Digging for Britain (2010) s09e01 Episode Script
East
1
Everywhere you look, the rich
history of the United Kingdom
is there to be seen.
But hidden beneath our feet,
there is still a wealth
of archaeological treasure
just waiting to be found.
That's why each year,
up and down the country,
our archaeologists dig down,
searching for fresh discoveries.
Another one.
Revealing the imprint
of ancient civilisations
We are looking at a completely
unknown Roman town. That's crazy.
and unearthing priceless objects.
Might be a pendant.
Oh, yeah, I can see that.
This is something special, isn't it?
Yeah, I've not seen anything
like it so far.
Every dig adds new pieces to the
ever-growing
archaeological jigsaw
Do you want to come and have a look?
that is the epic story
of our islands.
It's been an extraordinary year
full of challenges,
and yet I've been able to visit
so many exciting digs
up and down the country.
Oh, my goodness!
There have been spine-tingling
discoveries to witness.
That is the face of a Trojan. Yes.
My heart is racing.
I'm even getting a chance
to use a trowel myself.
I'm joined by a trio
of expert investigators
I can actually see
the texture of the weave,
and it's 1,600 years old.
It's amazing that a small
DNA sample like this
can tell a really big story.
as they dig deeper for answers.
The same technique
as the Romans used? Exactly.
Finally, the archaeologists bring
their best finds into the studio
Whisk that away.
You can see that this object
has had a life of its own.
for up-close analysis.
It's astonishing detail.
Welcome to Digging for Britain.
In this special episode
we are in the east of England,
where I'm lucky enough to join in
uncovering a spectacular
and internationally important
piece of Roman art.
From under a crop of wheat,
one of the most jaw-dropping finds
ever featured on
Digging for Britain.
So much colour.
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
A Saxon burial in Kent
shows the brutality
of a seventh century death.
When we lifted the boss up,
we realised the skull had been
crushed in.
And in Norfolk we get to taste ale
just how the Anglo-Saxons made it.
Thank God I'm not driving home!
Across Britain, on hillsides
and in town squares,
the indelible evidence of Roman rule
is there for all to see.
Dedicated archaeologists
have spent whole lifetimes
piecing together evidence.
Whether reconstructing
once great buildings
or studying priceless possessions,
this work has created a vivid
portrait of Roman Britain.
It's such a well trodden
field of study.
It's fascinated antiquarians
and archaeologists for centuries.
And you could be forgiven
for thinking that there wasn't
much new left to discover.
Well, think again.
The Roman occupation of Britain
was an era of intense activity
lasting almost four centuries.
The Romans built to last, but
periods of great upheaval followed
and England's fertile soil
has been tilled and repurposed
for so many centuries since
that sites revealing completely new
Roman treasures are rare to find.
Which is partly why this
dig at a secret location
just west of Peterborough
has got the experts very excited.
The Romans always keep
archaeologists on their toes,
and just last year, in this field,
the most amazing Roman mosaic
was found.
And then it's lain, safely
covered up by this crop of wheat
until now, you can
see the wheat being harvested.
The same family has farmed this land
for 60 years,
never realising what lay
just beneath the surface.
When farmer's son Jim
first found the mosaic,
it was only partly revealed.
Now, Jim is back to help
uncover it in full.
So, Jim, you discovered this.
You made this discovery.
Tell me about it. How did it happen?
Last year, 2020, during lockdown
we brought the kids to the field
so we could get out of the house.
There was a whole palaver
with a load of angry bees
which meant that we couldn't
go back the way we came
and we ended up having to go along
the field boundary,
which didn't have any crops in it.
And along the ground was lots of
different bits of pottery
which didn't really look
like they should have been
in the field at all.
So there was an orange pot
and a multicoloured pot
and there was oyster shells.
And you'd never seen anything
like that before? No.
So this was a real surprise because
I've been in and out of this field
for a long time,
since I was a teenager.
A wet winter followed by a drought
revealed previously hidden
fragments of Roman pottery,
brick and tiles.
But it was satellite images
that suggested something
really out of the ordinary.
So, just using the overhead maps
that are available on the internet,
and right in front of me, in this
field that we are standing in now,
was a crop mark that looked like
someone had drawn it
with a piece of chalk
onto my computer screen.
It looked almost like a plan
of a church or some sort of castle
or something like that.
Jim figured out where the mark was
and after getting permission,
began digging.
Pretty soon things got interesting.
My spade hit something hard.
It was the big shock, basically,
was these large tesserae,
which I now know they are.
Tesserae, Latin for cubes or dice,
are the small coloured tiles
that make up a mosaic.
There's another panel!
Jim's family soon found they had
uncovered more and more.
No, it's not the end.
Realising the scale
of his discovery,
Jim called in the professionals.
I'm just tickling it and I'm
getting some more mosaic underneath.
As further layers of earth
were removed,
part of huge and clearly very
special Roman mosaic was revealed.
Now back for the 2021 dig,
Dr John Thomas is leading
the University of Leicester
Archaeological Services team.
This is where we are going to be
digging again.
David Neal was once chief
illustrator for English Heritage.
He spent his life studying
and recording Roman mosaic art.
That's all pegged out. Right.
And you'll able to pick up
where you left off.
Yes, and I want to use
the same baselines.
They got a sneak preview last year.
Now they're back to fully excavate
and record the mosaic
in all its glory.
I mean, what an amazing site
to be involved in.
You must be itching to get back to
it this year. Really much so, yeah.
We've never seen the like of before.
Certainly in our area,
but even in Britain.
So you uncovered a good proportion
of this mosaic last year
and then realised
it was hugely significant.
I didn't hear anything about it
last year, though. No.
Once we realised
the importance of the discovery,
we really started to think we
needed to step back
and sort of gather our thoughts
a little bit, really,
and come up with a plan with which
to come back.
But the importance of it dictated
that we needed
to keep everything secret.
Although only about half
of the mosaic was uncovered,
it was enough to show
that it featured scenes
from the epic Greek tales
of the Trojan War.
David, you must know mosaics
in Britain better than anyone else.
How significant a find is this?
I would say it's the most important
mosaic to have been
found in Britain for over 100 years.
No! Yes.
And it's one of the most important
mosaics that's been found
in northern Europe,
without a shadow of doubt.
And you're not exaggerating?
This is astonishing.
So for you, it really is a
once-in-a-lifetime discovery?
It is indeed.
I mean, when it was found last year
it was quite staggering,
this mosaic.
With this painterly quality
about it.
It's unlike the majority of mosaics
in Britain.
We are looking at other areas
to try and find out how the mosaic
fits in with the building
that it sits in
but also buildings that may be
around it.
How big is this site, then?
It's It could cover
the whole field.
There's potential for a lot more.
To get a sense of what else
the Romans built here,
magnetometry and ground - penetrating
radar have been used
to create a detailed survey
of the entire field.
John, I'm blown away
by this geophysics.
I mean, it's extraordinary.
You can see so much detail.
You surely can.
I mean, this is very good
at identifying the cut features,
so the negative ditches
such as here.
These very angular ones
and these sweeping ones down here.
So this is a big building
with a mosaic in it
and it's got these
really interesting features.
Yeah, so that's part of the area
where we found the mosaic
and that's probably the area
where the owner and his guests
would have sat in the dining room,
looking out at the mosaic.
Because the orientation
of the mosaic strongly suggests
it has got to be viewed
from that way. Right.
Alongside the building
that contains the mosaic,
the geophysics reveals evidence of
walls and rooms nearby,
so a second trench is being opened.
Debbie Frearson is
the excavation supervisor.
In this early stage, we've got
This wall across here has shown up
and this ditch has shown up.
It's quite a substantial ditch.
And it goes around the whole
of the site.
And I can see that there's some
activity going on over there.
A third trench is being dug on
the opposite side of the field,
where the survey has revealed
some intriguing shapes.
Potentially, they're shrines
or temples.
So you've got a really
precious opportunity
to uncover this incredible,
this amazing mosaic,
but also, actually, to take
a much more holistic approach
and to understand more about
the whole villa complex,
what life was like here
in the Roman period?
Absolutely, yeah, and that is
the ultimate aim, really,
to give that story about this place
that is, you know, meaningful.
The first day of the excavation
is nearly over,
but Jim and Peter have managed
to get below the earth
and protective membrane
that's covered the mosaic
for the last year, and now just sand
hides the tesserae.
They must be getting close now!
Jim, I see you've put
the shovel down.
Does that mean you think
you're close?
Yeah, we're within about an inch
of the surface now, so Ooh!
ready to take a bit of sand off
if you want to have a go.
I 'd love to. Is that OK?
Yeah, sure, sure. Some tools here.
That plastic one
Where do we start, Peter?
We're in the corner,
so somewhere there,
there's the shield bearer
behind the king.
So King Priam is here somewhere.
In Homer's I liad,
Priam, King of Troy,
loses his son in battle
against the invading Greeks.
Can I kneel down on here? Yes.
Oh! Oh, my goodness!
It's just there?
It is right under the surface.
Oh, look at that.
That's amazing. So
Ah! The shield of the shield bearer.
This curving around here?
Yeah, yeah, that is his shield
running into the border here.
OK, OK, so his face is going to be
just here? Yeah, it is.
It is fabulous, isn't it?
Oh, my goodness! This is amazing!
You can look them in the face.
It's
You know, you don't get to do that
very often.
That is the face of a Trojan? Yes.
So this ought to be Priam, with a
bit of luck. This is jut fantastic!
So My heart is racing!
Amazing. Ah, hang on! Look at that!
That's Priam's face.
There we go. Oh, there he is.
There's his Phrygian cap.
Cos he was the king of Phrygia
as well as the king of Troy.
You just don't want to stop
uncovering it, do you? No.
Jim, I'm quite emotional doing this.
It's just amazing!
I feel incredibly privileged
just to be here,
to help begin to uncover it.
Nobody's seen those faces
for perhaps 1,600 years.
It's mind - blowing.
This whole site is so precious, and
I just can't wait to come back and
see how much more of this amazing
site they'll have uncovered then.
There he is!
The dig is continuing for
another two weeks,
so join me later in the show,
as I get my hands dirty
helping to unearth the rest of
this Titanic masterpiece.
Wow!
The sixth and seventh century
in southeastern Britain
is a fascinating period. We see
a distinctive culture emerging
and wonder how much of that
is influenced from abroad,
how much of it is home-grown.
And where we see that culture best
is in graves,
because the burial rite of the time
was to inter people fully clothed
with their jewellery,
with other objects.
And as we see so well
at our next dig,
each burial is like a time capsule.
This extraordinary dig site
is located on the eastern tip
of the Kent coast, just 25 miles
from continental Europe.
With the last of the Roman army
departing in 410,
the Kent coast was clear,
and history tells us of the arrival
of Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
When work recently began on
a housing development here in Deal,
it revealed over 80 graves,
some containing spectacular finds.
Among the archaeologists
who have been carefully excavating
these treasures
is Dr Andrew Richardson from
the Kent Archaeological Trust.
This extravagant burial
dates from the seventh century.
So what we've got here
probably is a woman.
And clearly,
from the objects in the grave,
this is somebody of
considerable wealth and status.
At the feet, we've got
this beautiful glass vessel.
It's almost certainly
a Kentish product,
probably produced at Faversham,
where we think the kings of Kent had
a high-status craft working centre.
So we know straight away
this individual's family
is wealthy enough to have deposited
a glass vessel like this
into this burial.
The unusual variety and quality
of the grave goods suggests
vibrant international trade or
travel in this coastal community.
Here, we've got a collection of
small yellow glass beads.
This pendant looks like it's gold
with really fine gold filigree
on it.
These are imported.
These might come from as far afield
as India, so it really encapsulates
how diverse and well-connected
Kent was at this time.
Two of the most fascinating graves
were excavated
and their contents removed
early in the dig.
Tim Allen is
lead archaeologist on-site.
In this large rectangular burial
was the skeleton of a horse
and of a large, wolf-sized dog.
Next to the two animals,
the remains of a man who seems to
have earned great respect.
He had a sword with a ring on it
and a jewel set into the sword,
which marked it as
a royal gift sword.
Perhaps the sword was bestowed by
a king or local leader
for the same fearlessness
that led to a brutal death.
The shield was placed over
the skull.
And when we lifted the boss up,
we realised why,
because the skull had been crushed
in, and it looked as if they placed
the shield over his face as a sign
of respect for the person who died
or, in this case, we suspect
was killed in battle.
In another grave,
an impressive sword is carefully
prepared for lifting.
Joe and Kirstie are now beginning
to excavate the seax.
It's called a seax.
It's more like a short sword
than a knife, or a large knife.
It's thought that the name Saxon is
actually derived from the word seax,
because possession of a knife
signified status as a free person
in early Anglo-Saxon society.
It would be suspended from a belt.
And we can see
the belt buckle there.
And we know that this is probably
a seventh-century buckle,
probably early seventh-century.
From the bones to the artefacts,
analysis of these burials will help
to paint a clearer picture
of sixth and seventh-century life
in Kent.
Many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have
been found in Kent over the years.
They come up every so often.
But there's some things here
that are exceptional.
Next, the finds need to be cleaned
and protected from the damage
moisture in the air can cause
while also uncovering
any information they may be hiding.
Expert conservator
Dana Goodburn Brown
has set herself up
in the Digging for Britain tent
to show me a few trade secrets
and some of the best finds
from the Deal dig.
Wow, Dana! I just can't believe
how many finds you've got here.
And this is just from one or two
graves? Two graves, yeah.
Two graves? Incredible. That's
amazing. Can I pick that up? Yep.
So have you started to
conserve this yet?
There's micro-evidence that's there,
so I want to really go slow
with the cleaning and understanding
it before I start cleaning it.
So your work, really,
is the next stage
in the analysis after excavation,
isn't it? Yeah.
That all these objects get carefully
packaged up, sent to your lab
Mm-hm and you start to
micro-excavate them?
Yeah.
Micro-excavation is exactly right.
But I can't go whipping off
the corrosion because,
if you look really closely,
you see all sorts of things.
Using her stereoscopic digital
microscope, Dana gently cleans
a seventh-century disc brooch
found in the grave of a woman.
I'm right now looking at a garnet.
There's different types
of beading on one brooch.
It's mind boggling.
So you can judge depth
as you're cleaning it?
I can, otherwise I would not dare
be taking even soft tools
like a thorn, because it would
be so easy to scratch.
You're using a thorn? Yeah.
A blackthorn thorn.
And I also have a porcupine quill
I try I use as well.
So, all instruments which aren't
going to scratch the surface. Yeah.
So you know you're not going to
damage it while you're cleaning it.
And when it's very hard,
then I would use my scalpel.
You can just see, yeah,
as you do it -
as you touch it
with the scalpel tip -
you can see the dirt flaking away.
Conservation's not
just about cleaning objects,
it's about analysing them,
understanding their construction,
their make-up. Absolutely.
The making is so fine,
you almost need a microscope
to see the details
of how they did it.
All the wires are handmade.
The detail's amazing.
Yeah. It's incredible.
For even greater detail,
Dana has used an electron microscope
to magnify a tiny part
of the warrior's sword handle
Eurgh! What's that?
and an unexpected guest.
I think that's a little tick, maybe.
It looks like a tick entombed
Entombed in copper.
So, we're getting all of those
kind of environmental clues.
So, we've got the artefact,
but then we've got little
micro eco-facts in there too.
I'll send samples
to a friend of mine
in organic residue analysis
so she can tell me
if there's maybe honey there or
And then we can look
at the proteins now. Yeah.
I mean, it's just wonderful.
Yeah, there's just
so much information
coming out of burials now.
I just want to have a look again
at these very beautiful objects.
I mean, that lovely pendant
What was that? What was it part of?
That was found near the sword,
so it's part
of the sword embellishments.
And again,
we've got those garnets
And the little sparkly gold foil
underneath.
Yeah. Gold around the outer cell,
and then silver on the inner cells.
It's astonishing detail.
Absolutely beautiful.
And that's just part
of what would have been
a very decorated sword fitting.
Absolutely. Yeah.
For our next dig, we're staying
with the Anglo-Saxons.
In the eighth century,
the flat marshy fenlands
of eastern England were
the perfect place to come
if you were a would - be saint
seeking out splendid isolation
to get closer to God.
But what is the reality?
Who were these medieval saints
really?
We can hope to get closer
to the truth through a combination
of archaeological
and historical research.
In the Lincolnshire Fens is a site
where, it is claimed, a hugely
influential early medieval monk
lived out his most pious years.
Here in the early eighth century,
this man achieved
Christian megastar status
for renouncing his riches
and embracing the life of a hermit.
His name was Guthlac.
After his death,
Guthlac was made a saint
and therefore ascended to heaven
to be next to God.
But back here on Earth, there's very
little hard evidence about his life.
Archaeologist Hugh Willmott is
on a mission to change that.
We know from historical sources
that, in the year 699,
Guthlac came here and lived
in splendid isolation
and built a sort of hermitage.
In the seventh century,
it would look completely different.
It would have been
quite a desolate wasteland.
So it's an ideal place
for Guthlac to come
to, sort of, seek solitude
from the world.
Hugh's team are
forensically sifting the site
for evidence dated
to Guthlac's time here -
half a mile from Crowland village -
in the early eighth century.
We've been finding
some really interesting finds
that are early medieval in date.
So, we've got some fairly typical
Anglo-Saxon pottery of the time,
which is fairly crude,
it's fairly heavy,
but it's functional
everyday ceramics.
Guthlac's home was said
to be a simple dwelling
dug into a mound
in a desolate field.
We have been finding
quite a bit of worked flint,
particularly in the,
sort of, central area of the site.
And it feeds into the Guthlac story,
because we're told
by the ancient chroniclers
that he came here
and actually made his dwelling
in the side of an old barrow,
so a prehistoric barrow, presumably.
And we are now finding evidence
for prehistoric activity here.
There may not be much to see
of Guthlac's daily life,
but excavation supervisor
Duncan Wright has uncovered
the foundations
of a large structure,
possibly built in honour of Guthlac
after he died in 714.
This appears to be the western limit
of our building.
We have a large wall
in the trench here -
that's the interior of the building.
We are particularly excited
about this structure,
because it is orientated
perfectly east-west.
It's substantially built -
built of stone.
This may well be an early
medieval church of some description.
In nearby Crowland,
a monument was built soon after
Guthlac's death at the age of 41.
The original Crowland Abbey,
rebuilt several times
over the centuries,
was founded to honour the saint.
The monks here at Crowland Abbey
held his relics,
and people would travel far and wide
to come and visit his shrine.
And you can tell
from the richness of the church
quite how much money this would
also have generated for them
through the pilgrimage trade.
This dig raises
a fascinating question -
how did this apparently
reclusive hermit become
such an important figure
in the early days
of the Christian Church in Britain?
Historian Onyeka Nubia has travelled
to Cambridge University
to investigate.
As a historian,
part of my job is to try
and unpack the fact
from the fiction.
The arcs of history are long,
and St Guthlac's life is
one of those obscure moments.
On those Lincolnshire Fens
in Crowland all the way till now,
1,300 years later, we are
still talking about this man.
This simple hermit's life led
to the creation
of a key site
of Christian pilgrimage,
later promoted by one book.
It was written
shortly after Guthlac died in 714,
by a monk called Felix.
It's incredibly rare,
and Dr Philippa Hoskin
of the Faculty of Divinity has
agreed to show me a copy.
So, Philippa, I'm interested
in learning about Guthlac's journey.
Where did he start? Who was he?
And why did he end up being
this saint?
Well, to start with,
he's the son of a nobleman.
And when he's about 15,
we can see from what he tells us
in this book -
"..et iuvenni inpectore'"
And his young heart is
filled with desire for
"..dominatio'" For power.
It says ' "love'", doesn't it?
Is that quite strong -
to say that he had a love for power?
Yes. So, he becomes a warlord,
if you like.
And he starts going out and raiding,
he gets money, booty,
more people who follow him.
Oh. So this is
what he's doing as a young man.
And then he has a revelation, is it?
After nine years,
he gives up what he's doing
and he goes to live in a monastery.
There's an old idea
that to want to be poor,
you have to be rich
in the first place.
Because no-one wants
to actually be poor who's poor.
It's only the rich
that want to be poor -
they think
that there's some virtue in it.
Yeah, it's about renunciation,
isn't it?
He's experienced that secular power,
and he can go
and look for something else.
The book tells us that Guthlac found
the life of a medieval monk
still too indulgent,
so he seeks
a closer connection to God.
It says here,
' "..luminatio cordis gremio.'"
' " Luminatio'" is a fantastic word,
isn't it?
Obviously we get the English word
' "illumination'" from it,
but it's almost
like he's seen the light.
Yes, he has.
It says he wants to go into
the ' "heorteum'" - into the desert.
Of course, this is Lincolnshire,
and he decides that he's going
to be this, sort of, hermit.
So, he wants to be
in touch with nature
because he feels it will make him
closer to God?
He wants to struggle,
he wants to suffer.
It is Guthlac's sacrifice
as a hermit that makes him famous,
including the most frugal diet
possible.
' "..lutulente aquae'"
It's a muddy, horrible water.
'" Pants'" is bread, isn't it?
'" Pants'" is bread.
He's eating tiny bits of bread.
So this text is going into a lot
of detail about what he's wearing
Yeah what he's consuming,
and how he's living.
To paint a picture for us
that this is someone
who's living an ascetic lifestyle.
A lifestyle that are
like the saints. Yes, absolutely.
You know somebody is a saint
because they behave like a saint.
So this book would draw people
to Crowland.
It's an advert for a pilgrimage
that includes Crowland.
It's almost a road map to divinity.
Absolutely.
This account of Guthlac's life,
written so soon after his death,
is advertising to the faithful
that giving up your possessions
brings you closer to God.
And what better way to give them up
than by giving them to the Church
in the name of Guthlac?
So, within a few centuries,
from obscure lives like St Guthlac,
the English Church became part
of an international economic,
political powerhouse.
It's time to journey
back to the East Midlands
and the site where we started off
our archaeological tour -
our very special Roman mosaic dig
in a farmer's wheat field.
Come with me, John.
But attention has shifted
from the small piece of mosaic
I helped uncover
when I first visited.
I'll show you what your task is
for the day.
That's because there's big news -
digging on the rest of the mosaic
is on hold
thanks to a new discovery
in the layers above it.
So, the chances are that in here,
although we can't see it yet,
we've actually got a grave cut.
If there is a grave here,
there could well be human bone,
so the team must proceed cautiously
to avoid destroying vital evidence.
Jen Browning is
in charge of the dig team.
It's actually quite exciting,
because we've discovered the remains
of a human body, basically.
These remains could hold clues
to the people
who occupied this site
after the original villa's owners.
The villa has fallen down
or been demolished,
and the burial is
actually on top of that.
So it's likely to be very late Roman
or possibly Saxon.
So, really exciting stuff for us.
Ah, now, it's broken.
This is going into the box.
Hopefully the rest will
just lift off.
One of the more unexpected
discoveries has been made
by former county archaeologist
Peter Liddle.
One bizarre thing is the skull was
entirely full of snails.
So, all of those came out
from inside the skull.
But I have never seen that
inside a skull before.
So, whether we have vicious
brain-eating snails in Rutland,
I'm not sure.
Which is a little bit weird.
I am a human bone expert,
so whenever I hear about burials,
my ears prick up.
And I've had a chat to John and Jen,
and they are very happy for me
to start having a look at the bones
which emerged
from that main room in the villa.
They're very fragmentary,
but if we wash them,
I might be able to tell something
about the people
that were buried here
once the villa fell into disuse.
So, you actually excavated
these bones, didn't you?
Yeah, I did.
I found part of the skull
as we were cleaning back the soil.
And do you think it was just one
burial? We think it might be two.
Yeah. Because we could see
four sets of legs.
Right, OK.
What looks like a tray
of random bones might tell us
some revealing details about
who the two people buried here were.
Trying to organise things
by region of the body,
so we've got a really nice set
of bones from the hand here.
Metacarpals,
which are in the palm of the hand.
And then we've also got
some of these phalanges,
which are the finger bones.
So, there's a whole set of finger
bones there, that's rather nice.
And then we've also got
a nice bit of the jaw.
So, I'm noticing a difference here.
Are you noticing a difference
in the teeth that we're getting?
Those ones seem very worn. Yeah.
So, these anterior teeth
are completely worn down.
And in this jawbone,
there's a space here where, in fact,
the molars have gone,
and they've gone
a long time before death.
This bone has had a chance to
essentially heal over those sockets.
So this is probably
quite an elderly person.
As opposed to
So, that's a premolar there,
and that's another premolar.
Oh, yeah,
there's a lot less wear on that.
So I suspect we've got
an older person here,
and a much younger person here.
So, it is useful. I know it's
painstaking, isn't it, doing this?
But it is actually all very useful,
because to be able to
hopefully look at age and sex
and other bits of pathology
as well
Just start to give these people
a bit of biography,
a bit of identity. Yeah.
With bones still emerging
out of the ground
and progress on the mosaic still
stalled, I catch up with
what's been discovered
in the mosaic's neighbouring trench.
I've got to be quite careful
about where I tread here.
But I've been told I can go down
this little ramp
and tread on this area.
I don't want to walk over anything
that's just been cleaned.
Jeremy. Hi. Hello.
Jeremy Taylor from
Leicester University is supervising
this part of the dig. Welcome.
This looks exciting.
You've very definitely
got walls here.
Yes, and quite a complicated
array of them as well.
So, what have you got here then?
You've got a room here that you're
standing in. That's right.
And essentially, if you see running
across the trench pretty much
where you're standing right
the way across,
is the northern end of a large
stone built building,
probably from east to west,
round about 14, 15 metres long. Mm.
Who would've lived
in a place like this, Jeremy?
In all probability, you know,
a very wealthy Roman landowner,
a regional double noble, notable.
Somebody who's a very powerful
individual in local society.
It's fascinating, isn't it?
Because you're getting a glimpse
of stratification of Roman society.
Absolutely.
Places like this are very important.
Not just as a country seat to bring
your friends and other peers to,
but also it's a fundamental part of
who you are and maintaining
your status and wealth.
So, at the moment we've got this
large main building
with the fantastic mosaic in it.
Yep.
That's where the landowner and
perhaps his family are living. Yeah.
I think this is where he's
installed his mother-in-law.
Possibly, although I hope
we haven't found her.
It's clear that the scale of
Roman building on this site
was impressive.
And, itching to get another
look at that mosaic,
I've found a way to see how part of
it may once have looked.
Ooh! So, this is the drawing
you made on site last year?
Yes. It's drawn at a 1:10 scale
using a 1 metre drawing grid.
And then painted,
tesserae by tesserae.
David Neal has spent decades
painstakingly recording
Roman mosaics, and then
painting them by hand
to reveal their original glory.
It's mind blowing, the detail.
So, how many tesserae
are represented in this
part of the mosaic that's
already been uncovered?
Well, I should think in that section
there are at least 60,000,
at a guess. Yeah.
I suspect we may have to paint
yet another 30-40,000 tesserae.
Oh, my goodness. And you are
painting them individually? Yes.
Was it obvious to you as soon as
you saw the mosaic
that it was a story of
the Trojan War?
Yes, it is clearly the Trojan War.
From what we've seen so far,
the mosaic appears to be a dramatic
illustration of what is
perhaps the Trojan war's
bloodiest passage -
when the Greek warrior Achilles
kills the Trojan prince Hector
then drags his corpse around Troy,
finally demanding that Hector's
grieving father King Priam
pays his son's weight in gold
for the return of the body.
Is that a common
theme for a Roman mosaic?
There are some subjects,
various aspects of the Trojan War,
but it would just be
one small scene.
Here you've got these three scenes,
and this is what is remarkable
about it.
So that's completely unique?
Yes. Yeah.
David is having to be
just as patient as me,
as, tantalisingly, I'm going
to leave the team to it
for a few more days.
But when I return, I'll be helping
David uncover the entire mosaic,
revealing the whole story
of what those Romans
left behind in this field
over 1,600 years ago.
We dig for the gods that
leave no bones
For the ship that sailed
in the sunken sea
There's a lot to discarded stones
The famine road,
and the merchants keep. ♪
The fertile fields of eastern
England have long sustained
the cereal crops needed to make that
elixir of medieval life - ale.
Vast quantities of it must've
been produced and drunk.
But how is it made
and what did it taste like?
We catch up with some archaeologists
on a quest to answer
those very important questions.
We now make our way back east
to the coast of North Norfolk
and the village of Sedgeford.
With Roman influence waning,
a new culture started to emerge
in early fifth century Britain -
a culture linked to Germanic
tribes across the North Sea
and incomers bringing with them
new habits and customs.
In 2013, archaeologist
Dr Ellie Blakelock
found a settlement
after a geophysical survey
revealed intriguing evidence in the
corner of a field in Sedgeford.
Since then, an annual summer dig
for volunteer archaeologists
has been helping piece together
what once happened here.
We found some hot spots that
suggested that there was some
form of hot working process.
We originally thought it was going
to be iron working,
but when we actually excavated
and started working on the site
we realised quite quickly that
they were nothing to do with
metalworking,
they were something else.
In fact, Ellie had discovered
an industry
of a completely different kind.
It turns out this massive site was
part of a huge malting operation,
used to make the vital
ingredient for the most popular
drink of Anglo-Saxon times - ale.
What we have here is
we have a steeping tank.
Now, this is a clay-lined structure
and we think that there were
originally sides to it here,
and another one that's
actually on this side here.
Steeping the harvested grain in
this water tank was the first step
of the malting process.
What you do is you lower
your grain into this water,
and it soaks into the grain and it
starts the germination process,
which is so important for
the beer making process.
Buried in the ground, Ellie's found
evidence of tools that show
what a large scale
operation this was.
And what we have here is
we have a wonderful iron hook
and they would've used that to
lever the grain into the water
and take it back up again.
The soaked grain was then
spread across this clay floor
to continue germinating.
So, waiting for the little shoots
and the little rootlets
to start forming in the grain,
and that tells them that it's
starting to build up sugars
and starch, and that is what's
really, really useful
and important for the malt and
for actual creating your beer.
At least five kilns have also
been found on the site.
These would've been used to dry
the malted grain,
stopping germination.
One reveals an incredible link to
the maltsters of the distant past.
But what's really remarkable
about it is you can actually see
the fingerprints
and smears of the Anglo-Saxons
from when they actually repaired
the kiln, and it's so nice
to be able to almost touch
and feel the people in the past.
In a fascinating effort
to reveal even more
about the ancient
Anglo-Saxon malting process here,
PhD student Hannah Carrow is using
a flotation tank to separate out
burnt grains unearthed at the site.
Right, so here we have a bucket
of sediment from the north end
of Kiln 2.
I'm just going to put
some of it into the tank here.
And burnt seeds, which are light,
float to the surface of the water
and then they collect in the bucket
and you can begin to see
a piece of some charcoal and some
seeds down there, which is exciting.
Hannah can now identify
exactly which cereal grains
were used to make the malt
using a microscope.
So, quite excitingly, these grains
are 1,200 years old
from the Middle Saxon times.
So, we've got here
There's a big barley grain quite
badly damaged down there.
So, this is a wheat grain.
This is the most common
wheat grown today
and also in the Anglo-Saxon period.
And lots of rye, the most common
kind of grain at Sedgeford.
It's unusual to find a site with
such a high proportion of rye.
So, that's interesting.
The discovery of these three cereal
crops has led archaeologists
to one conclusion.
We find all three types of grain,
the rye, the wheat and barley,
in pretty much every single sample
from Sedgeford,
which potentially suggests that they
were being grown together
in one field and harvested together
and then malted together
to make beer, which was made from
all three types of grain.
The high proportion of rye is
unusual in British malting,
and it could say something about the
ancient ale makers of North Norfolk.
The fact we've got the rye here
does suggest that link back
to their ancestral homelands,
where they're using rye
on a more regular basis,
and it probably suggests
that what's happening is the
Anglo-Saxons have brought across
their technology for beer making
and for malt making,
and what we're seeing is the
continuation of that process.
Perhaps the best way to understand
the effect of using all that rye
is to brew some ale with it.
Dr Stewart Prior has come
to meet an expert home-brewer
to get a taste of the past.
Now I like and ale as much as the
next early medieval archaeologist.
So understanding the Saxon brewing
process feels like perfect
experimental archaeology to me.
Hi, John. Hello, Stuart.
Nice fire you've got going.
I understand you're
a Saxon brewing historian? Yes.
I've done a few early medieval brews
based on the best part of six months
of evenings in the Imperial College,
in libraries,
exploring various old books
and reference books
which were in the back, and came up
with an idea of some recipes.
You've got some beer for me to try?
I have indeed, just here.
Excuse the container. OK.
This has travelled a bit,
so it's got a bit cloudy.
John's research led him to create
an Anglo-Saxon ale recipe that,
unlike the Sedgeford blend,
uses plenty of barley
but zero rye.
The barley ale is
flavoured with honey
and a plant the Anglo-Saxons
found on river banks and on marshes,
bog myrtle.
Cor, that's not bad, is it?
It's a nice brew. That's not bad.
Wow, that's actually really sweet.
It is. The honey does that.
It's not meant to get you drunk.
It's meant to be
a nice pleasant drink.
It is pleasant. Yeah.
I'm surprised at how good it is.
John's going to recreate a beer
based on the unusual grain ratios
found at Sedgeford.
10% barley, 20% wheat and 70% rye.
So, this is the rye? Two thirds rye,
yes. Two thirds rye? Yeah.
And here is crushed rye.
Rye is much more unusual in brewing.
This makes the product?
Yes, if you smell that, it's got
a really aromatic smell to it.
It smells like, well, beer! Exactly!
And that will infuse
into the liquid.
We put it with the water
and the flavourants.
And that would have made a fairly
good beer? I'm not sure. As I say,
I've always done single brews. So, it'll be
interesting to see what it comes out like.
Next, John has to steep
his mix of crushed grains.
So, you've got your three grains.
I have indeed. There's the rye.
There's the barley,
and here is the wheat.
You let it simmer for about an hour
and a half to two hours.
After cooling
and fermenting for four days,
John's experimental Sedgeford
rye ale will be ready to drink.
Taste that.
But in another time-honoured
tradition, here's one he made earlier.
It's definitely drinkable.
I prefer it to water,
but it's very earthy. Very earthy.
Yes, it would need flavouring.
So this is a good way of protecting
your health,
as well as providing you Yeah.
And also, boiling it
would kill off any parasites
the water has picked up
through storage, or whatever else,
of course.
I'll just try it again,
just to make sure.
It's going to taste nicer
the more I've drunk!
As the night goes on.
Yeah, certainly.
Whether or not the Anglo-Saxons
knew it was the boiling
that made their beer
safer to drink than water,
it's fascinating they malted their
grain on such an industrial scale
at Sedgeford.
Cheers. Cheers.
The rye-rich brew isn't
quite as moreish as John's
sweetly flavoured
Anglo-Saxon barley ale.
It's definitely strong.
But at least it's not going
to kill me.
Thank God I'm not driving home!
Honestly, it is strong!
Our Anglo-Saxon digs
have given us glimpses
into lifestyles and characters
from those early medieval centuries.
Fascinating weaponry
and jewellery, certainly.
But very little
evidence of interior decoration.
Thankfully, those show offs,
the Romans, have compensated,
as I returned to perhaps
the most extraordinary find ever
to feature on Digging for Britain.
Right, I'm back in this field.
I was here about two weeks ago,
just starting to uncover
that amazing mosaic.
And this site was promising to be
maybe the most significant
Roman discovery in Britain
for at least the last few decades.
I can't wait to see if it's
living up to those expectations.
Jim, hello. Hi.
Farmer's son Jim
discovered the mosaic in 2020.
It's taken until now to get
this unique piece of art history
back open.
I'm tingling
with anticipation here, Jim.
Oh, look at this.
It's my first proper look at what's
hoped is around half of the mosaic.
Wow!
Gosh, it is big, isn't it?
That's the - that's the part
I helped you uncover two weeks ago,
just there.
There's so much colour, isn't there?
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
I mean, to you this is just one
of the fields on the family farm.
You're really familiar with it.
And then suddenly it's not just
one of the fields. What have we got?
It's Yeah, incredible.
Really, really incredible.
Right. I'm going to go and have
a chat to John. Where is he?
He's over there, isn't he? Yeah.
Enjoy.
I'll catch up with you in a bit.
With this half of the mosaic
back out in the open, it should be
possible to start exposing more,
if indeed it survives,
and hopefully, we'll see more
imagery from this legendary moment
in Greek mythology, the brutal
slaying of Hector by Achilles
during the Trojan War.
John.
John Thomas is overseeing
this delicate operation.
It's amazing.
It's wonderful to see a mosaic
coming up like this.
And you're finding new bits of it?
We're getting new bits.
We are moving into the apse,
and we're moving across the room
into the areas
that we excavated last year.
So, do you think that this mosaic
is all the way up to that wall
over there? That's what
we're hoping? Really?! Yeah, yeah.
I mean, basically what we're seeing
is a sort of design,
like a comic strip, really.
Three panels telling the story.
I'm kind of itching to get in there,
actually.
Do you need more help?
That would be grateful, yeah.
Yeah, OK! I think we've got enough
shovels for everybody here, haven't we?!
Everyone's on a mission to get
the rest of the earth cleared
as soon as possible.
So this is the scene from the Iliad,
the end of the battle.
This is really exciting now.
So, this is the body of Hector
that we've got coming up here.
Mosaic artist David Neal,
who, at the age of 80,
seems to be working harder
than just about anybody here,
is letting me uncover what we hope
is the face of a dead Hector.
There's his abdomen.
These are wounds on his abdomen.
He's got wounds on his chest.
And under here, we're
expecting to find the head.
It's the face of Hector.
There are the eyes Oh! Wonderful.
just coming up. It may have
chewed into the next panel.
That will be interesting if it does.
There he is.
His eyes and his nose.
Where Hector, who I think might be
dead at this point, is being dragged
behind the chariot of Achilles,
dragged around the walls of Troy.
And you can see his body here.
His legs have disappeared
in that area of damage,
but we can see
his arm coming up here.
The archaeologists had feared
the large patch of what appears
to be fire damage in the middle
could run all the way across.
But with each new perfectly
preserved tessera we reveal,
the picture becomes clearer
in all its gory detail.
David, how common is it for mosaics
to have figures on?
It's quite rare.
You get little scenes
where you've got one or two figures
in isolation, in separate panels.
Yeah.
Various mosaics around Britain.
But nothing on this scale. Really?
Nothing at all. Here, you've got
the whole story Yeah.
spread out. Yeah.
That is fascinating,
because, you know, what we're
seeing here is the archaeology
that survives and it's hinting
at a much richer material culture.
Yes, yes. All the paper that we
don't get. Very sophisticated. Yeah.
Obviously a very educated man
who owned this. Mm. Yes.
Somebody who could read the story.
Read the story,
in both perhaps Greek and Latin.
Yeah.
Once again, we've got this
astonishing preservation here,
where luck has played a huge role.
We had a face of Achilles there,
which had barely survived,
being lost forever, with an area
of damage which came
right up to his forehead,
and we've got exactly
the same thing here with Hector.
At last, the final crumbs of earth
are brushed away.
It's time for David to demonstrate
one of his tricks of the trade.
When you pour water, I want that
amount of water poured in.
But no more.
And then, you've got to come to me
with the water.
This unique rapid mosaic washing
technique rinses away the dust
and brightens
the tesserae's colours.
Finally, after perhaps 1,600 years,
human eyes can once again
appreciate the craftsmanship and
artistry of this dining room floor.
What's extraordinary is that
although we've got areas of damage,
we can still see what
each of those panels represents.
Yes. This is the story of the climax
of the Trojan War.
Yes.
Tell me what we are looking at here.
Well, the first panel is the contest
between Achilles and Hector.
Hector, the Trojan prince,
facing off Achilles with the Greeks.
Hector, over on the right-hand side.
And then we've got that magnificent
chariot that Achilles is driving.
That's right.
And even though a lot of Achilles is
missing, his face survives.
His face survives.
And what I like is the fact
that the horses are represented
in different colours, both sides.
And then in the middle,
Achilles wins,
and Hector's body's being dragged
around the walls of Troy,
and Priam pleading with Achilles
to be merciful.
So, Priam is the king of Troy
He is the king of Troy.
and this is his son.
That's his son.
He's seeing his body being dragged
around the walls of Troy.
And, of course, Achilles is not
going to let him have the body back
without his weight in gold.
And we are looking at
a brutal Bronze Age story.
Yes, really nasty.
And then the final scene represents
King Priam has come
to Achilles' camp
with the gold to recover the body.
We have these three wonderful scenes
of the Iliad, and it's
quite amazing.
And we are seeing it in all its
glory.
You must be so pleased, John.
Absolutely.
And there is much more of it than
we could have hoped for, really.
At the beginning of the dig,
you were suggesting, David,
that this was an incredibly
significant discovery.
You've seen so many Roman mosaics
over the course of your career -
why is this one so special?
It's figured, it's animated,
it's a copy of or pages of a book,
it's telling us so much, not just
I mean, it's joyous to look at,
but it's telling us so much
about the villa proprietor,
I think that's wonderful.
And it's probably one of the finest
mosaics in northern Europe
on this theme.
What is so astounding about this
is that nobody had any idea
that this villa was here,
that this extraordinary mosaic was
here,
and now, this year,
with it fully uncovered,
we can see the story,
and it is a story, it's not just
decoration, it's a story that's been
passed down through generations,
and here we are in an English
field so far away from Troy,
revealing this story again.
So we might think we know everything
about Roman Britain,
but we are only just starting
to uncover the story right here.
Next time on Digging For Britain,
on Salisbury Plain,
some 3,000-year-old holes
have got archaeologists stumped
I'm convinced
we've got a roundhouse here,
it's just a bit confusing
at the moment.
a village on the banks of the
Thames reveals
perhaps Britain's oldest money
So, these are among some
of the first coins made in Britain.
and the mystery of a derelict
church is finally solved
with the discovery of some
truly head -turning treasures.
I just can't believe that's just
come out of the ground
while I'm here. I'm so excited.
Come and search for,
we would search
And looking for a scarred land
And dig for us as we have done
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪
Everywhere you look, the rich
history of the United Kingdom
is there to be seen.
But hidden beneath our feet,
there is still a wealth
of archaeological treasure
just waiting to be found.
That's why each year,
up and down the country,
our archaeologists dig down,
searching for fresh discoveries.
Another one.
Revealing the imprint
of ancient civilisations
We are looking at a completely
unknown Roman town. That's crazy.
and unearthing priceless objects.
Might be a pendant.
Oh, yeah, I can see that.
This is something special, isn't it?
Yeah, I've not seen anything
like it so far.
Every dig adds new pieces to the
ever-growing
archaeological jigsaw
Do you want to come and have a look?
that is the epic story
of our islands.
It's been an extraordinary year
full of challenges,
and yet I've been able to visit
so many exciting digs
up and down the country.
Oh, my goodness!
There have been spine-tingling
discoveries to witness.
That is the face of a Trojan. Yes.
My heart is racing.
I'm even getting a chance
to use a trowel myself.
I'm joined by a trio
of expert investigators
I can actually see
the texture of the weave,
and it's 1,600 years old.
It's amazing that a small
DNA sample like this
can tell a really big story.
as they dig deeper for answers.
The same technique
as the Romans used? Exactly.
Finally, the archaeologists bring
their best finds into the studio
Whisk that away.
You can see that this object
has had a life of its own.
for up-close analysis.
It's astonishing detail.
Welcome to Digging for Britain.
In this special episode
we are in the east of England,
where I'm lucky enough to join in
uncovering a spectacular
and internationally important
piece of Roman art.
From under a crop of wheat,
one of the most jaw-dropping finds
ever featured on
Digging for Britain.
So much colour.
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
A Saxon burial in Kent
shows the brutality
of a seventh century death.
When we lifted the boss up,
we realised the skull had been
crushed in.
And in Norfolk we get to taste ale
just how the Anglo-Saxons made it.
Thank God I'm not driving home!
Across Britain, on hillsides
and in town squares,
the indelible evidence of Roman rule
is there for all to see.
Dedicated archaeologists
have spent whole lifetimes
piecing together evidence.
Whether reconstructing
once great buildings
or studying priceless possessions,
this work has created a vivid
portrait of Roman Britain.
It's such a well trodden
field of study.
It's fascinated antiquarians
and archaeologists for centuries.
And you could be forgiven
for thinking that there wasn't
much new left to discover.
Well, think again.
The Roman occupation of Britain
was an era of intense activity
lasting almost four centuries.
The Romans built to last, but
periods of great upheaval followed
and England's fertile soil
has been tilled and repurposed
for so many centuries since
that sites revealing completely new
Roman treasures are rare to find.
Which is partly why this
dig at a secret location
just west of Peterborough
has got the experts very excited.
The Romans always keep
archaeologists on their toes,
and just last year, in this field,
the most amazing Roman mosaic
was found.
And then it's lain, safely
covered up by this crop of wheat
until now, you can
see the wheat being harvested.
The same family has farmed this land
for 60 years,
never realising what lay
just beneath the surface.
When farmer's son Jim
first found the mosaic,
it was only partly revealed.
Now, Jim is back to help
uncover it in full.
So, Jim, you discovered this.
You made this discovery.
Tell me about it. How did it happen?
Last year, 2020, during lockdown
we brought the kids to the field
so we could get out of the house.
There was a whole palaver
with a load of angry bees
which meant that we couldn't
go back the way we came
and we ended up having to go along
the field boundary,
which didn't have any crops in it.
And along the ground was lots of
different bits of pottery
which didn't really look
like they should have been
in the field at all.
So there was an orange pot
and a multicoloured pot
and there was oyster shells.
And you'd never seen anything
like that before? No.
So this was a real surprise because
I've been in and out of this field
for a long time,
since I was a teenager.
A wet winter followed by a drought
revealed previously hidden
fragments of Roman pottery,
brick and tiles.
But it was satellite images
that suggested something
really out of the ordinary.
So, just using the overhead maps
that are available on the internet,
and right in front of me, in this
field that we are standing in now,
was a crop mark that looked like
someone had drawn it
with a piece of chalk
onto my computer screen.
It looked almost like a plan
of a church or some sort of castle
or something like that.
Jim figured out where the mark was
and after getting permission,
began digging.
Pretty soon things got interesting.
My spade hit something hard.
It was the big shock, basically,
was these large tesserae,
which I now know they are.
Tesserae, Latin for cubes or dice,
are the small coloured tiles
that make up a mosaic.
There's another panel!
Jim's family soon found they had
uncovered more and more.
No, it's not the end.
Realising the scale
of his discovery,
Jim called in the professionals.
I'm just tickling it and I'm
getting some more mosaic underneath.
As further layers of earth
were removed,
part of huge and clearly very
special Roman mosaic was revealed.
Now back for the 2021 dig,
Dr John Thomas is leading
the University of Leicester
Archaeological Services team.
This is where we are going to be
digging again.
David Neal was once chief
illustrator for English Heritage.
He spent his life studying
and recording Roman mosaic art.
That's all pegged out. Right.
And you'll able to pick up
where you left off.
Yes, and I want to use
the same baselines.
They got a sneak preview last year.
Now they're back to fully excavate
and record the mosaic
in all its glory.
I mean, what an amazing site
to be involved in.
You must be itching to get back to
it this year. Really much so, yeah.
We've never seen the like of before.
Certainly in our area,
but even in Britain.
So you uncovered a good proportion
of this mosaic last year
and then realised
it was hugely significant.
I didn't hear anything about it
last year, though. No.
Once we realised
the importance of the discovery,
we really started to think we
needed to step back
and sort of gather our thoughts
a little bit, really,
and come up with a plan with which
to come back.
But the importance of it dictated
that we needed
to keep everything secret.
Although only about half
of the mosaic was uncovered,
it was enough to show
that it featured scenes
from the epic Greek tales
of the Trojan War.
David, you must know mosaics
in Britain better than anyone else.
How significant a find is this?
I would say it's the most important
mosaic to have been
found in Britain for over 100 years.
No! Yes.
And it's one of the most important
mosaics that's been found
in northern Europe,
without a shadow of doubt.
And you're not exaggerating?
This is astonishing.
So for you, it really is a
once-in-a-lifetime discovery?
It is indeed.
I mean, when it was found last year
it was quite staggering,
this mosaic.
With this painterly quality
about it.
It's unlike the majority of mosaics
in Britain.
We are looking at other areas
to try and find out how the mosaic
fits in with the building
that it sits in
but also buildings that may be
around it.
How big is this site, then?
It's It could cover
the whole field.
There's potential for a lot more.
To get a sense of what else
the Romans built here,
magnetometry and ground - penetrating
radar have been used
to create a detailed survey
of the entire field.
John, I'm blown away
by this geophysics.
I mean, it's extraordinary.
You can see so much detail.
You surely can.
I mean, this is very good
at identifying the cut features,
so the negative ditches
such as here.
These very angular ones
and these sweeping ones down here.
So this is a big building
with a mosaic in it
and it's got these
really interesting features.
Yeah, so that's part of the area
where we found the mosaic
and that's probably the area
where the owner and his guests
would have sat in the dining room,
looking out at the mosaic.
Because the orientation
of the mosaic strongly suggests
it has got to be viewed
from that way. Right.
Alongside the building
that contains the mosaic,
the geophysics reveals evidence of
walls and rooms nearby,
so a second trench is being opened.
Debbie Frearson is
the excavation supervisor.
In this early stage, we've got
This wall across here has shown up
and this ditch has shown up.
It's quite a substantial ditch.
And it goes around the whole
of the site.
And I can see that there's some
activity going on over there.
A third trench is being dug on
the opposite side of the field,
where the survey has revealed
some intriguing shapes.
Potentially, they're shrines
or temples.
So you've got a really
precious opportunity
to uncover this incredible,
this amazing mosaic,
but also, actually, to take
a much more holistic approach
and to understand more about
the whole villa complex,
what life was like here
in the Roman period?
Absolutely, yeah, and that is
the ultimate aim, really,
to give that story about this place
that is, you know, meaningful.
The first day of the excavation
is nearly over,
but Jim and Peter have managed
to get below the earth
and protective membrane
that's covered the mosaic
for the last year, and now just sand
hides the tesserae.
They must be getting close now!
Jim, I see you've put
the shovel down.
Does that mean you think
you're close?
Yeah, we're within about an inch
of the surface now, so Ooh!
ready to take a bit of sand off
if you want to have a go.
I 'd love to. Is that OK?
Yeah, sure, sure. Some tools here.
That plastic one
Where do we start, Peter?
We're in the corner,
so somewhere there,
there's the shield bearer
behind the king.
So King Priam is here somewhere.
In Homer's I liad,
Priam, King of Troy,
loses his son in battle
against the invading Greeks.
Can I kneel down on here? Yes.
Oh! Oh, my goodness!
It's just there?
It is right under the surface.
Oh, look at that.
That's amazing. So
Ah! The shield of the shield bearer.
This curving around here?
Yeah, yeah, that is his shield
running into the border here.
OK, OK, so his face is going to be
just here? Yeah, it is.
It is fabulous, isn't it?
Oh, my goodness! This is amazing!
You can look them in the face.
It's
You know, you don't get to do that
very often.
That is the face of a Trojan? Yes.
So this ought to be Priam, with a
bit of luck. This is jut fantastic!
So My heart is racing!
Amazing. Ah, hang on! Look at that!
That's Priam's face.
There we go. Oh, there he is.
There's his Phrygian cap.
Cos he was the king of Phrygia
as well as the king of Troy.
You just don't want to stop
uncovering it, do you? No.
Jim, I'm quite emotional doing this.
It's just amazing!
I feel incredibly privileged
just to be here,
to help begin to uncover it.
Nobody's seen those faces
for perhaps 1,600 years.
It's mind - blowing.
This whole site is so precious, and
I just can't wait to come back and
see how much more of this amazing
site they'll have uncovered then.
There he is!
The dig is continuing for
another two weeks,
so join me later in the show,
as I get my hands dirty
helping to unearth the rest of
this Titanic masterpiece.
Wow!
The sixth and seventh century
in southeastern Britain
is a fascinating period. We see
a distinctive culture emerging
and wonder how much of that
is influenced from abroad,
how much of it is home-grown.
And where we see that culture best
is in graves,
because the burial rite of the time
was to inter people fully clothed
with their jewellery,
with other objects.
And as we see so well
at our next dig,
each burial is like a time capsule.
This extraordinary dig site
is located on the eastern tip
of the Kent coast, just 25 miles
from continental Europe.
With the last of the Roman army
departing in 410,
the Kent coast was clear,
and history tells us of the arrival
of Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
When work recently began on
a housing development here in Deal,
it revealed over 80 graves,
some containing spectacular finds.
Among the archaeologists
who have been carefully excavating
these treasures
is Dr Andrew Richardson from
the Kent Archaeological Trust.
This extravagant burial
dates from the seventh century.
So what we've got here
probably is a woman.
And clearly,
from the objects in the grave,
this is somebody of
considerable wealth and status.
At the feet, we've got
this beautiful glass vessel.
It's almost certainly
a Kentish product,
probably produced at Faversham,
where we think the kings of Kent had
a high-status craft working centre.
So we know straight away
this individual's family
is wealthy enough to have deposited
a glass vessel like this
into this burial.
The unusual variety and quality
of the grave goods suggests
vibrant international trade or
travel in this coastal community.
Here, we've got a collection of
small yellow glass beads.
This pendant looks like it's gold
with really fine gold filigree
on it.
These are imported.
These might come from as far afield
as India, so it really encapsulates
how diverse and well-connected
Kent was at this time.
Two of the most fascinating graves
were excavated
and their contents removed
early in the dig.
Tim Allen is
lead archaeologist on-site.
In this large rectangular burial
was the skeleton of a horse
and of a large, wolf-sized dog.
Next to the two animals,
the remains of a man who seems to
have earned great respect.
He had a sword with a ring on it
and a jewel set into the sword,
which marked it as
a royal gift sword.
Perhaps the sword was bestowed by
a king or local leader
for the same fearlessness
that led to a brutal death.
The shield was placed over
the skull.
And when we lifted the boss up,
we realised why,
because the skull had been crushed
in, and it looked as if they placed
the shield over his face as a sign
of respect for the person who died
or, in this case, we suspect
was killed in battle.
In another grave,
an impressive sword is carefully
prepared for lifting.
Joe and Kirstie are now beginning
to excavate the seax.
It's called a seax.
It's more like a short sword
than a knife, or a large knife.
It's thought that the name Saxon is
actually derived from the word seax,
because possession of a knife
signified status as a free person
in early Anglo-Saxon society.
It would be suspended from a belt.
And we can see
the belt buckle there.
And we know that this is probably
a seventh-century buckle,
probably early seventh-century.
From the bones to the artefacts,
analysis of these burials will help
to paint a clearer picture
of sixth and seventh-century life
in Kent.
Many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have
been found in Kent over the years.
They come up every so often.
But there's some things here
that are exceptional.
Next, the finds need to be cleaned
and protected from the damage
moisture in the air can cause
while also uncovering
any information they may be hiding.
Expert conservator
Dana Goodburn Brown
has set herself up
in the Digging for Britain tent
to show me a few trade secrets
and some of the best finds
from the Deal dig.
Wow, Dana! I just can't believe
how many finds you've got here.
And this is just from one or two
graves? Two graves, yeah.
Two graves? Incredible. That's
amazing. Can I pick that up? Yep.
So have you started to
conserve this yet?
There's micro-evidence that's there,
so I want to really go slow
with the cleaning and understanding
it before I start cleaning it.
So your work, really,
is the next stage
in the analysis after excavation,
isn't it? Yeah.
That all these objects get carefully
packaged up, sent to your lab
Mm-hm and you start to
micro-excavate them?
Yeah.
Micro-excavation is exactly right.
But I can't go whipping off
the corrosion because,
if you look really closely,
you see all sorts of things.
Using her stereoscopic digital
microscope, Dana gently cleans
a seventh-century disc brooch
found in the grave of a woman.
I'm right now looking at a garnet.
There's different types
of beading on one brooch.
It's mind boggling.
So you can judge depth
as you're cleaning it?
I can, otherwise I would not dare
be taking even soft tools
like a thorn, because it would
be so easy to scratch.
You're using a thorn? Yeah.
A blackthorn thorn.
And I also have a porcupine quill
I try I use as well.
So, all instruments which aren't
going to scratch the surface. Yeah.
So you know you're not going to
damage it while you're cleaning it.
And when it's very hard,
then I would use my scalpel.
You can just see, yeah,
as you do it -
as you touch it
with the scalpel tip -
you can see the dirt flaking away.
Conservation's not
just about cleaning objects,
it's about analysing them,
understanding their construction,
their make-up. Absolutely.
The making is so fine,
you almost need a microscope
to see the details
of how they did it.
All the wires are handmade.
The detail's amazing.
Yeah. It's incredible.
For even greater detail,
Dana has used an electron microscope
to magnify a tiny part
of the warrior's sword handle
Eurgh! What's that?
and an unexpected guest.
I think that's a little tick, maybe.
It looks like a tick entombed
Entombed in copper.
So, we're getting all of those
kind of environmental clues.
So, we've got the artefact,
but then we've got little
micro eco-facts in there too.
I'll send samples
to a friend of mine
in organic residue analysis
so she can tell me
if there's maybe honey there or
And then we can look
at the proteins now. Yeah.
I mean, it's just wonderful.
Yeah, there's just
so much information
coming out of burials now.
I just want to have a look again
at these very beautiful objects.
I mean, that lovely pendant
What was that? What was it part of?
That was found near the sword,
so it's part
of the sword embellishments.
And again,
we've got those garnets
And the little sparkly gold foil
underneath.
Yeah. Gold around the outer cell,
and then silver on the inner cells.
It's astonishing detail.
Absolutely beautiful.
And that's just part
of what would have been
a very decorated sword fitting.
Absolutely. Yeah.
For our next dig, we're staying
with the Anglo-Saxons.
In the eighth century,
the flat marshy fenlands
of eastern England were
the perfect place to come
if you were a would - be saint
seeking out splendid isolation
to get closer to God.
But what is the reality?
Who were these medieval saints
really?
We can hope to get closer
to the truth through a combination
of archaeological
and historical research.
In the Lincolnshire Fens is a site
where, it is claimed, a hugely
influential early medieval monk
lived out his most pious years.
Here in the early eighth century,
this man achieved
Christian megastar status
for renouncing his riches
and embracing the life of a hermit.
His name was Guthlac.
After his death,
Guthlac was made a saint
and therefore ascended to heaven
to be next to God.
But back here on Earth, there's very
little hard evidence about his life.
Archaeologist Hugh Willmott is
on a mission to change that.
We know from historical sources
that, in the year 699,
Guthlac came here and lived
in splendid isolation
and built a sort of hermitage.
In the seventh century,
it would look completely different.
It would have been
quite a desolate wasteland.
So it's an ideal place
for Guthlac to come
to, sort of, seek solitude
from the world.
Hugh's team are
forensically sifting the site
for evidence dated
to Guthlac's time here -
half a mile from Crowland village -
in the early eighth century.
We've been finding
some really interesting finds
that are early medieval in date.
So, we've got some fairly typical
Anglo-Saxon pottery of the time,
which is fairly crude,
it's fairly heavy,
but it's functional
everyday ceramics.
Guthlac's home was said
to be a simple dwelling
dug into a mound
in a desolate field.
We have been finding
quite a bit of worked flint,
particularly in the,
sort of, central area of the site.
And it feeds into the Guthlac story,
because we're told
by the ancient chroniclers
that he came here
and actually made his dwelling
in the side of an old barrow,
so a prehistoric barrow, presumably.
And we are now finding evidence
for prehistoric activity here.
There may not be much to see
of Guthlac's daily life,
but excavation supervisor
Duncan Wright has uncovered
the foundations
of a large structure,
possibly built in honour of Guthlac
after he died in 714.
This appears to be the western limit
of our building.
We have a large wall
in the trench here -
that's the interior of the building.
We are particularly excited
about this structure,
because it is orientated
perfectly east-west.
It's substantially built -
built of stone.
This may well be an early
medieval church of some description.
In nearby Crowland,
a monument was built soon after
Guthlac's death at the age of 41.
The original Crowland Abbey,
rebuilt several times
over the centuries,
was founded to honour the saint.
The monks here at Crowland Abbey
held his relics,
and people would travel far and wide
to come and visit his shrine.
And you can tell
from the richness of the church
quite how much money this would
also have generated for them
through the pilgrimage trade.
This dig raises
a fascinating question -
how did this apparently
reclusive hermit become
such an important figure
in the early days
of the Christian Church in Britain?
Historian Onyeka Nubia has travelled
to Cambridge University
to investigate.
As a historian,
part of my job is to try
and unpack the fact
from the fiction.
The arcs of history are long,
and St Guthlac's life is
one of those obscure moments.
On those Lincolnshire Fens
in Crowland all the way till now,
1,300 years later, we are
still talking about this man.
This simple hermit's life led
to the creation
of a key site
of Christian pilgrimage,
later promoted by one book.
It was written
shortly after Guthlac died in 714,
by a monk called Felix.
It's incredibly rare,
and Dr Philippa Hoskin
of the Faculty of Divinity has
agreed to show me a copy.
So, Philippa, I'm interested
in learning about Guthlac's journey.
Where did he start? Who was he?
And why did he end up being
this saint?
Well, to start with,
he's the son of a nobleman.
And when he's about 15,
we can see from what he tells us
in this book -
"..et iuvenni inpectore'"
And his young heart is
filled with desire for
"..dominatio'" For power.
It says ' "love'", doesn't it?
Is that quite strong -
to say that he had a love for power?
Yes. So, he becomes a warlord,
if you like.
And he starts going out and raiding,
he gets money, booty,
more people who follow him.
Oh. So this is
what he's doing as a young man.
And then he has a revelation, is it?
After nine years,
he gives up what he's doing
and he goes to live in a monastery.
There's an old idea
that to want to be poor,
you have to be rich
in the first place.
Because no-one wants
to actually be poor who's poor.
It's only the rich
that want to be poor -
they think
that there's some virtue in it.
Yeah, it's about renunciation,
isn't it?
He's experienced that secular power,
and he can go
and look for something else.
The book tells us that Guthlac found
the life of a medieval monk
still too indulgent,
so he seeks
a closer connection to God.
It says here,
' "..luminatio cordis gremio.'"
' " Luminatio'" is a fantastic word,
isn't it?
Obviously we get the English word
' "illumination'" from it,
but it's almost
like he's seen the light.
Yes, he has.
It says he wants to go into
the ' "heorteum'" - into the desert.
Of course, this is Lincolnshire,
and he decides that he's going
to be this, sort of, hermit.
So, he wants to be
in touch with nature
because he feels it will make him
closer to God?
He wants to struggle,
he wants to suffer.
It is Guthlac's sacrifice
as a hermit that makes him famous,
including the most frugal diet
possible.
' "..lutulente aquae'"
It's a muddy, horrible water.
'" Pants'" is bread, isn't it?
'" Pants'" is bread.
He's eating tiny bits of bread.
So this text is going into a lot
of detail about what he's wearing
Yeah what he's consuming,
and how he's living.
To paint a picture for us
that this is someone
who's living an ascetic lifestyle.
A lifestyle that are
like the saints. Yes, absolutely.
You know somebody is a saint
because they behave like a saint.
So this book would draw people
to Crowland.
It's an advert for a pilgrimage
that includes Crowland.
It's almost a road map to divinity.
Absolutely.
This account of Guthlac's life,
written so soon after his death,
is advertising to the faithful
that giving up your possessions
brings you closer to God.
And what better way to give them up
than by giving them to the Church
in the name of Guthlac?
So, within a few centuries,
from obscure lives like St Guthlac,
the English Church became part
of an international economic,
political powerhouse.
It's time to journey
back to the East Midlands
and the site where we started off
our archaeological tour -
our very special Roman mosaic dig
in a farmer's wheat field.
Come with me, John.
But attention has shifted
from the small piece of mosaic
I helped uncover
when I first visited.
I'll show you what your task is
for the day.
That's because there's big news -
digging on the rest of the mosaic
is on hold
thanks to a new discovery
in the layers above it.
So, the chances are that in here,
although we can't see it yet,
we've actually got a grave cut.
If there is a grave here,
there could well be human bone,
so the team must proceed cautiously
to avoid destroying vital evidence.
Jen Browning is
in charge of the dig team.
It's actually quite exciting,
because we've discovered the remains
of a human body, basically.
These remains could hold clues
to the people
who occupied this site
after the original villa's owners.
The villa has fallen down
or been demolished,
and the burial is
actually on top of that.
So it's likely to be very late Roman
or possibly Saxon.
So, really exciting stuff for us.
Ah, now, it's broken.
This is going into the box.
Hopefully the rest will
just lift off.
One of the more unexpected
discoveries has been made
by former county archaeologist
Peter Liddle.
One bizarre thing is the skull was
entirely full of snails.
So, all of those came out
from inside the skull.
But I have never seen that
inside a skull before.
So, whether we have vicious
brain-eating snails in Rutland,
I'm not sure.
Which is a little bit weird.
I am a human bone expert,
so whenever I hear about burials,
my ears prick up.
And I've had a chat to John and Jen,
and they are very happy for me
to start having a look at the bones
which emerged
from that main room in the villa.
They're very fragmentary,
but if we wash them,
I might be able to tell something
about the people
that were buried here
once the villa fell into disuse.
So, you actually excavated
these bones, didn't you?
Yeah, I did.
I found part of the skull
as we were cleaning back the soil.
And do you think it was just one
burial? We think it might be two.
Yeah. Because we could see
four sets of legs.
Right, OK.
What looks like a tray
of random bones might tell us
some revealing details about
who the two people buried here were.
Trying to organise things
by region of the body,
so we've got a really nice set
of bones from the hand here.
Metacarpals,
which are in the palm of the hand.
And then we've also got
some of these phalanges,
which are the finger bones.
So, there's a whole set of finger
bones there, that's rather nice.
And then we've also got
a nice bit of the jaw.
So, I'm noticing a difference here.
Are you noticing a difference
in the teeth that we're getting?
Those ones seem very worn. Yeah.
So, these anterior teeth
are completely worn down.
And in this jawbone,
there's a space here where, in fact,
the molars have gone,
and they've gone
a long time before death.
This bone has had a chance to
essentially heal over those sockets.
So this is probably
quite an elderly person.
As opposed to
So, that's a premolar there,
and that's another premolar.
Oh, yeah,
there's a lot less wear on that.
So I suspect we've got
an older person here,
and a much younger person here.
So, it is useful. I know it's
painstaking, isn't it, doing this?
But it is actually all very useful,
because to be able to
hopefully look at age and sex
and other bits of pathology
as well
Just start to give these people
a bit of biography,
a bit of identity. Yeah.
With bones still emerging
out of the ground
and progress on the mosaic still
stalled, I catch up with
what's been discovered
in the mosaic's neighbouring trench.
I've got to be quite careful
about where I tread here.
But I've been told I can go down
this little ramp
and tread on this area.
I don't want to walk over anything
that's just been cleaned.
Jeremy. Hi. Hello.
Jeremy Taylor from
Leicester University is supervising
this part of the dig. Welcome.
This looks exciting.
You've very definitely
got walls here.
Yes, and quite a complicated
array of them as well.
So, what have you got here then?
You've got a room here that you're
standing in. That's right.
And essentially, if you see running
across the trench pretty much
where you're standing right
the way across,
is the northern end of a large
stone built building,
probably from east to west,
round about 14, 15 metres long. Mm.
Who would've lived
in a place like this, Jeremy?
In all probability, you know,
a very wealthy Roman landowner,
a regional double noble, notable.
Somebody who's a very powerful
individual in local society.
It's fascinating, isn't it?
Because you're getting a glimpse
of stratification of Roman society.
Absolutely.
Places like this are very important.
Not just as a country seat to bring
your friends and other peers to,
but also it's a fundamental part of
who you are and maintaining
your status and wealth.
So, at the moment we've got this
large main building
with the fantastic mosaic in it.
Yep.
That's where the landowner and
perhaps his family are living. Yeah.
I think this is where he's
installed his mother-in-law.
Possibly, although I hope
we haven't found her.
It's clear that the scale of
Roman building on this site
was impressive.
And, itching to get another
look at that mosaic,
I've found a way to see how part of
it may once have looked.
Ooh! So, this is the drawing
you made on site last year?
Yes. It's drawn at a 1:10 scale
using a 1 metre drawing grid.
And then painted,
tesserae by tesserae.
David Neal has spent decades
painstakingly recording
Roman mosaics, and then
painting them by hand
to reveal their original glory.
It's mind blowing, the detail.
So, how many tesserae
are represented in this
part of the mosaic that's
already been uncovered?
Well, I should think in that section
there are at least 60,000,
at a guess. Yeah.
I suspect we may have to paint
yet another 30-40,000 tesserae.
Oh, my goodness. And you are
painting them individually? Yes.
Was it obvious to you as soon as
you saw the mosaic
that it was a story of
the Trojan War?
Yes, it is clearly the Trojan War.
From what we've seen so far,
the mosaic appears to be a dramatic
illustration of what is
perhaps the Trojan war's
bloodiest passage -
when the Greek warrior Achilles
kills the Trojan prince Hector
then drags his corpse around Troy,
finally demanding that Hector's
grieving father King Priam
pays his son's weight in gold
for the return of the body.
Is that a common
theme for a Roman mosaic?
There are some subjects,
various aspects of the Trojan War,
but it would just be
one small scene.
Here you've got these three scenes,
and this is what is remarkable
about it.
So that's completely unique?
Yes. Yeah.
David is having to be
just as patient as me,
as, tantalisingly, I'm going
to leave the team to it
for a few more days.
But when I return, I'll be helping
David uncover the entire mosaic,
revealing the whole story
of what those Romans
left behind in this field
over 1,600 years ago.
We dig for the gods that
leave no bones
For the ship that sailed
in the sunken sea
There's a lot to discarded stones
The famine road,
and the merchants keep. ♪
The fertile fields of eastern
England have long sustained
the cereal crops needed to make that
elixir of medieval life - ale.
Vast quantities of it must've
been produced and drunk.
But how is it made
and what did it taste like?
We catch up with some archaeologists
on a quest to answer
those very important questions.
We now make our way back east
to the coast of North Norfolk
and the village of Sedgeford.
With Roman influence waning,
a new culture started to emerge
in early fifth century Britain -
a culture linked to Germanic
tribes across the North Sea
and incomers bringing with them
new habits and customs.
In 2013, archaeologist
Dr Ellie Blakelock
found a settlement
after a geophysical survey
revealed intriguing evidence in the
corner of a field in Sedgeford.
Since then, an annual summer dig
for volunteer archaeologists
has been helping piece together
what once happened here.
We found some hot spots that
suggested that there was some
form of hot working process.
We originally thought it was going
to be iron working,
but when we actually excavated
and started working on the site
we realised quite quickly that
they were nothing to do with
metalworking,
they were something else.
In fact, Ellie had discovered
an industry
of a completely different kind.
It turns out this massive site was
part of a huge malting operation,
used to make the vital
ingredient for the most popular
drink of Anglo-Saxon times - ale.
What we have here is
we have a steeping tank.
Now, this is a clay-lined structure
and we think that there were
originally sides to it here,
and another one that's
actually on this side here.
Steeping the harvested grain in
this water tank was the first step
of the malting process.
What you do is you lower
your grain into this water,
and it soaks into the grain and it
starts the germination process,
which is so important for
the beer making process.
Buried in the ground, Ellie's found
evidence of tools that show
what a large scale
operation this was.
And what we have here is
we have a wonderful iron hook
and they would've used that to
lever the grain into the water
and take it back up again.
The soaked grain was then
spread across this clay floor
to continue germinating.
So, waiting for the little shoots
and the little rootlets
to start forming in the grain,
and that tells them that it's
starting to build up sugars
and starch, and that is what's
really, really useful
and important for the malt and
for actual creating your beer.
At least five kilns have also
been found on the site.
These would've been used to dry
the malted grain,
stopping germination.
One reveals an incredible link to
the maltsters of the distant past.
But what's really remarkable
about it is you can actually see
the fingerprints
and smears of the Anglo-Saxons
from when they actually repaired
the kiln, and it's so nice
to be able to almost touch
and feel the people in the past.
In a fascinating effort
to reveal even more
about the ancient
Anglo-Saxon malting process here,
PhD student Hannah Carrow is using
a flotation tank to separate out
burnt grains unearthed at the site.
Right, so here we have a bucket
of sediment from the north end
of Kiln 2.
I'm just going to put
some of it into the tank here.
And burnt seeds, which are light,
float to the surface of the water
and then they collect in the bucket
and you can begin to see
a piece of some charcoal and some
seeds down there, which is exciting.
Hannah can now identify
exactly which cereal grains
were used to make the malt
using a microscope.
So, quite excitingly, these grains
are 1,200 years old
from the Middle Saxon times.
So, we've got here
There's a big barley grain quite
badly damaged down there.
So, this is a wheat grain.
This is the most common
wheat grown today
and also in the Anglo-Saxon period.
And lots of rye, the most common
kind of grain at Sedgeford.
It's unusual to find a site with
such a high proportion of rye.
So, that's interesting.
The discovery of these three cereal
crops has led archaeologists
to one conclusion.
We find all three types of grain,
the rye, the wheat and barley,
in pretty much every single sample
from Sedgeford,
which potentially suggests that they
were being grown together
in one field and harvested together
and then malted together
to make beer, which was made from
all three types of grain.
The high proportion of rye is
unusual in British malting,
and it could say something about the
ancient ale makers of North Norfolk.
The fact we've got the rye here
does suggest that link back
to their ancestral homelands,
where they're using rye
on a more regular basis,
and it probably suggests
that what's happening is the
Anglo-Saxons have brought across
their technology for beer making
and for malt making,
and what we're seeing is the
continuation of that process.
Perhaps the best way to understand
the effect of using all that rye
is to brew some ale with it.
Dr Stewart Prior has come
to meet an expert home-brewer
to get a taste of the past.
Now I like and ale as much as the
next early medieval archaeologist.
So understanding the Saxon brewing
process feels like perfect
experimental archaeology to me.
Hi, John. Hello, Stuart.
Nice fire you've got going.
I understand you're
a Saxon brewing historian? Yes.
I've done a few early medieval brews
based on the best part of six months
of evenings in the Imperial College,
in libraries,
exploring various old books
and reference books
which were in the back, and came up
with an idea of some recipes.
You've got some beer for me to try?
I have indeed, just here.
Excuse the container. OK.
This has travelled a bit,
so it's got a bit cloudy.
John's research led him to create
an Anglo-Saxon ale recipe that,
unlike the Sedgeford blend,
uses plenty of barley
but zero rye.
The barley ale is
flavoured with honey
and a plant the Anglo-Saxons
found on river banks and on marshes,
bog myrtle.
Cor, that's not bad, is it?
It's a nice brew. That's not bad.
Wow, that's actually really sweet.
It is. The honey does that.
It's not meant to get you drunk.
It's meant to be
a nice pleasant drink.
It is pleasant. Yeah.
I'm surprised at how good it is.
John's going to recreate a beer
based on the unusual grain ratios
found at Sedgeford.
10% barley, 20% wheat and 70% rye.
So, this is the rye? Two thirds rye,
yes. Two thirds rye? Yeah.
And here is crushed rye.
Rye is much more unusual in brewing.
This makes the product?
Yes, if you smell that, it's got
a really aromatic smell to it.
It smells like, well, beer! Exactly!
And that will infuse
into the liquid.
We put it with the water
and the flavourants.
And that would have made a fairly
good beer? I'm not sure. As I say,
I've always done single brews. So, it'll be
interesting to see what it comes out like.
Next, John has to steep
his mix of crushed grains.
So, you've got your three grains.
I have indeed. There's the rye.
There's the barley,
and here is the wheat.
You let it simmer for about an hour
and a half to two hours.
After cooling
and fermenting for four days,
John's experimental Sedgeford
rye ale will be ready to drink.
Taste that.
But in another time-honoured
tradition, here's one he made earlier.
It's definitely drinkable.
I prefer it to water,
but it's very earthy. Very earthy.
Yes, it would need flavouring.
So this is a good way of protecting
your health,
as well as providing you Yeah.
And also, boiling it
would kill off any parasites
the water has picked up
through storage, or whatever else,
of course.
I'll just try it again,
just to make sure.
It's going to taste nicer
the more I've drunk!
As the night goes on.
Yeah, certainly.
Whether or not the Anglo-Saxons
knew it was the boiling
that made their beer
safer to drink than water,
it's fascinating they malted their
grain on such an industrial scale
at Sedgeford.
Cheers. Cheers.
The rye-rich brew isn't
quite as moreish as John's
sweetly flavoured
Anglo-Saxon barley ale.
It's definitely strong.
But at least it's not going
to kill me.
Thank God I'm not driving home!
Honestly, it is strong!
Our Anglo-Saxon digs
have given us glimpses
into lifestyles and characters
from those early medieval centuries.
Fascinating weaponry
and jewellery, certainly.
But very little
evidence of interior decoration.
Thankfully, those show offs,
the Romans, have compensated,
as I returned to perhaps
the most extraordinary find ever
to feature on Digging for Britain.
Right, I'm back in this field.
I was here about two weeks ago,
just starting to uncover
that amazing mosaic.
And this site was promising to be
maybe the most significant
Roman discovery in Britain
for at least the last few decades.
I can't wait to see if it's
living up to those expectations.
Jim, hello. Hi.
Farmer's son Jim
discovered the mosaic in 2020.
It's taken until now to get
this unique piece of art history
back open.
I'm tingling
with anticipation here, Jim.
Oh, look at this.
It's my first proper look at what's
hoped is around half of the mosaic.
Wow!
Gosh, it is big, isn't it?
That's the - that's the part
I helped you uncover two weeks ago,
just there.
There's so much colour, isn't there?
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
I mean, to you this is just one
of the fields on the family farm.
You're really familiar with it.
And then suddenly it's not just
one of the fields. What have we got?
It's Yeah, incredible.
Really, really incredible.
Right. I'm going to go and have
a chat to John. Where is he?
He's over there, isn't he? Yeah.
Enjoy.
I'll catch up with you in a bit.
With this half of the mosaic
back out in the open, it should be
possible to start exposing more,
if indeed it survives,
and hopefully, we'll see more
imagery from this legendary moment
in Greek mythology, the brutal
slaying of Hector by Achilles
during the Trojan War.
John.
John Thomas is overseeing
this delicate operation.
It's amazing.
It's wonderful to see a mosaic
coming up like this.
And you're finding new bits of it?
We're getting new bits.
We are moving into the apse,
and we're moving across the room
into the areas
that we excavated last year.
So, do you think that this mosaic
is all the way up to that wall
over there? That's what
we're hoping? Really?! Yeah, yeah.
I mean, basically what we're seeing
is a sort of design,
like a comic strip, really.
Three panels telling the story.
I'm kind of itching to get in there,
actually.
Do you need more help?
That would be grateful, yeah.
Yeah, OK! I think we've got enough
shovels for everybody here, haven't we?!
Everyone's on a mission to get
the rest of the earth cleared
as soon as possible.
So this is the scene from the Iliad,
the end of the battle.
This is really exciting now.
So, this is the body of Hector
that we've got coming up here.
Mosaic artist David Neal,
who, at the age of 80,
seems to be working harder
than just about anybody here,
is letting me uncover what we hope
is the face of a dead Hector.
There's his abdomen.
These are wounds on his abdomen.
He's got wounds on his chest.
And under here, we're
expecting to find the head.
It's the face of Hector.
There are the eyes Oh! Wonderful.
just coming up. It may have
chewed into the next panel.
That will be interesting if it does.
There he is.
His eyes and his nose.
Where Hector, who I think might be
dead at this point, is being dragged
behind the chariot of Achilles,
dragged around the walls of Troy.
And you can see his body here.
His legs have disappeared
in that area of damage,
but we can see
his arm coming up here.
The archaeologists had feared
the large patch of what appears
to be fire damage in the middle
could run all the way across.
But with each new perfectly
preserved tessera we reveal,
the picture becomes clearer
in all its gory detail.
David, how common is it for mosaics
to have figures on?
It's quite rare.
You get little scenes
where you've got one or two figures
in isolation, in separate panels.
Yeah.
Various mosaics around Britain.
But nothing on this scale. Really?
Nothing at all. Here, you've got
the whole story Yeah.
spread out. Yeah.
That is fascinating,
because, you know, what we're
seeing here is the archaeology
that survives and it's hinting
at a much richer material culture.
Yes, yes. All the paper that we
don't get. Very sophisticated. Yeah.
Obviously a very educated man
who owned this. Mm. Yes.
Somebody who could read the story.
Read the story,
in both perhaps Greek and Latin.
Yeah.
Once again, we've got this
astonishing preservation here,
where luck has played a huge role.
We had a face of Achilles there,
which had barely survived,
being lost forever, with an area
of damage which came
right up to his forehead,
and we've got exactly
the same thing here with Hector.
At last, the final crumbs of earth
are brushed away.
It's time for David to demonstrate
one of his tricks of the trade.
When you pour water, I want that
amount of water poured in.
But no more.
And then, you've got to come to me
with the water.
This unique rapid mosaic washing
technique rinses away the dust
and brightens
the tesserae's colours.
Finally, after perhaps 1,600 years,
human eyes can once again
appreciate the craftsmanship and
artistry of this dining room floor.
What's extraordinary is that
although we've got areas of damage,
we can still see what
each of those panels represents.
Yes. This is the story of the climax
of the Trojan War.
Yes.
Tell me what we are looking at here.
Well, the first panel is the contest
between Achilles and Hector.
Hector, the Trojan prince,
facing off Achilles with the Greeks.
Hector, over on the right-hand side.
And then we've got that magnificent
chariot that Achilles is driving.
That's right.
And even though a lot of Achilles is
missing, his face survives.
His face survives.
And what I like is the fact
that the horses are represented
in different colours, both sides.
And then in the middle,
Achilles wins,
and Hector's body's being dragged
around the walls of Troy,
and Priam pleading with Achilles
to be merciful.
So, Priam is the king of Troy
He is the king of Troy.
and this is his son.
That's his son.
He's seeing his body being dragged
around the walls of Troy.
And, of course, Achilles is not
going to let him have the body back
without his weight in gold.
And we are looking at
a brutal Bronze Age story.
Yes, really nasty.
And then the final scene represents
King Priam has come
to Achilles' camp
with the gold to recover the body.
We have these three wonderful scenes
of the Iliad, and it's
quite amazing.
And we are seeing it in all its
glory.
You must be so pleased, John.
Absolutely.
And there is much more of it than
we could have hoped for, really.
At the beginning of the dig,
you were suggesting, David,
that this was an incredibly
significant discovery.
You've seen so many Roman mosaics
over the course of your career -
why is this one so special?
It's figured, it's animated,
it's a copy of or pages of a book,
it's telling us so much, not just
I mean, it's joyous to look at,
but it's telling us so much
about the villa proprietor,
I think that's wonderful.
And it's probably one of the finest
mosaics in northern Europe
on this theme.
What is so astounding about this
is that nobody had any idea
that this villa was here,
that this extraordinary mosaic was
here,
and now, this year,
with it fully uncovered,
we can see the story,
and it is a story, it's not just
decoration, it's a story that's been
passed down through generations,
and here we are in an English
field so far away from Troy,
revealing this story again.
So we might think we know everything
about Roman Britain,
but we are only just starting
to uncover the story right here.
Next time on Digging For Britain,
on Salisbury Plain,
some 3,000-year-old holes
have got archaeologists stumped
I'm convinced
we've got a roundhouse here,
it's just a bit confusing
at the moment.
a village on the banks of the
Thames reveals
perhaps Britain's oldest money
So, these are among some
of the first coins made in Britain.
and the mystery of a derelict
church is finally solved
with the discovery of some
truly head -turning treasures.
I just can't believe that's just
come out of the ground
while I'm here. I'm so excited.
Come and search for,
we would search
And looking for a scarred land
And dig for us as we have done
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪