Digging for Britain (2010) s08e03 Episode Script
South
1
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?"
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 archaeologists
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're exploring
the south of Britain,
where archaeologists have been
making incredible discoveries,
both above and below the waves.
From a Stone Age settlement
found off the Dorset coast
Incredible site. You know,
nothing like it in the country.
to an Elizabethan theatre
in the heart of London
It must have been
such a raucous place -
it's kind of 16th-century
EastEnders.
and a mysterious Iron Age burial
near Dorchester.
I've been working in Dorset
for over 40 years
and I've never come across
anything like this.
Welcome to Digging For Britain.
After the invasion of Britain in
43 AD by the Roman Emperor Claudius,
it was here in the south
that the first forts
and settlements grew up.
Archaeologists in East Sussex
are out investigating
one of these early settlements.
But, with no Roman records
of this place,
its name and its purpose
have been lost in time.
The excavation is located around
ten miles north-east of Brighton
in the village of Barcombe.
The site was first discovered
in 2011 by chance.
Archaeologist Rob Wallis was
excavating part of a Roman road
when a wider geophysical survey
revealed a possible settlement.
This survey is magnetometry,
so it picks up the magnetic
variations in the Earth -
especially in the Roman period
and other periods, you tend to get
a lot of charcoal and burnt material,
which is very magnetic.
So these will show up ditches,
linear features
So the geophysics
we use is an indication
that there's something there,
rather than actually telling us
what it is there.
Artefacts already uncovered
suggest this settlement was
already in existence by 70 AD,
just 27 years
after the Roman invasion.
With no historical records to help
us here, Rob is trying to work out
the role this settlement
might have played
in the wider context
of Roman Britannia.
He looks first for clues
in its layout and location.
Original settlement
round about 70 AD is round here,
and it's a
small four-grid system.
The Roman road,
which goes to London,
comes up through here.
We have the Greensand Way,
which is the east-west route,
which goes to Hardham
and then Chichester,
and we have a road
going eastwards to Arlington
and then on to Pevensey.
As well as the roads
heading off in all directions,
the settlement is also
very close to a waterway.
The River Ouse is a tidal river.
It was probably a lot wider
and shallower in the Roman period.
The Romans would have used
flat-bottomed boats anyway,
and it's an easy way
to move mass bulk.
So possibly grains
and things like that -
iron ore that's coming out
from the Weald.
While the Romans are famous
for their road building
waterways were just as important.
They used seagoing merchant
ships to transport goods
in and out of the country,
and river barges for transporting
goods within it.
So you can move stuff in mass.
They can move round the rivers,
rather than on carts,
which is more costly
and time-consuming.
So basically, we have north,
south, east and west covered
from this location.
This is a key revelation.
The site was well connected
by roads and river
to other Roman settlements
in the region.
The team also discover that the site
itself is surrounded by a ditch.
If we look out here,
you'll see that hedgerow,
which goes all the way up
to that corner.
It's then coming all the way up,
three-quarters of the way
up to there.
That hedgerow is this -
the inner enclosure ditch.
It then comes back across the site.
It levels up with the oak tree and
comes down to form this around it.
The ditch suggests
a certain level of fortification.
It meant that you could only get
in through approved entry points.
The ditch was a way of controlling
who and what
came in and out of the site.
Further clues to the role
of this settlement
come in the huge variety of
artefacts that are being unearthed,
including over 300 coins.
So here we have
a Septimius Severus coin,
round about 198 to 200 AD,
which is silver,
from this year's excavation.
Yeah, so it's quite a collection.
They date from early-Roman,
right the way through to 435 AD.
Along with the coins,
evidence is also building
of a site rich in material goods
coming from all over Britain.
This is a mortaria bowl. This is a
white ware, possibly from Oxford.
And they normally had a grit
inclusion in the actual base.
And these are used for mixing,
so they'd have maybe greens
and stuff like that, with olive oil.
There are also goods
coming in from further afield.
So here you have a lion
attacking another animal.
You've got different
gladiatorial scenes throughout.
This is a great example
of the classic Red Roman pottery,
known as Samian Ware.
It's got a maker's stamp on it.
It's been manufactured in Gaul,
which is France - modern-day
France, in the Roman period.
They're even finding
pieces of Roman glass.
You can see some inclusions in it.
If you look up to the light,
there's some bubbles.
This would have been the neck,
and possibly
comes out to a square bottle.
There's no evidence for glass-making
from scratch in Roman Britain.
So, once again, this is evidence
of luxury goods being imported
from across the Roman world.
Caught on their dig diary camera,
the site is continuing to yield
a constant flow of intriguing
artefacts.
Sticking my neck out on this one,
but it could be the
There you go! Oh! Look at that!
Maybe that is that!
Like it grew there. Wow!
Like it grew there, look.
This year, the team are also finding
evidence of manufacturing processes
taking place
within the settlement itself.
We've got a part of a kiln
here in situ,
and that is the base of it,
which would've went across and up
to where the white chalk is.
This kiln could have been used
to make tiles
and pottery for the town,
or potentially for export.
The finds are helping
to paint a picture
of this forgotten Roman settlement.
The archaeologists have unearthed
artefacts that have arrived here
from across the Roman world,
as well as large numbers of coins.
And then there are those
road and river access routes.
Rob is considering the possibility
that this could have been
an important trading hub,
and possibly even a centre
for Roman administration.
The finds indicate
that it's an official site.
It's under the Roman
government's control.
So people will be here
collecting taxes,
or, if goods are coming in,
looking at what's coming in
and what's going out,
and see if there's any taxes
to pay on that.
With each season, they're
discovering that this trading settlement
is far larger
than previously thought.
Rob and his team plan to keep coming
back for many years to come.
You never know
what you're going to find
from one day to the next.
You can be, you know,
a small bit of pot, or a coin,
or a brooch, or, you know,
something more personal.
It's Yeah,
it's an amazing feeling.
Leaving the Roman era,
we now peer further back
into British prehistory.
Our next dig sees archaeologists
donning scuba gear
and plunging into the
chilly waters of the Solent
to investigate an extremely ancient
Stone Age settlement.
Just off the coast of the Isle of
Wight lies one of the UK's
most unusual archaeological sites.
Today, a team from the
Maritime Archaeology Trust,
led by Garry Momber,
are planning to survey the site,
and they hope to raise
what is thought to be
an 8,000-year-old timber structure
for further analysis.
Pretty good,
the first dive of the day.
Visibility is a few metres. Tide is
dropping off, running quite fast,
but it's just incredible, seeing
these lovely layers of wood.
8,000 years old, the first time
it's being uncovered.
OK. We're ready!
And go.
Lying just 11 metres
beneath the waves
are worked timbers that date back to
the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.
The Mesolithic was a time
before farming,
when the people living in Britain
were still nomadic hunter-gatherers.
What I love is really getting
on the site and uncovering -
it's just finding things
for the first time in 8,000 years
and then knowing that that's
going to tell us so much
about those people.
This site was discovered
over 20 years ago
by an unusual sort of
archaeologist - a lobster.
He saw this lobster kicking out
these flints from a hole,
and thought,
"Oh, that's really nice."
He picked up little bits of flint
and brought them to the surface
and said, "Look, worked flints
on the seabed".
And that was how we found it.
Well-preserved Mesolithic
sites are incredibly rare.
Archaeologists often just find
scatters of worked flint,
like the ones the lobster
discovered.
But, when these
archaeologists excavated
around the lobster's burrow, they
started to find ancient timbers.
There's lots of wood -
there's structures been built.
There's posts, there are
these sort of series of platforms
put in place - it seems to be
a living spot.
But these ancient structures
are under threat.
For 8,000 years,
the wood has been preserved
under a blanket of silt and mud.
Now, changing currents are causing
extensive erosion along this stretch
of coastline, exposing the timbers
and leaving the wood open to attack.
As you get these
wood-boring organisms,
you get gribble move into it,
dig lots of holes,
and we see it in the sample,
so everything's sort of
compromised and undermined.
Underwater, the divers are
completing a survey of the site.
It can be a very difficult
work environment.
The harder the current is running,
the harder it is for you to work
because you're operating
in three dimensions.
It's not just on a flat surface -
you're up and down as well.
So it adds challenge to the diving,
which is the whole point
of doing this, really.
The ancient timbers
are photographed,
and each piece logged and tagged.
The divers then start
to bring them to the surface.
This is the sort of material
that we've got on the seabed.
What they've done is, they've got
bits of timber and they've sliced it
so it's flat on one side, and on the
other side, it's sort of bark.
Another one there.
And they've sort of overlaid them
to form a sort of layered platform
on the seabed.
The specific purpose of these
timber platforms is still unknown.
But Garry has a working hypothesis.
We know it was wet round here,
boggy, so they would have been
You know, it would have been a nice
platform to stand on and walk on,
a dry area for whatever
activity they might have been doing.
These Mesolithic people
seem to have constructed
something quite permanent.
This is clearly much more
than just a temporary camp.
It challenges our ideas about
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
as nomads always on the move.
These things are very rare
because this was
a hunter-gatherer society
that was known
to move around the place.
But here we've got what looks
more like a settlement,
looks more like there's been
a lot of time invested
in this particular site.
It would've been a special
place to live at the time.
It would've been a nice
little sheltered valley.
You're very near sources of flints,
just in the chalk cliffs.
You would've had wild fowl,
you'd have had vegetation -
a place that you could
probably live all year round.
Over the course of the day,
the divers have been steadily
bringing up the whole Mesolithic
platform, piece by piece.
Coming up from the last dive,
Garry brings up the final parts.
Yeah, it's good.
That's the last big piece on top.
They will come up in smaller pieces,
but this was a big plank
sitting on top.
Degraded, but it's just one hefty
piece of timber.
You know, there's a whole landscape
down there that we really want
It's just not enough.
We need more time.
Incredible site. You know,
nothing else like it in the country.
All of the artefacts that were
lifted from the seabed are now
in the National Oceanography
Centre in Southampton,
and our roving archaeologist Naoise
Mac Sweeney is visiting their labs.
Excavating an underwater prehistoric
site has its challenges,
but piecing the finds back together
is a whole new headache.
So, Garry, what are we doing today?
Well, these boxes contain
all the artefacts,
all the parts of the platform
that we lifted.
They've been in cold storage.
We're going to get them out now
and we're going to reconstruct them
for the first time.
Oh, it's cold! That water's cold!
So, we keep them cold and dark
and in fresh water
to minimise the degradation
and to keep them stable
for as long as possible.
We've got to spend time
analysing it and recording it.
It's only when we've done that
we can extract the information
that will tell us about these
people, of which we know so little.
They're still really delicate, I guess we
have to handle them with a lot of care?
A lot of it's been eaten away
by these marine boring organisms.
They drill down into it.
See the grain of a worm
that's gone through? Hmm.
Its tracks through here.
The platform is quite
a complex structure,
made up of several layers of
what once was interlocking wood.
We don't have any other blueprints
of Mesolithic platforms.
This is This is the first one.
The structure is one thing.
It is also,
how are they doing it?
And how are they converting trees
into different sorts of planks?
What tools are they using?
So all those sort of questions
will come out of this. Mm.
Each piece was given
a unique number underwater,
which we should now be able to match
up against the team's photographs.
It's quite a challenge to rebuild.
So, this is piece 51.
Which is this one here
That one.
Turn it round the other way. Right.
This one looks like it's 022.
Or 25? Possibly. 20 smudge
Oh, that's a big bit. Another one.
There's a big bit.
It's a puzzle, and I'm puzzled
because it's not just there,
it's different layers.
Bits go underneath, over each other,
they kind of interweave.
It's the whole kind of interlocking,
interlacing puzzle-tastic platform.
In trying to
put the platform back together,
it's apparent to me that this was
a well-thought-out and complicated
piece of engineering, with
multiple layers, all carefully
cut and fitted together.
This is a pre-settlement phase,
and yet you wouldn't expect
it from Mesolithic people,
from hunter-gatherers.
It's just incredible to see it.
No.
You thought they just ran around,
broke twigs off,
built lean-tos, and
killed the odd animal. Yeah!
But here they were building
these complicated structures.
Proper carpentry.
Yeah, and very complicated. Mm.
As we're finding out.
Despite what seemed to be
an insurmountable challenge,
we managed to piece back together
the 8,000-year-old
Mesolithic wooden platform.
That's it there.
Beautiful. Da-da! There it is.
Is this the first time
it's all been together,
reassembled since it came out
of the sea? Yes, this is it.
This is the most complete
section we have.
It's a Well, to me,
it's really impressive.
It may look like
just loads of bits of wood,
but really, I mean, this was made
by someone 8,000 years ago,
laid out for a purpose we don't
know because we know very little
about these people.
This is just one part
of a massive set of platforms
still lying underwater.
We can then start looking at some
of the detail on some of the timbers
and how they relate to each other.
We can try and use that to help sort
of interpret the building method.
The platform is a unique find
that has advanced our understanding
of our nomadic Mesolithic ancestors,
clearly showing that they built
permanent structures.
The intricacy of this whole
platform, this whole structure,
has actually been really surprising.
The process of putting it back
together has helped me to understand
the process of how
it must have been made,
and it was so carefully,
beautifully made,
it's absolutely jaw-dropping.
Our next dig
takes us to southern Dorset,
and the chance discovery
of an extremely rare
early Iron Age burial.
The dig is taking place
in a private cottage garden
eight miles from Dorchester.
In 2013, builders were
installing a new sewage pipe
for a medieval cottage
owned by the National Trust.
Work came to a halt
when they stumbled across
some human bones.
Archaeologist Dr Martin Papworth
was called in to investigate.
To find a JCB bucket full of bones
is an extraordinary thing.
Obviously. It doesn't happen
every day, does it?!
And But it just raises
lots of questions, doesn't it?
I mean, how old are the bones?
Is it one person?
Is it several people?
Why are they there?
A bone sample sent for radiocarbon
testing indicated
the burial dated from around 800 BC,
the very early Iron Age.
In the Iron Age,
people were farming the land,
living in roundhouses,
building hill forts, and starting
to use a new metal - iron -
for tools and weapons.
It's rare to find burials
from this period.
People may have been cremating
the dead and scattering burned bone,
or leaving bodies
out in the open to decompose.
It's taken Martin
several years to raise the funds
to excavate the site, and now
he's back with a team of volunteers.
He wants to investigate
how the bodies were buried
in order to understand the funeral
practices of these Iron Age people.
Already they're finding that the
graves were carefully constructed.
They've dug a pit,
they've laid the burials,
or the bones in the pit,
and then they've placed the stones
over it and buried it,
so the stones are the capping
to the funeral remains.
Over the next few days,
the stones are removed,
and the full scale of the burials
is revealed.
Martin has uncovered
three skeletons.
Their size suggests
they could have been quite young.
So you have one skull there,
another crushed skull here,
and on the other
side of the pipe trench,
you've got another crushed
skull here.
Each one had a large stone above it.
Over the years, as the flesh
has rotted from these bodies
the skulls have impacted and
collapsed under the weight of the stones.
The archaeologists are finding
something strange
about the way the bodies
were buried.
There's the skull,
there's the teeth,
there's the backbone,
there's the shoulder,
humerus running down through here,
a series of ribs.
But the whole thing
has been caved back in
and folded very, very sharply.
And these are the two legs
above the head,
with the toes of each foot
one above the other.
So, to get it in
that sort of position,
you'd have to tie the body up
before you put it in the hole,
because it's very hard
to squeeze somebody in
that kind of tight angle.
It appears the bodies
may have been buried
in a tightly crouched position.
While crouched burials like this
have been found at Iron Age sites
in Wales and Cornwall,
for Martin, this is a first.
I've been working in Dorset
for over 40 years now,
and I've never come across anything
like this, or heard about it.
We know that there are rituals
where young people are put into the
ground as part of a religion,
but these people
could have been dead
some time before they were
put in the ground,
so that they could be
trussed up in these positions,
and it could have been
a caring thing to do.
It may be loving families,
placing people in graves
in the way they always do.
Or it may be something
more sinister,
maybe something more brutal.
All we can do is speculate.
With no grave goods
accompanying the burials,
the archaeologists are left
with many unanswered questions.
But they're also left
feeling a deep connection
with these ancestors.
You get a sense of,
these are people,
and when you spend a day
cleaning bones,
you do feel rather sort of closer,
and you wonder about them
and how they interacted
with this beautiful place.
That they lived here, too,
though 2,800 years ago.
With the dig drawing to a close,
Martin and the team decide to leave
the skeletons in their graves,
just taking small bone samples
for DNA analysis.
We never came here
to take the bodies away
from their resting place.
We just came to take small samples
to enable us, the scientists,
to talk about the origins
of these people,
so they will remain here in the
ground where we found them.
The local people who live
in the village
have taken this place to heart
and they will look after them
in the future.
I'm intrigued to find out more
about these curious graves.
We don't have many burials
from the early Iron Age.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
It's a very blank sort of period.
But this will be fascinating
because if there's good
preservation of DNA,
then you could sample
the whole genome.
I notice the arm bone there,
and the top of that humerus
looks as though it's separate.
Is that real? It is, that's right.
Yes. So that's a separate epiphysis.
Yes.
Which means that bone
is still growing. Yes.
So this is a juvenile.
This is not an adult. That's right.
No. They're all young.
Are they? They're all teenagers.
Yes. We'd like to know
why these three are together.
So, are they related in any way?
Are they brother and sister?
You know, with DNA,
we should be able to
at least start
to answer these questions.
It hasn't been possible
to answer them before.
Were there any signs
of cause of death at all?
No. No, that wasn't seen.
So it's quite a strange burial.
They bound them
when they buried them,
trussed up tightly as possible,
legs and arms like this,
perhaps wrapping them in something
and then ironing it tight,
and bringing the legs
back up like that.
Looking at burial practices like
this, it seems very odd to us today,
but then, of course, this might
be just perfectly normal
burial practice - a respectful
way to treat the dead.
It's a sort of
window into a piece of the past
that we just don't understand
Yes which makes it fascinating.
Mudlarking is a practice
which has been popular in London
since at least the 18th century.
People scoured the banks
of the Thames,
looking for valuable trinkets,
or cargo that had fallen off
passing ships.
But archaeologists sometimes indulge
in a spot of mudlarking as well.
Our next excavation focuses
on a huge artefact,
24 metres long -
a submarine chaser
from the First World War.
The dig takes place on the banks
of the River Thames in Isleworth,
on the outskirts of West London.
A team from the Thames Discovery
Programme are investigating
a sorry-looking watercraft,
left to rot in thick mud
behind a boat yard.
But this wreck has a story to tell.
It's the last known example
of a First World War watercraft,
known as a motor launch.
As far as we know, there are no
plans in existence for these things.
So the only way
we can find out how these things
were actually built is by
digging holes in the mud
and trying to record it.
During the First World War,
motor launches
were part of the Royal Navy's
answer to the looming threat
of German submarine ambush.
On May 7th 1915,
the Lusitania was torpedoed
with nearly 2,000 passengers
on board.
The ocean liner was ripped in two,
and sank in just 18 seconds.
Over 1,000 people died
in the attack.
The Navy swiftly placed an order
of motor launches
with the Electric Launch Company,
based in America.
These fast little boats were armed
with depth charges, machine guns
and a cannon, and would be
sent out to patrol
alongside British shipping.
They managed to knock out
550 of these in 488 days
and, because the US
was neutral at the time,
they had to be part-assembled
in New York,
put on railway wagons, taken up
to Canada for full assembly,
and were then shipped across the
Atlantic to serve in the North Sea,
the Mediterranean,
and all round the European coast.
This specific craft
was called ML286.
Post-war, she was retired
from the military
and converted into a houseboat.
At some point, she was brought here
to the boat yard to be patched up.
But sadly, the repairs
proved too expensive,
so she was abandoned
and has been here ever since.
We've been here for seven days,
slowly trying to excavate out
the middle of her,
and try and learn some of the
construction details of the vessel.
Each day, the team don't
have much time on site.
They must gather as much information
as possible about this important
little vessel before the tide turns.
They take measurements
and photographs,
and make drawings
to create a detailed plan.
But, knee-deep in thick mud,
this is a far harder task
than the average dig.
But I think probably
the most challenging aspect of it
is it's by far the muddiest site
we have, which can be fun.
Everything gets covered in mud, but
you've just got to embrace it.
There's no point in trying
to not get dirty on this site.
Oh! It kept my feet!
Are you all right?
I've just filled my whole boot
with water. Oh, no!
When the order for the
motor launches was placed,
it was a challenge
to deliver the fleet
in such a short space of time.
With foundries struggling
to keep up with demand,
even jeweller Tiffany's
stepped in to supply brass.
But, despite the rich benefactors,
the team are surprised
at the construction.
These upper ribs,
these are actually made of,
sort of, really cheap plywood -
they're actually held together
by bits of ply. Um
Which no-one knew.
We knew they were cheap,
but we didn't know quite how cheap.
We're finding that out now.
After her duties in World War I,
this plucky vessel also served
in the Second World War,
rescuing British soldiers as one
of the little ships of Dunkirk.
She was then retired and repurposed
to be used as a houseboat
on the Thames.
Just trying to piece together,
or tease out
the different bits,
from the original,
to what was done when she
was turned into a houseboat.
People had the time to take,
and the money to spend,
and so you start getting
some of the original
very cheap soft wood fittings
replaced by this, which is hardwood.
Elsewhere in the hull, the team
are uncovering further features.
See, our porthole Oh!
That's so exciting!
It's the capstan. It would have
been on the bow of the ship
for letting go of the anchor
and then winding it up again.
With the dig completely
dictated by the tides,
Eliott must run a tight ship, and
keep a close eye on the river.
It comes in very quickly.
When you're downstream,
you've got plenty of warning.
Here upstream,
you've got no indication.
It's running out, it's running out,
and suddenly it's going the other
way and it's coming in quickly,
so we've got to get out the mud
and across the river,
or else we're camping here tonight.
The team now hope to use
their photographs and drawings
of this last remaining motor launch
to create a detailed record
of the structure of this
historically important craft.
Our next dig is back in Dorset,
where archaeologists
are investigating a Roman site.
It was first dug
in the late 1700s,
when stunning mosaics were found,
but we know that they were dug up.
We also know that very little
attention was paid
to what this building actually was.
So, many questions remain.
The excavation is located just
outside the village of Frampton,
next to the River Frome.
Archaeologist Dr Miles Russell,
and his team from
Bournemouth University,
are investigating the site.
They want to find out
about the people who lived here
and, if possible, some clues
about the relationship
between these Romans
and the wider local population.
It's a Roman building
that's been known for some time,
but it's one of a number of
extremely late-Roman luxury
buildings that are occurring in
Dorset in the 4th century AD.
This is a late Roman site,
dating to some 300 years
after the invasion.
Up until this point, Roman activity
in Dorset is fairly low-key.
There's no real villas until
we get to the 4th century,
and suddenly they're everywhere.
So the real question is,
what is happening - why does
it take 250 to 300 years,
and then there's a sudden
explosion of wealth?
These are starting
to dominate the countryside.
It seems odd that the Romans
didn't stamp their mark on Dorset
until so late.
Elsewhere in England, Romans
were building lavish villas
and ornate temples.
They brought with them a
Mediterranean style of architecture
with painted plaster walls
and elaborate mosaic floors.
Back at the dig,
Miles starts to uncover
the footprint of the villa.
You see where Harry's working
down here, he's found this wall.
It might be part of these more
extensive rooms coming through.
That block of stone there,
I think might be part
of a step or an entrance structure
going up and into the corridor.
So it's some kind
of formal entrance way here.
And then this is a
slightly destroyed wall.
You can see we're coming
into now, mosaic.
So this is some of the mosaic
that was recorded in the 1790s.
That is very nice.
That is amazing. Lovely, isn't it?
Absolutely incredible.
When the mosaics
were first revealed in 1794,
they were so impressive
that King George III
came to visit.
But they were not preserved in situ,
and seem to have been taken away
as souvenirs.
Despite the fact
the mosaics are mostly gone,
there's still plenty of material
on site that could reveal
more about who was living here
and their status in the community.
It's the rubbish
that we're interested in,
things that tell us about ordinary
lives of people living in this site.
So the sorts of things that were
not saved during the 1790s dig.
This was a large, rectangular
hollow tile
that's built into the walls that
conveys heating from under the floor
and up through the walls themselves,
so this is basically
cavity wall heating.
So to find these tiles
means that we've got
a heated room, pushing us towards
the interpretation this is the
main entertainment space.
So it's more information that just
wasn't recorded in the 1790s.
Captured here
on their dig diary camera,
the team are also
unearthing evidence
that the outside of the villa
was richly decorated.
This carved sandstone finial
would have sat on the apex
of the roof.
Wow.
That is gorgeous.
Dave, I love you.
Everything that we're finding,
from the box tiles,
which suggests underfloor heating,
from the wall plaster and now also
from the pottery and animal bone,
it all fits a domestic context.
It is a wealthy,
high-status building,
up against the River Frome,
in quite an exotic and luxurious
part of the Dorset landscape.
In amongst the rubble,
Miles is also finding
intriguing evidence
of the people that lived here.
One astonishing item
even gives us a glimpse
of their religious beliefs.
This is a coin of the Roman Emperor
Magnentius in about 350 AD.
We've got his face on one side.
And he was very keen to advertise
that he was a Christian emperor.
So on the back of his coin,
we've got the Chi-Rho symbol,
the P and the X.
The key thing about this,
it's been pierced,
so they've worn it
around their neck.
The Roman Emperor Constantine
converted to Christianity in 312 AD.
With his backing,
this religion slowly spread
through the Roman world,
reaching even the distant
province of Britannia.
It's a nice little individual find
that gives us a little insight
to the sorts of religions
that were going on here.
These are a new wealthy elite
that's coming in
from another part of the empire,
and they're building
their luxury houses here,
and they're bringing their exotic
Eastern faith with them,
and it's coins like this
that give us that indicator,
or that sort of personalised aspect
of this new religious belief system.
But this opulent villa
and its Christian-Roman occupants
are only a small part of the story
of Dorset at this time.
At another site
not far from the villa,
Miles is also finding evidence
of the people who lived
in the wider landscape here.
These people belonged to a tribe
called the Durotriges.
The Durotriges were one of a number
of tribes in south-west Britain
at the time of the
Roman invasion and occupation.
The land of the Durotriges seems
to have centred on Dorset,
with parts of southern Wiltshire
and Somerset as well.
But very little is known
about their relationship
with the Roman Empire.
The artefacts Miles has unearthed
give us a glimpse into the lives
of these people.
The Durotriges, the local tribe,
are constantly recycling,
reusing, and making sure
everything has a purpose.
This is actually carved
out of a sheep bone.
You can see it's a comb.
Other things that we get from
native sites around here,
we get lots of spindle whorls.
So these are the weights at the end
of a spindle during weaving process.
We get no real idea of the range
of materials they were wearing.
The only real dress indicators
that we get are often these little
bronze pins, or brooches - this is
much like a modern-day safety pin.
It seems that the Durotriges
lived peacefully
alongside the Roman settlers.
But these artefacts appear
to show the Durotriges
maintained a strong sense
of their own identity.
This is probably a wine vessel,
or possibly an alcohol,
sort of a beer or mead cup.
It's completely unlike anything
the Roman world is producing.
People are using ceramic styles
that aren't linked
to the Roman Empire.
They're using things
that are more native design,
and they're not high
on status symbols.
So, despite some Romans building
lavish villas in Dorset,
Roman culture didn't seem to seep
out into the wider countryside.
As far as we can see, the locals
here, the Durotrige tribe,
didn't embrace Roman culture at all.
They don't seem to be impressed by,
or want to be part
of that Roman system.
They don't seem to want to be Roman.
I've asked Miles to bring in
some of those fascinating finds
for closer analysis.
So, you've got this pattern,
where you've got very different
material culture in the villa,
compared with sites
in the surrounding countryside.
What does this tell us
about the people of Dorset,
and how they engaged with being
part of the Roman Empire?
I don't think they're really
engaging with it at all.
In the east, we can see Roman
villas, we can see Roman culture,
right the way down
to the native settlements,
we've got high-status
Roman pottery, and so on.
There's none of that filtering
down to the natives here in Dorset.
It's fascinating because
it shows us how dangerous it is
to look at a scenario
in one part of our country
and then extrapolate that
across the whole nation.
They are existing within the Roman
world, but for whatever reason,
they're not choosing to be Roman.
So what are these objects?
We've got a range,
which are all native.
We've got combs,
we've got spindle whorls,
there's a whole range
of craft activities.
Are these brooches
not Roman, then? No, they're not.
Is that more of a kind of
native British design? It is, yes
I mean, we see these really
from 80 BC onwards -
we see them going way right
the way through the Roman period,
but it's not something
that is Roman at all.
It was not influenced
by the Roman world whatsoever.
That's fascinating. So you're seeing
a completely different culture. Yes.
The Roman jewellery
is far more decorated,
far more sort of squared, and
really quite chunky status items.
These are quite small in comparison.
And then this little bowl.
I mean, this is this is beautiful,
but this is very much
a British form. Yes.
So that's black-burnished ware.
It's very highly polished.
It's made in southern Dorset,
right the way up until
the 4th century AD.
And again, you've got that
sort of diamond egg-shaped design
around the outside.
And it's got this in-built strainer
on it. It's brilliant.
Yeah, I really like it.
It's beautifully made.
And look at that crazy design
on the base.
These are all individual
unique items.
So they've got their own
personality to them.
These people clearly
thought of themselves
as being the people of Dorset.
Exactly.
There's no real desire to be Roman.
They're paying their tax,
they're living within that system,
but they're not choosing to become
Roman in any shape or form.
They're not adopting that identity.
No.
So even when you've got villas
appearing in the countryside
in Dorset, they seem to be
capsules of Roman culture -
it's not seeping out. No, it's
a little, sort of, cultural bubble.
I think the wealthy are living in
their house with their own estate,
but their culture is not
seeping out to the wider world.
Neither is the native stuff
coming in.
So they are very much excluded.
between these two separate worlds.
It's almost like
a cultural apartheid going on
between these two
different cultures.
We know that the Romans and Greeks
love putting on plays,
but it wasn't until the 16th century
that theatre as we know it
really took off in Britain.
And the focus of the drama
was London,
where raucous comedies and
historical tragedies
were performed in the open air.
For our next dig,
Naoise Mac Sweeney joins a team
from MOLA, Museum of London
Archaeology,
as they excavate
an Elizabethan playhouse.
The dig takes place in Whitechapel,
the bustling heart
of London's East End.
The impending construction
of a new student accommodation block
has opened up an exciting
archaeological possibility.
Records suggest that this was
the location of a long lost open-air
theatre, built in the back garden
of a popular Elizabethan inn,
known as The Boar's Head.
MOLA were commissioned
to investigate.
We're here to see the remains
of The Boar's Head playhouse.
We don't know much about it.
It's not a Shakespearean playhouse,
but we think it was
a thriving theatre.
Records reveal that The Boar's
Head playhouse dates from
the 16th and 17th century,
to the time of Queen Elizabeth I.
Senior archaeologist Heather Knight
is showing me around the site.
Where we're standing now is at the
back of what would have been
The Boar's Head playhouse.
The stage was under
where our machine is now.
The tiring-house would have been
just slightly outside of the site.
What's the tiring-house?
It's like the changing rooms,
where the actors
put on their attire.
And where was the old inn?
The inn itself would have
actually fronted the road,
which is Whitechapel High Street,
so right down the far side of the
site would have been the inn.
Playhouses were at their peak
during the 1600s,
and were sometimes attached to pubs.
The theatre at The Boar's Head
was one of the earliest
known in London.
There are records of performances
taking place in the pub's back yard.
But it wasn't until 1598
that a purpose-built
stage was constructed.
Digging down some three metres
below modern street level,
the team finally arrived
at the site of the pub.
So what we do, we start
taking off the top levels,
using a big machine,
and then slowly as we come down,
we can see from the finds
within those layers,
that we're going back through time,
and then when we get back
to the 18th-century layers,
we then go to hand digging,
and then we work our way down
into the 17th-century levels.
So can you tell me
what we've got here, then?
We're actually standing within the
foundations for a building
that was part of
The Boar's Head playhouse.
So you can stand here,
looking at actors
performing on the stage
in front of you.
This rectangular playhouse
makes this site distinct
from other Elizabethan theatres,
which were more commonly built
as rounded, enclosed structures.
For example, Shakespeare's Globe,
which was built two years
after The Boar's Head playhouse.
I think the spotlight
has been more on Bankside
because of the associations
with Shakespeare.
And I think that's part
of the reason The Boar's Head
might have slipped off
people's radar slightly.
It's been overlooked a little bit.
So, yeah, this is
its chance to shine.
For a small fee
of one or two pennies,
audiences could enjoy
a whole afternoon of entertainment.
The combination
of performance and beer
made for a high-spirited crowd.
Looking at some of the plays
that were performed here
when it was a proper playhouse,
they're kind of city plays,
they would have really appealed
to a city audience,
they're kind of scandalous,
lampooning public figures, you know,
they did push the boundaries
a little bit.
But, as the more puritanical
mid-17th century approached,
there was little tolerance
of drunken crowds
enjoying raucous satire.
At the start of the Civil War
in 1642,
most of London's playhouses
shut down.
With closure on the horizon,
The Boar's Head landowner saw
a development opportunity.
The site was split
into small plots and sold off.
The team have found evidence
of what happened next.
Where we're standing now is after
The Boar's Head has gone out of use
and this end of the site, we're
finding a lot of clay pipe making
OK. And also a lot of pipe clay.
Is this actual pipe clay?
This is actual pipe clay
and it's still really squishy.
So they're using this to make,
what kind of pipes?
Oh, very Tiny! It is tiny.
And by the shape of the bowl,
we know this is the 17th century.
What other things were they making
in this industrial area,
apart from lots and lots of pipe?
We're also finding evidence
for horn working.
So you take the useful part
of an animal horn,
which is that outside coating,
it's a bit like your fingernails,
and you kind of peel it
and stretch it,
and you can make lantern panes
because it's translucent.
You can also make things like
drinking cups and spoons,
and the covers for horn books.
So Middlesex Street
in the 17th century
really does seem to be the
epicentre of horn working in London.
After the end of this kind of
theatrical period of the site,
it then becomes
a kind of commercial centre.
It is really industrial,
and it's kind of the industries
you wouldn't maybe
want to live next door to.
You know, if you've got pipe kilns,
you've got people boiling up
animal horns
Smelly, smoky Smelly, yeah.
Maybe that's why it's happening
on the east side of the city.
As London grew, factories
and other manufacturing sites
tended to be built
on London's east side.
It's thought that they were
built here to make use
of the prevailing westerly winds.
This would mean that the smoke
and pungent odours
were blown away
from the city centre.
So, what are the finds that we have
from The Boar's Head itself?
Well, amongst our sort of
selection of finds on the table,
the things that are really
kind of obviously Boar's Head
are beer mugs. Ah!
Beautiful black glaze -
17th-century ceramics.
Originally, it would have been quite
tall, maybe with another handle.
And we're finding lots of those.
So what about the
industrial installations?
We were talking about horn working,
and we obviously
get the waste product,
which is the inside
of the animal horn.
These just get thrown away
because they have no use for those.
The big thing we have going on
is clay tobacco pipe making.
We have wasters, the ones
that have failed the process.
And so they've not been smoked -
really clean on the inside.
On the table here, we've got part
of the actual kiln fabric.
So, you can see it's really
vitrified from the heat of the kiln,
and you can actually see
how they've used clay pipes
within the fabric of the kiln.
It's almost like
clay wattle and daub, really.
It kind of gives the clay
some rigidity in the structure.
To celebrate the site's connection
with the city's theatrical heritage,
the exposed Elizabethan playhouse
will be preserved in situ,
and incorporated
as part of the new development.
We first arrived this morning
to a hole in the ground -
no idea what we're going to find
at the bottom of it.
This kind of politically charged,
irreverent kind of theatre scene,
where people are out there
with their beer mugs,
it's really exciting to get
to get a feel of it here.
After the end of the
theatrical phase,
you have this industry -
this thriving hub of manufacture.
And the small finds from this site
really bring the place to life
for me.
You've got the tobacco pipes,
hundreds of them.
The kind of smoky tobacco. You've
got beer mugs after beer mugs.
It must have been
such a raucous place.
It's kind of 16th-century
EastEnders.
For our final dig,
we're revisiting an excavation
first filmed by Digging For Britain
in 2017.
Back then, MoD archaeologists
were called in to investigate
a small island
in Portsmouth Harbour,
where human bones
were eroding out off a cliff.
The team discovered four sets
of human remains, including
a skull that had been sawn open.
We've got a craniotomy here,
so if you see this cut
through the skull
This year, MoD archaeologist
Richard Osgood is back
because storms have eroded the cliff
face, causing more bones to emerge.
We've got at the moment, I think,
three or four areas of interest
with human remains.
We've got only about three
or four days to get them out.
The dig takes place on
Burrow Island,
which lies just opposite
Portsmouth's historic dockyard.
Richard's filming his dig diary
with members of
Operation Nightingale.
This is a military initiative,
using archaeology
to help the recovery of service
personnel injured in conflict.
So here we've got tibia,
and a fibula just coming in,
going into the side of the cliff
there. So that's one lower leg?
Yes, that's right.
Is there just one that you can see?
We think we've got the second one
just coming through here.
The burials are believed to date
from the early 1800s.
The late Georgian era.
At this time, floating jails,
called prison hulks,
were moored in the nearby harbour.
These were home to convicts
and prisoners of war.
The author, Charles Dickens,
grew up in Portsmouth
and he knew
about these prison ships.
It's believed the inmates
could have inspired the character
of Abel Magwitch, the escaped
convict in Great Expectations.
Back at the dig, artefacts
are emerging that help confirm
the date of the graves.
One of the burials, which had
just a few bones within it,
also produced this really
lovely pipe bowl.
This is really a date of about
Early 19th century
is a good fix for
what we're doing on the site.
But, as the dig continues, the team
make an unsettling discovery.
They're finding more graves
extending right up the cliff face,
far higher than originally recorded.
We're cleaning up the cliff.
Perhaps that was an error because
when we've cleaned up the face,
there are even more coffins
that are being exposed.
This is a new revelation.
The burials are stacked
one on top of another.
The large number of graves suggests
that the island was being used
as a burial site over many years -
longer than previously thought.
You've got a nice clear coffin
that's cutting through
this area of the site,
but you've got bones
either side of it.
What that shows is they've come
across an earlier burial
and dug it out
to put the new coffin in.
So this set of human remains
is an earlier burial -
at least two phases of burial here.
It just shows the sheer level
of activity of burial on the island.
With the dig coming to a close,
the bones are taken away
for further analysis.
But the plan is that in the future,
all the skeletons will be
reburied on the island.
But on the top, safely away
from the eroding cliff edges.
I've asked Richard to bring in some
of the human remains recovered
this year, including
one very unusual find.
One of the coffins
that we saw this year,
actually, there were some other
bones that were found
as part of that assemblage.
We're still looking
at human bones here.
But absolutely minute human bones,
so an infant.
Is that unusual -
have we found any infant remains
before on the island?
No, this is the first time
we've found this.
In many ways, that changes
our understanding,
maybe our picture
of what's going on.
Does it mean that there's a female
convict who went on whilst pregnant?
Gave birth and the infant died?
Was she incarcerated with an infant?
I don't know.
But it changes our whole
narrative of the site
because it's so much younger
than anything else.
It's very sad to think about.
You know, if it is a female
convict with her baby on board
one of those prison hulks,
it must have been
a horrendous place to be.
So these are skeletons
that have just emerged this year
and there's quite a bit
more work still to do on them,
but you've been able
to advance some of that process
with skeletons that have emerged
in previous years. That's right.
I've brought one of them in.
I've seen this one before, haven't
I? You have seen this one before.
But we've got a lot
more about this man's story
from when he was here last.
He's been subjected to some fairly
rudimentary early autopsy work.
Yeah. We've been able to get
a company do a facial reconstruction
of him, and you've got it there.
You've brought that along.
We can see him there.
And then if we put the flesh
back on the bones,
that's what he might
have looked like.
It's quite strange, isn't it, to
see a face brought back to life?
It's astonishing.
It's so realistic, isn't it?
It's quite haunting.
I like to think he'd be pleased
that we remembered his story,
and are still telling
a bit more about him
some 200 years after his demise.
The south of Britain has yielded
up a rich diversity
of archaeological finds
spanning 10,000 years of history.
We've travelled back to an
ancient Stone Age settlement,
marvelled at a Roman trading post
and trodden the boards
of an Elizabethan theatre.
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?"
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 archaeologists
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're exploring
the south of Britain,
where archaeologists have been
making incredible discoveries,
both above and below the waves.
From a Stone Age settlement
found off the Dorset coast
Incredible site. You know,
nothing like it in the country.
to an Elizabethan theatre
in the heart of London
It must have been
such a raucous place -
it's kind of 16th-century
EastEnders.
and a mysterious Iron Age burial
near Dorchester.
I've been working in Dorset
for over 40 years
and I've never come across
anything like this.
Welcome to Digging For Britain.
After the invasion of Britain in
43 AD by the Roman Emperor Claudius,
it was here in the south
that the first forts
and settlements grew up.
Archaeologists in East Sussex
are out investigating
one of these early settlements.
But, with no Roman records
of this place,
its name and its purpose
have been lost in time.
The excavation is located around
ten miles north-east of Brighton
in the village of Barcombe.
The site was first discovered
in 2011 by chance.
Archaeologist Rob Wallis was
excavating part of a Roman road
when a wider geophysical survey
revealed a possible settlement.
This survey is magnetometry,
so it picks up the magnetic
variations in the Earth -
especially in the Roman period
and other periods, you tend to get
a lot of charcoal and burnt material,
which is very magnetic.
So these will show up ditches,
linear features
So the geophysics
we use is an indication
that there's something there,
rather than actually telling us
what it is there.
Artefacts already uncovered
suggest this settlement was
already in existence by 70 AD,
just 27 years
after the Roman invasion.
With no historical records to help
us here, Rob is trying to work out
the role this settlement
might have played
in the wider context
of Roman Britannia.
He looks first for clues
in its layout and location.
Original settlement
round about 70 AD is round here,
and it's a
small four-grid system.
The Roman road,
which goes to London,
comes up through here.
We have the Greensand Way,
which is the east-west route,
which goes to Hardham
and then Chichester,
and we have a road
going eastwards to Arlington
and then on to Pevensey.
As well as the roads
heading off in all directions,
the settlement is also
very close to a waterway.
The River Ouse is a tidal river.
It was probably a lot wider
and shallower in the Roman period.
The Romans would have used
flat-bottomed boats anyway,
and it's an easy way
to move mass bulk.
So possibly grains
and things like that -
iron ore that's coming out
from the Weald.
While the Romans are famous
for their road building
waterways were just as important.
They used seagoing merchant
ships to transport goods
in and out of the country,
and river barges for transporting
goods within it.
So you can move stuff in mass.
They can move round the rivers,
rather than on carts,
which is more costly
and time-consuming.
So basically, we have north,
south, east and west covered
from this location.
This is a key revelation.
The site was well connected
by roads and river
to other Roman settlements
in the region.
The team also discover that the site
itself is surrounded by a ditch.
If we look out here,
you'll see that hedgerow,
which goes all the way up
to that corner.
It's then coming all the way up,
three-quarters of the way
up to there.
That hedgerow is this -
the inner enclosure ditch.
It then comes back across the site.
It levels up with the oak tree and
comes down to form this around it.
The ditch suggests
a certain level of fortification.
It meant that you could only get
in through approved entry points.
The ditch was a way of controlling
who and what
came in and out of the site.
Further clues to the role
of this settlement
come in the huge variety of
artefacts that are being unearthed,
including over 300 coins.
So here we have
a Septimius Severus coin,
round about 198 to 200 AD,
which is silver,
from this year's excavation.
Yeah, so it's quite a collection.
They date from early-Roman,
right the way through to 435 AD.
Along with the coins,
evidence is also building
of a site rich in material goods
coming from all over Britain.
This is a mortaria bowl. This is a
white ware, possibly from Oxford.
And they normally had a grit
inclusion in the actual base.
And these are used for mixing,
so they'd have maybe greens
and stuff like that, with olive oil.
There are also goods
coming in from further afield.
So here you have a lion
attacking another animal.
You've got different
gladiatorial scenes throughout.
This is a great example
of the classic Red Roman pottery,
known as Samian Ware.
It's got a maker's stamp on it.
It's been manufactured in Gaul,
which is France - modern-day
France, in the Roman period.
They're even finding
pieces of Roman glass.
You can see some inclusions in it.
If you look up to the light,
there's some bubbles.
This would have been the neck,
and possibly
comes out to a square bottle.
There's no evidence for glass-making
from scratch in Roman Britain.
So, once again, this is evidence
of luxury goods being imported
from across the Roman world.
Caught on their dig diary camera,
the site is continuing to yield
a constant flow of intriguing
artefacts.
Sticking my neck out on this one,
but it could be the
There you go! Oh! Look at that!
Maybe that is that!
Like it grew there. Wow!
Like it grew there, look.
This year, the team are also finding
evidence of manufacturing processes
taking place
within the settlement itself.
We've got a part of a kiln
here in situ,
and that is the base of it,
which would've went across and up
to where the white chalk is.
This kiln could have been used
to make tiles
and pottery for the town,
or potentially for export.
The finds are helping
to paint a picture
of this forgotten Roman settlement.
The archaeologists have unearthed
artefacts that have arrived here
from across the Roman world,
as well as large numbers of coins.
And then there are those
road and river access routes.
Rob is considering the possibility
that this could have been
an important trading hub,
and possibly even a centre
for Roman administration.
The finds indicate
that it's an official site.
It's under the Roman
government's control.
So people will be here
collecting taxes,
or, if goods are coming in,
looking at what's coming in
and what's going out,
and see if there's any taxes
to pay on that.
With each season, they're
discovering that this trading settlement
is far larger
than previously thought.
Rob and his team plan to keep coming
back for many years to come.
You never know
what you're going to find
from one day to the next.
You can be, you know,
a small bit of pot, or a coin,
or a brooch, or, you know,
something more personal.
It's Yeah,
it's an amazing feeling.
Leaving the Roman era,
we now peer further back
into British prehistory.
Our next dig sees archaeologists
donning scuba gear
and plunging into the
chilly waters of the Solent
to investigate an extremely ancient
Stone Age settlement.
Just off the coast of the Isle of
Wight lies one of the UK's
most unusual archaeological sites.
Today, a team from the
Maritime Archaeology Trust,
led by Garry Momber,
are planning to survey the site,
and they hope to raise
what is thought to be
an 8,000-year-old timber structure
for further analysis.
Pretty good,
the first dive of the day.
Visibility is a few metres. Tide is
dropping off, running quite fast,
but it's just incredible, seeing
these lovely layers of wood.
8,000 years old, the first time
it's being uncovered.
OK. We're ready!
And go.
Lying just 11 metres
beneath the waves
are worked timbers that date back to
the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age.
The Mesolithic was a time
before farming,
when the people living in Britain
were still nomadic hunter-gatherers.
What I love is really getting
on the site and uncovering -
it's just finding things
for the first time in 8,000 years
and then knowing that that's
going to tell us so much
about those people.
This site was discovered
over 20 years ago
by an unusual sort of
archaeologist - a lobster.
He saw this lobster kicking out
these flints from a hole,
and thought,
"Oh, that's really nice."
He picked up little bits of flint
and brought them to the surface
and said, "Look, worked flints
on the seabed".
And that was how we found it.
Well-preserved Mesolithic
sites are incredibly rare.
Archaeologists often just find
scatters of worked flint,
like the ones the lobster
discovered.
But, when these
archaeologists excavated
around the lobster's burrow, they
started to find ancient timbers.
There's lots of wood -
there's structures been built.
There's posts, there are
these sort of series of platforms
put in place - it seems to be
a living spot.
But these ancient structures
are under threat.
For 8,000 years,
the wood has been preserved
under a blanket of silt and mud.
Now, changing currents are causing
extensive erosion along this stretch
of coastline, exposing the timbers
and leaving the wood open to attack.
As you get these
wood-boring organisms,
you get gribble move into it,
dig lots of holes,
and we see it in the sample,
so everything's sort of
compromised and undermined.
Underwater, the divers are
completing a survey of the site.
It can be a very difficult
work environment.
The harder the current is running,
the harder it is for you to work
because you're operating
in three dimensions.
It's not just on a flat surface -
you're up and down as well.
So it adds challenge to the diving,
which is the whole point
of doing this, really.
The ancient timbers
are photographed,
and each piece logged and tagged.
The divers then start
to bring them to the surface.
This is the sort of material
that we've got on the seabed.
What they've done is, they've got
bits of timber and they've sliced it
so it's flat on one side, and on the
other side, it's sort of bark.
Another one there.
And they've sort of overlaid them
to form a sort of layered platform
on the seabed.
The specific purpose of these
timber platforms is still unknown.
But Garry has a working hypothesis.
We know it was wet round here,
boggy, so they would have been
You know, it would have been a nice
platform to stand on and walk on,
a dry area for whatever
activity they might have been doing.
These Mesolithic people
seem to have constructed
something quite permanent.
This is clearly much more
than just a temporary camp.
It challenges our ideas about
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
as nomads always on the move.
These things are very rare
because this was
a hunter-gatherer society
that was known
to move around the place.
But here we've got what looks
more like a settlement,
looks more like there's been
a lot of time invested
in this particular site.
It would've been a special
place to live at the time.
It would've been a nice
little sheltered valley.
You're very near sources of flints,
just in the chalk cliffs.
You would've had wild fowl,
you'd have had vegetation -
a place that you could
probably live all year round.
Over the course of the day,
the divers have been steadily
bringing up the whole Mesolithic
platform, piece by piece.
Coming up from the last dive,
Garry brings up the final parts.
Yeah, it's good.
That's the last big piece on top.
They will come up in smaller pieces,
but this was a big plank
sitting on top.
Degraded, but it's just one hefty
piece of timber.
You know, there's a whole landscape
down there that we really want
It's just not enough.
We need more time.
Incredible site. You know,
nothing else like it in the country.
All of the artefacts that were
lifted from the seabed are now
in the National Oceanography
Centre in Southampton,
and our roving archaeologist Naoise
Mac Sweeney is visiting their labs.
Excavating an underwater prehistoric
site has its challenges,
but piecing the finds back together
is a whole new headache.
So, Garry, what are we doing today?
Well, these boxes contain
all the artefacts,
all the parts of the platform
that we lifted.
They've been in cold storage.
We're going to get them out now
and we're going to reconstruct them
for the first time.
Oh, it's cold! That water's cold!
So, we keep them cold and dark
and in fresh water
to minimise the degradation
and to keep them stable
for as long as possible.
We've got to spend time
analysing it and recording it.
It's only when we've done that
we can extract the information
that will tell us about these
people, of which we know so little.
They're still really delicate, I guess we
have to handle them with a lot of care?
A lot of it's been eaten away
by these marine boring organisms.
They drill down into it.
See the grain of a worm
that's gone through? Hmm.
Its tracks through here.
The platform is quite
a complex structure,
made up of several layers of
what once was interlocking wood.
We don't have any other blueprints
of Mesolithic platforms.
This is This is the first one.
The structure is one thing.
It is also,
how are they doing it?
And how are they converting trees
into different sorts of planks?
What tools are they using?
So all those sort of questions
will come out of this. Mm.
Each piece was given
a unique number underwater,
which we should now be able to match
up against the team's photographs.
It's quite a challenge to rebuild.
So, this is piece 51.
Which is this one here
That one.
Turn it round the other way. Right.
This one looks like it's 022.
Or 25? Possibly. 20 smudge
Oh, that's a big bit. Another one.
There's a big bit.
It's a puzzle, and I'm puzzled
because it's not just there,
it's different layers.
Bits go underneath, over each other,
they kind of interweave.
It's the whole kind of interlocking,
interlacing puzzle-tastic platform.
In trying to
put the platform back together,
it's apparent to me that this was
a well-thought-out and complicated
piece of engineering, with
multiple layers, all carefully
cut and fitted together.
This is a pre-settlement phase,
and yet you wouldn't expect
it from Mesolithic people,
from hunter-gatherers.
It's just incredible to see it.
No.
You thought they just ran around,
broke twigs off,
built lean-tos, and
killed the odd animal. Yeah!
But here they were building
these complicated structures.
Proper carpentry.
Yeah, and very complicated. Mm.
As we're finding out.
Despite what seemed to be
an insurmountable challenge,
we managed to piece back together
the 8,000-year-old
Mesolithic wooden platform.
That's it there.
Beautiful. Da-da! There it is.
Is this the first time
it's all been together,
reassembled since it came out
of the sea? Yes, this is it.
This is the most complete
section we have.
It's a Well, to me,
it's really impressive.
It may look like
just loads of bits of wood,
but really, I mean, this was made
by someone 8,000 years ago,
laid out for a purpose we don't
know because we know very little
about these people.
This is just one part
of a massive set of platforms
still lying underwater.
We can then start looking at some
of the detail on some of the timbers
and how they relate to each other.
We can try and use that to help sort
of interpret the building method.
The platform is a unique find
that has advanced our understanding
of our nomadic Mesolithic ancestors,
clearly showing that they built
permanent structures.
The intricacy of this whole
platform, this whole structure,
has actually been really surprising.
The process of putting it back
together has helped me to understand
the process of how
it must have been made,
and it was so carefully,
beautifully made,
it's absolutely jaw-dropping.
Our next dig
takes us to southern Dorset,
and the chance discovery
of an extremely rare
early Iron Age burial.
The dig is taking place
in a private cottage garden
eight miles from Dorchester.
In 2013, builders were
installing a new sewage pipe
for a medieval cottage
owned by the National Trust.
Work came to a halt
when they stumbled across
some human bones.
Archaeologist Dr Martin Papworth
was called in to investigate.
To find a JCB bucket full of bones
is an extraordinary thing.
Obviously. It doesn't happen
every day, does it?!
And But it just raises
lots of questions, doesn't it?
I mean, how old are the bones?
Is it one person?
Is it several people?
Why are they there?
A bone sample sent for radiocarbon
testing indicated
the burial dated from around 800 BC,
the very early Iron Age.
In the Iron Age,
people were farming the land,
living in roundhouses,
building hill forts, and starting
to use a new metal - iron -
for tools and weapons.
It's rare to find burials
from this period.
People may have been cremating
the dead and scattering burned bone,
or leaving bodies
out in the open to decompose.
It's taken Martin
several years to raise the funds
to excavate the site, and now
he's back with a team of volunteers.
He wants to investigate
how the bodies were buried
in order to understand the funeral
practices of these Iron Age people.
Already they're finding that the
graves were carefully constructed.
They've dug a pit,
they've laid the burials,
or the bones in the pit,
and then they've placed the stones
over it and buried it,
so the stones are the capping
to the funeral remains.
Over the next few days,
the stones are removed,
and the full scale of the burials
is revealed.
Martin has uncovered
three skeletons.
Their size suggests
they could have been quite young.
So you have one skull there,
another crushed skull here,
and on the other
side of the pipe trench,
you've got another crushed
skull here.
Each one had a large stone above it.
Over the years, as the flesh
has rotted from these bodies
the skulls have impacted and
collapsed under the weight of the stones.
The archaeologists are finding
something strange
about the way the bodies
were buried.
There's the skull,
there's the teeth,
there's the backbone,
there's the shoulder,
humerus running down through here,
a series of ribs.
But the whole thing
has been caved back in
and folded very, very sharply.
And these are the two legs
above the head,
with the toes of each foot
one above the other.
So, to get it in
that sort of position,
you'd have to tie the body up
before you put it in the hole,
because it's very hard
to squeeze somebody in
that kind of tight angle.
It appears the bodies
may have been buried
in a tightly crouched position.
While crouched burials like this
have been found at Iron Age sites
in Wales and Cornwall,
for Martin, this is a first.
I've been working in Dorset
for over 40 years now,
and I've never come across anything
like this, or heard about it.
We know that there are rituals
where young people are put into the
ground as part of a religion,
but these people
could have been dead
some time before they were
put in the ground,
so that they could be
trussed up in these positions,
and it could have been
a caring thing to do.
It may be loving families,
placing people in graves
in the way they always do.
Or it may be something
more sinister,
maybe something more brutal.
All we can do is speculate.
With no grave goods
accompanying the burials,
the archaeologists are left
with many unanswered questions.
But they're also left
feeling a deep connection
with these ancestors.
You get a sense of,
these are people,
and when you spend a day
cleaning bones,
you do feel rather sort of closer,
and you wonder about them
and how they interacted
with this beautiful place.
That they lived here, too,
though 2,800 years ago.
With the dig drawing to a close,
Martin and the team decide to leave
the skeletons in their graves,
just taking small bone samples
for DNA analysis.
We never came here
to take the bodies away
from their resting place.
We just came to take small samples
to enable us, the scientists,
to talk about the origins
of these people,
so they will remain here in the
ground where we found them.
The local people who live
in the village
have taken this place to heart
and they will look after them
in the future.
I'm intrigued to find out more
about these curious graves.
We don't have many burials
from the early Iron Age.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it?
It's a very blank sort of period.
But this will be fascinating
because if there's good
preservation of DNA,
then you could sample
the whole genome.
I notice the arm bone there,
and the top of that humerus
looks as though it's separate.
Is that real? It is, that's right.
Yes. So that's a separate epiphysis.
Yes.
Which means that bone
is still growing. Yes.
So this is a juvenile.
This is not an adult. That's right.
No. They're all young.
Are they? They're all teenagers.
Yes. We'd like to know
why these three are together.
So, are they related in any way?
Are they brother and sister?
You know, with DNA,
we should be able to
at least start
to answer these questions.
It hasn't been possible
to answer them before.
Were there any signs
of cause of death at all?
No. No, that wasn't seen.
So it's quite a strange burial.
They bound them
when they buried them,
trussed up tightly as possible,
legs and arms like this,
perhaps wrapping them in something
and then ironing it tight,
and bringing the legs
back up like that.
Looking at burial practices like
this, it seems very odd to us today,
but then, of course, this might
be just perfectly normal
burial practice - a respectful
way to treat the dead.
It's a sort of
window into a piece of the past
that we just don't understand
Yes which makes it fascinating.
Mudlarking is a practice
which has been popular in London
since at least the 18th century.
People scoured the banks
of the Thames,
looking for valuable trinkets,
or cargo that had fallen off
passing ships.
But archaeologists sometimes indulge
in a spot of mudlarking as well.
Our next excavation focuses
on a huge artefact,
24 metres long -
a submarine chaser
from the First World War.
The dig takes place on the banks
of the River Thames in Isleworth,
on the outskirts of West London.
A team from the Thames Discovery
Programme are investigating
a sorry-looking watercraft,
left to rot in thick mud
behind a boat yard.
But this wreck has a story to tell.
It's the last known example
of a First World War watercraft,
known as a motor launch.
As far as we know, there are no
plans in existence for these things.
So the only way
we can find out how these things
were actually built is by
digging holes in the mud
and trying to record it.
During the First World War,
motor launches
were part of the Royal Navy's
answer to the looming threat
of German submarine ambush.
On May 7th 1915,
the Lusitania was torpedoed
with nearly 2,000 passengers
on board.
The ocean liner was ripped in two,
and sank in just 18 seconds.
Over 1,000 people died
in the attack.
The Navy swiftly placed an order
of motor launches
with the Electric Launch Company,
based in America.
These fast little boats were armed
with depth charges, machine guns
and a cannon, and would be
sent out to patrol
alongside British shipping.
They managed to knock out
550 of these in 488 days
and, because the US
was neutral at the time,
they had to be part-assembled
in New York,
put on railway wagons, taken up
to Canada for full assembly,
and were then shipped across the
Atlantic to serve in the North Sea,
the Mediterranean,
and all round the European coast.
This specific craft
was called ML286.
Post-war, she was retired
from the military
and converted into a houseboat.
At some point, she was brought here
to the boat yard to be patched up.
But sadly, the repairs
proved too expensive,
so she was abandoned
and has been here ever since.
We've been here for seven days,
slowly trying to excavate out
the middle of her,
and try and learn some of the
construction details of the vessel.
Each day, the team don't
have much time on site.
They must gather as much information
as possible about this important
little vessel before the tide turns.
They take measurements
and photographs,
and make drawings
to create a detailed plan.
But, knee-deep in thick mud,
this is a far harder task
than the average dig.
But I think probably
the most challenging aspect of it
is it's by far the muddiest site
we have, which can be fun.
Everything gets covered in mud, but
you've just got to embrace it.
There's no point in trying
to not get dirty on this site.
Oh! It kept my feet!
Are you all right?
I've just filled my whole boot
with water. Oh, no!
When the order for the
motor launches was placed,
it was a challenge
to deliver the fleet
in such a short space of time.
With foundries struggling
to keep up with demand,
even jeweller Tiffany's
stepped in to supply brass.
But, despite the rich benefactors,
the team are surprised
at the construction.
These upper ribs,
these are actually made of,
sort of, really cheap plywood -
they're actually held together
by bits of ply. Um
Which no-one knew.
We knew they were cheap,
but we didn't know quite how cheap.
We're finding that out now.
After her duties in World War I,
this plucky vessel also served
in the Second World War,
rescuing British soldiers as one
of the little ships of Dunkirk.
She was then retired and repurposed
to be used as a houseboat
on the Thames.
Just trying to piece together,
or tease out
the different bits,
from the original,
to what was done when she
was turned into a houseboat.
People had the time to take,
and the money to spend,
and so you start getting
some of the original
very cheap soft wood fittings
replaced by this, which is hardwood.
Elsewhere in the hull, the team
are uncovering further features.
See, our porthole Oh!
That's so exciting!
It's the capstan. It would have
been on the bow of the ship
for letting go of the anchor
and then winding it up again.
With the dig completely
dictated by the tides,
Eliott must run a tight ship, and
keep a close eye on the river.
It comes in very quickly.
When you're downstream,
you've got plenty of warning.
Here upstream,
you've got no indication.
It's running out, it's running out,
and suddenly it's going the other
way and it's coming in quickly,
so we've got to get out the mud
and across the river,
or else we're camping here tonight.
The team now hope to use
their photographs and drawings
of this last remaining motor launch
to create a detailed record
of the structure of this
historically important craft.
Our next dig is back in Dorset,
where archaeologists
are investigating a Roman site.
It was first dug
in the late 1700s,
when stunning mosaics were found,
but we know that they were dug up.
We also know that very little
attention was paid
to what this building actually was.
So, many questions remain.
The excavation is located just
outside the village of Frampton,
next to the River Frome.
Archaeologist Dr Miles Russell,
and his team from
Bournemouth University,
are investigating the site.
They want to find out
about the people who lived here
and, if possible, some clues
about the relationship
between these Romans
and the wider local population.
It's a Roman building
that's been known for some time,
but it's one of a number of
extremely late-Roman luxury
buildings that are occurring in
Dorset in the 4th century AD.
This is a late Roman site,
dating to some 300 years
after the invasion.
Up until this point, Roman activity
in Dorset is fairly low-key.
There's no real villas until
we get to the 4th century,
and suddenly they're everywhere.
So the real question is,
what is happening - why does
it take 250 to 300 years,
and then there's a sudden
explosion of wealth?
These are starting
to dominate the countryside.
It seems odd that the Romans
didn't stamp their mark on Dorset
until so late.
Elsewhere in England, Romans
were building lavish villas
and ornate temples.
They brought with them a
Mediterranean style of architecture
with painted plaster walls
and elaborate mosaic floors.
Back at the dig,
Miles starts to uncover
the footprint of the villa.
You see where Harry's working
down here, he's found this wall.
It might be part of these more
extensive rooms coming through.
That block of stone there,
I think might be part
of a step or an entrance structure
going up and into the corridor.
So it's some kind
of formal entrance way here.
And then this is a
slightly destroyed wall.
You can see we're coming
into now, mosaic.
So this is some of the mosaic
that was recorded in the 1790s.
That is very nice.
That is amazing. Lovely, isn't it?
Absolutely incredible.
When the mosaics
were first revealed in 1794,
they were so impressive
that King George III
came to visit.
But they were not preserved in situ,
and seem to have been taken away
as souvenirs.
Despite the fact
the mosaics are mostly gone,
there's still plenty of material
on site that could reveal
more about who was living here
and their status in the community.
It's the rubbish
that we're interested in,
things that tell us about ordinary
lives of people living in this site.
So the sorts of things that were
not saved during the 1790s dig.
This was a large, rectangular
hollow tile
that's built into the walls that
conveys heating from under the floor
and up through the walls themselves,
so this is basically
cavity wall heating.
So to find these tiles
means that we've got
a heated room, pushing us towards
the interpretation this is the
main entertainment space.
So it's more information that just
wasn't recorded in the 1790s.
Captured here
on their dig diary camera,
the team are also
unearthing evidence
that the outside of the villa
was richly decorated.
This carved sandstone finial
would have sat on the apex
of the roof.
Wow.
That is gorgeous.
Dave, I love you.
Everything that we're finding,
from the box tiles,
which suggests underfloor heating,
from the wall plaster and now also
from the pottery and animal bone,
it all fits a domestic context.
It is a wealthy,
high-status building,
up against the River Frome,
in quite an exotic and luxurious
part of the Dorset landscape.
In amongst the rubble,
Miles is also finding
intriguing evidence
of the people that lived here.
One astonishing item
even gives us a glimpse
of their religious beliefs.
This is a coin of the Roman Emperor
Magnentius in about 350 AD.
We've got his face on one side.
And he was very keen to advertise
that he was a Christian emperor.
So on the back of his coin,
we've got the Chi-Rho symbol,
the P and the X.
The key thing about this,
it's been pierced,
so they've worn it
around their neck.
The Roman Emperor Constantine
converted to Christianity in 312 AD.
With his backing,
this religion slowly spread
through the Roman world,
reaching even the distant
province of Britannia.
It's a nice little individual find
that gives us a little insight
to the sorts of religions
that were going on here.
These are a new wealthy elite
that's coming in
from another part of the empire,
and they're building
their luxury houses here,
and they're bringing their exotic
Eastern faith with them,
and it's coins like this
that give us that indicator,
or that sort of personalised aspect
of this new religious belief system.
But this opulent villa
and its Christian-Roman occupants
are only a small part of the story
of Dorset at this time.
At another site
not far from the villa,
Miles is also finding evidence
of the people who lived
in the wider landscape here.
These people belonged to a tribe
called the Durotriges.
The Durotriges were one of a number
of tribes in south-west Britain
at the time of the
Roman invasion and occupation.
The land of the Durotriges seems
to have centred on Dorset,
with parts of southern Wiltshire
and Somerset as well.
But very little is known
about their relationship
with the Roman Empire.
The artefacts Miles has unearthed
give us a glimpse into the lives
of these people.
The Durotriges, the local tribe,
are constantly recycling,
reusing, and making sure
everything has a purpose.
This is actually carved
out of a sheep bone.
You can see it's a comb.
Other things that we get from
native sites around here,
we get lots of spindle whorls.
So these are the weights at the end
of a spindle during weaving process.
We get no real idea of the range
of materials they were wearing.
The only real dress indicators
that we get are often these little
bronze pins, or brooches - this is
much like a modern-day safety pin.
It seems that the Durotriges
lived peacefully
alongside the Roman settlers.
But these artefacts appear
to show the Durotriges
maintained a strong sense
of their own identity.
This is probably a wine vessel,
or possibly an alcohol,
sort of a beer or mead cup.
It's completely unlike anything
the Roman world is producing.
People are using ceramic styles
that aren't linked
to the Roman Empire.
They're using things
that are more native design,
and they're not high
on status symbols.
So, despite some Romans building
lavish villas in Dorset,
Roman culture didn't seem to seep
out into the wider countryside.
As far as we can see, the locals
here, the Durotrige tribe,
didn't embrace Roman culture at all.
They don't seem to be impressed by,
or want to be part
of that Roman system.
They don't seem to want to be Roman.
I've asked Miles to bring in
some of those fascinating finds
for closer analysis.
So, you've got this pattern,
where you've got very different
material culture in the villa,
compared with sites
in the surrounding countryside.
What does this tell us
about the people of Dorset,
and how they engaged with being
part of the Roman Empire?
I don't think they're really
engaging with it at all.
In the east, we can see Roman
villas, we can see Roman culture,
right the way down
to the native settlements,
we've got high-status
Roman pottery, and so on.
There's none of that filtering
down to the natives here in Dorset.
It's fascinating because
it shows us how dangerous it is
to look at a scenario
in one part of our country
and then extrapolate that
across the whole nation.
They are existing within the Roman
world, but for whatever reason,
they're not choosing to be Roman.
So what are these objects?
We've got a range,
which are all native.
We've got combs,
we've got spindle whorls,
there's a whole range
of craft activities.
Are these brooches
not Roman, then? No, they're not.
Is that more of a kind of
native British design? It is, yes
I mean, we see these really
from 80 BC onwards -
we see them going way right
the way through the Roman period,
but it's not something
that is Roman at all.
It was not influenced
by the Roman world whatsoever.
That's fascinating. So you're seeing
a completely different culture. Yes.
The Roman jewellery
is far more decorated,
far more sort of squared, and
really quite chunky status items.
These are quite small in comparison.
And then this little bowl.
I mean, this is this is beautiful,
but this is very much
a British form. Yes.
So that's black-burnished ware.
It's very highly polished.
It's made in southern Dorset,
right the way up until
the 4th century AD.
And again, you've got that
sort of diamond egg-shaped design
around the outside.
And it's got this in-built strainer
on it. It's brilliant.
Yeah, I really like it.
It's beautifully made.
And look at that crazy design
on the base.
These are all individual
unique items.
So they've got their own
personality to them.
These people clearly
thought of themselves
as being the people of Dorset.
Exactly.
There's no real desire to be Roman.
They're paying their tax,
they're living within that system,
but they're not choosing to become
Roman in any shape or form.
They're not adopting that identity.
No.
So even when you've got villas
appearing in the countryside
in Dorset, they seem to be
capsules of Roman culture -
it's not seeping out. No, it's
a little, sort of, cultural bubble.
I think the wealthy are living in
their house with their own estate,
but their culture is not
seeping out to the wider world.
Neither is the native stuff
coming in.
So they are very much excluded.
between these two separate worlds.
It's almost like
a cultural apartheid going on
between these two
different cultures.
We know that the Romans and Greeks
love putting on plays,
but it wasn't until the 16th century
that theatre as we know it
really took off in Britain.
And the focus of the drama
was London,
where raucous comedies and
historical tragedies
were performed in the open air.
For our next dig,
Naoise Mac Sweeney joins a team
from MOLA, Museum of London
Archaeology,
as they excavate
an Elizabethan playhouse.
The dig takes place in Whitechapel,
the bustling heart
of London's East End.
The impending construction
of a new student accommodation block
has opened up an exciting
archaeological possibility.
Records suggest that this was
the location of a long lost open-air
theatre, built in the back garden
of a popular Elizabethan inn,
known as The Boar's Head.
MOLA were commissioned
to investigate.
We're here to see the remains
of The Boar's Head playhouse.
We don't know much about it.
It's not a Shakespearean playhouse,
but we think it was
a thriving theatre.
Records reveal that The Boar's
Head playhouse dates from
the 16th and 17th century,
to the time of Queen Elizabeth I.
Senior archaeologist Heather Knight
is showing me around the site.
Where we're standing now is at the
back of what would have been
The Boar's Head playhouse.
The stage was under
where our machine is now.
The tiring-house would have been
just slightly outside of the site.
What's the tiring-house?
It's like the changing rooms,
where the actors
put on their attire.
And where was the old inn?
The inn itself would have
actually fronted the road,
which is Whitechapel High Street,
so right down the far side of the
site would have been the inn.
Playhouses were at their peak
during the 1600s,
and were sometimes attached to pubs.
The theatre at The Boar's Head
was one of the earliest
known in London.
There are records of performances
taking place in the pub's back yard.
But it wasn't until 1598
that a purpose-built
stage was constructed.
Digging down some three metres
below modern street level,
the team finally arrived
at the site of the pub.
So what we do, we start
taking off the top levels,
using a big machine,
and then slowly as we come down,
we can see from the finds
within those layers,
that we're going back through time,
and then when we get back
to the 18th-century layers,
we then go to hand digging,
and then we work our way down
into the 17th-century levels.
So can you tell me
what we've got here, then?
We're actually standing within the
foundations for a building
that was part of
The Boar's Head playhouse.
So you can stand here,
looking at actors
performing on the stage
in front of you.
This rectangular playhouse
makes this site distinct
from other Elizabethan theatres,
which were more commonly built
as rounded, enclosed structures.
For example, Shakespeare's Globe,
which was built two years
after The Boar's Head playhouse.
I think the spotlight
has been more on Bankside
because of the associations
with Shakespeare.
And I think that's part
of the reason The Boar's Head
might have slipped off
people's radar slightly.
It's been overlooked a little bit.
So, yeah, this is
its chance to shine.
For a small fee
of one or two pennies,
audiences could enjoy
a whole afternoon of entertainment.
The combination
of performance and beer
made for a high-spirited crowd.
Looking at some of the plays
that were performed here
when it was a proper playhouse,
they're kind of city plays,
they would have really appealed
to a city audience,
they're kind of scandalous,
lampooning public figures, you know,
they did push the boundaries
a little bit.
But, as the more puritanical
mid-17th century approached,
there was little tolerance
of drunken crowds
enjoying raucous satire.
At the start of the Civil War
in 1642,
most of London's playhouses
shut down.
With closure on the horizon,
The Boar's Head landowner saw
a development opportunity.
The site was split
into small plots and sold off.
The team have found evidence
of what happened next.
Where we're standing now is after
The Boar's Head has gone out of use
and this end of the site, we're
finding a lot of clay pipe making
OK. And also a lot of pipe clay.
Is this actual pipe clay?
This is actual pipe clay
and it's still really squishy.
So they're using this to make,
what kind of pipes?
Oh, very Tiny! It is tiny.
And by the shape of the bowl,
we know this is the 17th century.
What other things were they making
in this industrial area,
apart from lots and lots of pipe?
We're also finding evidence
for horn working.
So you take the useful part
of an animal horn,
which is that outside coating,
it's a bit like your fingernails,
and you kind of peel it
and stretch it,
and you can make lantern panes
because it's translucent.
You can also make things like
drinking cups and spoons,
and the covers for horn books.
So Middlesex Street
in the 17th century
really does seem to be the
epicentre of horn working in London.
After the end of this kind of
theatrical period of the site,
it then becomes
a kind of commercial centre.
It is really industrial,
and it's kind of the industries
you wouldn't maybe
want to live next door to.
You know, if you've got pipe kilns,
you've got people boiling up
animal horns
Smelly, smoky Smelly, yeah.
Maybe that's why it's happening
on the east side of the city.
As London grew, factories
and other manufacturing sites
tended to be built
on London's east side.
It's thought that they were
built here to make use
of the prevailing westerly winds.
This would mean that the smoke
and pungent odours
were blown away
from the city centre.
So, what are the finds that we have
from The Boar's Head itself?
Well, amongst our sort of
selection of finds on the table,
the things that are really
kind of obviously Boar's Head
are beer mugs. Ah!
Beautiful black glaze -
17th-century ceramics.
Originally, it would have been quite
tall, maybe with another handle.
And we're finding lots of those.
So what about the
industrial installations?
We were talking about horn working,
and we obviously
get the waste product,
which is the inside
of the animal horn.
These just get thrown away
because they have no use for those.
The big thing we have going on
is clay tobacco pipe making.
We have wasters, the ones
that have failed the process.
And so they've not been smoked -
really clean on the inside.
On the table here, we've got part
of the actual kiln fabric.
So, you can see it's really
vitrified from the heat of the kiln,
and you can actually see
how they've used clay pipes
within the fabric of the kiln.
It's almost like
clay wattle and daub, really.
It kind of gives the clay
some rigidity in the structure.
To celebrate the site's connection
with the city's theatrical heritage,
the exposed Elizabethan playhouse
will be preserved in situ,
and incorporated
as part of the new development.
We first arrived this morning
to a hole in the ground -
no idea what we're going to find
at the bottom of it.
This kind of politically charged,
irreverent kind of theatre scene,
where people are out there
with their beer mugs,
it's really exciting to get
to get a feel of it here.
After the end of the
theatrical phase,
you have this industry -
this thriving hub of manufacture.
And the small finds from this site
really bring the place to life
for me.
You've got the tobacco pipes,
hundreds of them.
The kind of smoky tobacco. You've
got beer mugs after beer mugs.
It must have been
such a raucous place.
It's kind of 16th-century
EastEnders.
For our final dig,
we're revisiting an excavation
first filmed by Digging For Britain
in 2017.
Back then, MoD archaeologists
were called in to investigate
a small island
in Portsmouth Harbour,
where human bones
were eroding out off a cliff.
The team discovered four sets
of human remains, including
a skull that had been sawn open.
We've got a craniotomy here,
so if you see this cut
through the skull
This year, MoD archaeologist
Richard Osgood is back
because storms have eroded the cliff
face, causing more bones to emerge.
We've got at the moment, I think,
three or four areas of interest
with human remains.
We've got only about three
or four days to get them out.
The dig takes place on
Burrow Island,
which lies just opposite
Portsmouth's historic dockyard.
Richard's filming his dig diary
with members of
Operation Nightingale.
This is a military initiative,
using archaeology
to help the recovery of service
personnel injured in conflict.
So here we've got tibia,
and a fibula just coming in,
going into the side of the cliff
there. So that's one lower leg?
Yes, that's right.
Is there just one that you can see?
We think we've got the second one
just coming through here.
The burials are believed to date
from the early 1800s.
The late Georgian era.
At this time, floating jails,
called prison hulks,
were moored in the nearby harbour.
These were home to convicts
and prisoners of war.
The author, Charles Dickens,
grew up in Portsmouth
and he knew
about these prison ships.
It's believed the inmates
could have inspired the character
of Abel Magwitch, the escaped
convict in Great Expectations.
Back at the dig, artefacts
are emerging that help confirm
the date of the graves.
One of the burials, which had
just a few bones within it,
also produced this really
lovely pipe bowl.
This is really a date of about
Early 19th century
is a good fix for
what we're doing on the site.
But, as the dig continues, the team
make an unsettling discovery.
They're finding more graves
extending right up the cliff face,
far higher than originally recorded.
We're cleaning up the cliff.
Perhaps that was an error because
when we've cleaned up the face,
there are even more coffins
that are being exposed.
This is a new revelation.
The burials are stacked
one on top of another.
The large number of graves suggests
that the island was being used
as a burial site over many years -
longer than previously thought.
You've got a nice clear coffin
that's cutting through
this area of the site,
but you've got bones
either side of it.
What that shows is they've come
across an earlier burial
and dug it out
to put the new coffin in.
So this set of human remains
is an earlier burial -
at least two phases of burial here.
It just shows the sheer level
of activity of burial on the island.
With the dig coming to a close,
the bones are taken away
for further analysis.
But the plan is that in the future,
all the skeletons will be
reburied on the island.
But on the top, safely away
from the eroding cliff edges.
I've asked Richard to bring in some
of the human remains recovered
this year, including
one very unusual find.
One of the coffins
that we saw this year,
actually, there were some other
bones that were found
as part of that assemblage.
We're still looking
at human bones here.
But absolutely minute human bones,
so an infant.
Is that unusual -
have we found any infant remains
before on the island?
No, this is the first time
we've found this.
In many ways, that changes
our understanding,
maybe our picture
of what's going on.
Does it mean that there's a female
convict who went on whilst pregnant?
Gave birth and the infant died?
Was she incarcerated with an infant?
I don't know.
But it changes our whole
narrative of the site
because it's so much younger
than anything else.
It's very sad to think about.
You know, if it is a female
convict with her baby on board
one of those prison hulks,
it must have been
a horrendous place to be.
So these are skeletons
that have just emerged this year
and there's quite a bit
more work still to do on them,
but you've been able
to advance some of that process
with skeletons that have emerged
in previous years. That's right.
I've brought one of them in.
I've seen this one before, haven't
I? You have seen this one before.
But we've got a lot
more about this man's story
from when he was here last.
He's been subjected to some fairly
rudimentary early autopsy work.
Yeah. We've been able to get
a company do a facial reconstruction
of him, and you've got it there.
You've brought that along.
We can see him there.
And then if we put the flesh
back on the bones,
that's what he might
have looked like.
It's quite strange, isn't it, to
see a face brought back to life?
It's astonishing.
It's so realistic, isn't it?
It's quite haunting.
I like to think he'd be pleased
that we remembered his story,
and are still telling
a bit more about him
some 200 years after his demise.
The south of Britain has yielded
up a rich diversity
of archaeological finds
spanning 10,000 years of history.
We've travelled back to an
ancient Stone Age settlement,
marvelled at a Roman trading post
and trodden the boards
of an Elizabethan theatre.
Join us next time, as we
continue Digging For Britain.