shipwrecks, we don't know.
I mean, there's quite a lot of,
I suppose,
accounts of shipwrecked people not
being buried in consecrated
ground, but actually being buried
quite close to the edge of the
Close to where they're found, by the sea. It's
tricky cos it's all kind of circumstantial
evidence at the moment, isn't it?
It is.
We know there were shipwrecks there.
We've got this intriguing story
about the pub being a mortuary.
Yeah. So, what about further
analyses on this skeleton?
What are you going to try? So, we're going
to try and find out sort of where they lived
and sort of what they ate, really.
Essentially,
the more sort of analyses you do,
the more sort of a complex picture
you build up of somebody's life.
Yeah. So you don't know.
I mean, Britain's an island
full of rich archaeology.
We will continue to find more
and more coastal archaeology
because of climate change,
storminess,
and all of those things,
so it's important that we
have good mechanisms
and we get the public onside
actually, cos, you know,
I always think there's these sort of lost
souls. We should be bringing them back together.
And if anyone does know
where his legs are, bring them
to Cardiff University.
Please bring them back. Yeah.
It's been a fantastic year of
exploration in the west of Britain.
From the discovery of Anglo-Saxon
treasure, to hunting for a lost
abbey and digging to the depths
of a Bronze Age burial mound.
We've shown there's still
so much to discover to
further our knowledge
and shed light on our past.
Join us next time,
as we continue Digging For Britain.