Digging for Britain (2010) s11e01 Episode Script
The Roman Emperor's Bathhouse
These islands we call home
have a rich and varied history
stretching back thousands of years.
But hidden under the ground
and under water are some amazing
treasures just waiting to be found.
Whoo! Wow!
So each year, all across the country,
archaeologists dig, dive
and explore their way down
Oh, this is brilliant!
searching for fresh discoveries
And it is completely intact.
revealing traces
of ancient cultures
This is here is 2,803 years old.
Oh, wow.
and unearthing
fascinating artefacts.
Oh, that's a nice thing! What is it?
I've never seen anything
quite like it in my career.
Every dig adds new pieces to the
ever-growing archaeological jigsaw
That's so cool.
that is the epic story
of our islands.
This year, I visit digs in
some extraordinary locations
The ceiling just got a bit lower.
and I call on the help of a trio
of expert investigators
It's quite difficult to find
any other evidence of things
that just didn't leave a mark
in the archaeology.
This is a really powerful document
because we're getting to hear the
voices that we don't usually hear.
who delve deeper to answer
the questions raised by the finds.
Is all of this already
recorded in books?
There was none of this
in a book anywhere.
Finally, the archaeologists bring
their most amazing discoveries
into our tent
Astonishing!
for up-close analysis.
Genuinely rewriting history.
Welcome to Digging For Britain.
This time I'm travelling
around the north of Britain
to uncover the region's most
exciting new archaeological digs.
The largest single Roman building
ever discovered
along Hadrian's Wall
Possibly the star find
of my whole career.
shocks the experts
Whoo! Wow!
and reveals links to
a Roman emperor here in Britain.
The north of England would
have been
the centre of the Roman Empire.
Isn't that crazy?
On a remote Scottish peak,
a lost fortress pushes archaeologists
to their limits
It's the most challenging excavation
type you'll get in Britain.
but uncovers remarkable new finds.
That's so cool. You never find
the other half of these querns.
And in Durham, a riverbed
gives up its medieval treasure.
These pilgrim badges are incredibly
rare finds for the north of England.
The north of Britain is home
to one of the largest
ancient landmarks in the country
Hadrian's Wall
built after decades of
brutal and bloody conflict
with what the Romans called
"barbarian" tribes in the north.
The Romans built nearly 100 forts
along its 73—mile length
and stationed nearly
10,000 soldiers here
on this dangerous frontier.
Our first dig takes us to
the western end of Hadrian's Wall
to Carlisle.
I've come to Carlisle
because — you've guessed it
I've heard about a fantastic dig
that's happening
in a very unusual place,
Carlisle Cricket Club.
Now, the club is nearly
200 years old,
but the archaeology they're
finding here is much more ancient.
In 2005, the River Eden
burst its banks
and flooded the entire cricket club.
Now the club want to build
a new pavilion on higher ground.
But being so close to Hadrian's Wall,
they had to check the site for
any archaeological remains first.
And they called in
Wardell Archaeology,
assisted by a team
of enthusiastic volunteers.
They just expected to find
some medieval rubbish
but what they've actually
discovered is far more exciting
a huge Roman building
full to the brim with Roman finds.
Piece of plaster —
that'll be Roman, that'll be.
Lovely piece of Roman glass
and you can just see the colour —
it's a really lovely sky blue.
Something really special
is going on here,
so everyone's wildly excited.
Brilliant.
Oh, so it's quite big.
Yeah.
Frank Giecco is leading
this very surprising dig
So what is this building
that we're looking at?
Well, we call it a bathhouse,
but it's not
a conventional bathhouse.
It's 50 metres by 50 metres.
That's huge. It is,
and it's two storey.
How do you know it's two storey?
Some of the surviving bits of wall,
they're about a 1.20 metre wide,
and the foundations are at least
a 1.30 metre deep, so it's huge.
So you know that that's big enough,
solid enough to be supporting
You wouldn't need that for
a single-storey building. Yeah.
Now, I can see lots of intriguing
archaeology over there.
Can we have a bit of a tour? Yeah.
Let's just come into site.
This extraordinary Roman bathhouse
is bigger than the trench.
It is enormous.
In fact, we think it's the largest
Roman building
ever found along Hadrian's Wall.
A detailed 3D model of the site
reveals a complex
network of thick walls
and spacious rooms.
With underfloor heating,
or a hypocaust,
the floor would have rested
on these columns of tiles.
And being a bathhouse,
there are plenty of drains.
But why would the Romans have built
such a magnificent bathhouse
up here at the far northern edge
of the empire?
The team are hoping to find clues,
and the drains are proving
to be a rich source.
By painstakingly sieving
sediment from the drains,
they're discovering evidence
of Roman bathers' lost property
engraved gemstones
known as intaglios.
Hello. What was the excitement about?
We heard a bit of excitement.
I found an intaglio here, yes.
That's tiny.
So that would've been set
in a ring? Yes.
The team have uncovered
intaglios made from carnelian,
jasper and amethyst.
They're held in the rings
with a vegetable glue
that loses its stickiness
in a sauna Ah.
so they just fall out.
So this would have been
a standard occurrence at the baths?
Totally. You go to the baths,
you get home and go,
"Oh, my intaglio's gone."
Yeah. They were clever, these Romans,
but they needed to invent
a better glue. Glue. Yeah, totally.
That is beautiful.
These valuable personal items
link us back to the actual people
who once bathed here
wealthy Romans.
And hidden among the sprawling ruins,
the archaeologists
are also uncovering
unusual architectural details.
Jo, what have you got there?
We've got some lovely examples
of vaulting tubes
architectural structures
that fitted together
and formed part of
the roof structure.
That's really clever,
so terracotta tubes. Yeah.
These tubes would have slotted
together to create curved ribs
to support a vaulted roof.
Is it Is it a standard way
of building a bathhouse?
No, it's not.
I think there's only four examples
of vaulting tubes being used
In Britain?
in Britain, yeah,
that we've found.
They're a North African design.
Are they? Yeah.
So do we think that
there are architects
coming from that North African
part of the empire?
I think that's the idea, yeah.
I think that's the idea.
This isn't a natural
British way of building,
so they had to have somebody
who had the knowledge
to make these and to build them
into some sort of structures.
Maybe they were part of the troops,
maybe the architects
came along with the design
and they came with the structure.
Yeah. Yeah.
This intriguing discovery of
North African construction techniques
and the evidence
of numerous wealthy bathers
is prompting more questions
than answers at this stage.
We'll catch up with the team
in Carlisle later in the program me
to see if the archaeology
can explain
why this luxurious bathhouse
was built on the far edge
of the Roman Empire.
But for now,
we're heading further north.
In the rugged landscape
to the north of Hadrian's Wall,
the "last of the free",
the Caledonians,
stubbornly resisted Roman occupation.
But even these remote,
beautiful locations
are filled with clues
of thriving ancient cultures.
In Shetland, the Broch of Clickimin
housed an Iron Age community
more than 1,600 years ago.
And the Calanais Standing Stones
on the Isle of Lewis
were first raised
nearly 5,000 years ago
long before Stonehenge.
The Romans never conquered Scotland
and controlled
the Scottish Highlands,
and they built these great walls
coast to coast
to separate off
the province of Britannia
and protect it.
And you can imagine them
peering across the wall,
looking out at that wild country
full of "barbarians" — the Picts,
as the Romans described them.
Well, our next dig allows us to meet
the Picts on their own terms.
We journey to Bennachie,
20 miles north-west of Aberdeen.
Amongst the peaks
of this isolated range
is Mither Tap.
Its commanding summit stands more
than 500 metres above sea level
and perched on the very top
is an astonishing stone fortress
built by the Picts
in the Early Medieval period.
This year,
an intrepid team of students
from the University of Aberdeen
is embarking on one of the
most challenging digs in the UK
investigating the ancient ruins
at the top of Mither Tap.
These hills are among
the first places in Aberdeenshire
to get snow in winter
it's a particularly
inhospitable location.
So, what were the Picts
doing up here?
The team want to find out
if it was a temporary military camp
or something much more significant.
But it's a long way up.
It's day two and this climb is not
going to get any easier.
It's the most challenging excavation
type you'll get in Britain.
So well done, you made it up
the hill for a second day.
Just happy to be here.
I think they either love it
or hate it.
I just don't think
there's anything in between.
Gordon Noble is leading the dig.
We've opened quite a large trench
and we're just beginning
to get down now
to the settlement layers.
And so this is hopefully
where the excitement begins.
Our Dig Diary cameras capture
the huge variety of finds
emerging from the site.
I think it's a little bit of flint.
Um, there was an
audible gasp escaped Yeah, yeah.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you very much.
Little bit of iron.
A little bit of a tip
of a nail maybe.
And they've also unearthed
half of a quern stone.
It's nuts to think
that they'd have been
grinding grain up here.
That's incredible, isn't it?
Do we have a finds bag
big enough for that?
No.
Now just need to find
the other half.
My God! Yay!
That's so cool.
You never find the other half
of these querns.
That's very nice.
Evidence that the Picts
were grinding grain here
could point to
a more permanent settlement
at this imposing location.
The remains of two
formidable stone ramparts
encircle an upper
and a lower citadel.
It's accessed by steep steps.
All built around a spectacular
rocky outcrop in the centre.
This year, the team are opening
trenches in the lower citadel,
looking for evidence
of settlement here,
and as the dig progresses,
traces of Pictish life
start to emerge.
What have you got there, Thomas?
It's an animal bone.
I believe it's cattle.
Tooth!
Probably pig. Tells us
that they're eating
different things on site, they're
butchering different things.
Pigs are often associated
with high status
and they're usually quite
a convenient animal
for feasting as well.
And along with this evidence
of fine dining,
the team are also uncovering
traces of industry.
Bit of burnt clay,
and on one side of it there's
what looks to be vitrified material,
almost like it's been used
in the metalworking process.
So we could have some sort
of a metalworking area here maybe.
Oh, my God.
That's incredible.
The team is starting to
build a more complex picture
of life within the fortress
but they're finding themselves
at the mercy of the elements.
We've got a thunderstorm moving in.
The realities of digging
in northern Scotland. Yeah.
With the weather closing in,
I've asked Gordon to join me
in the Digging For Britain tent
to share everything he's learned
about Pictish life at Mither Tap.
Gordon, this seems like
a pretty incredible site.
What were you hoping,
what were you expecting when
you first set out to dig there?
Well, it's one of the more extreme
sites we've dug, that's for sure,
and it must be one of the best
preserved hill forts in Scotland.
And now on this hilltop,
we're actually finding
some of the best evidence
for the kind of everyday lives
of the Picts
that we've got, really,
from this region.
So what have we got here, then?
So we've got some of the indicators
that this was
a high-status location.
So we've got little tiny
shards here from crucibles.
Right. So these are
the little clay vessels
they're using to melt down
bronze or silver Yeah.
and pour it into moulds,
and this is what these are.
Probably for casting
a big penannular brooch,
which would have been one of
the big status symbols of the day.
I mean, that's such
a tiny fragment It is.
to be able to know what this is
and the relevance of it.
And you're not finding the metal,
then?
You're just finding the evidence
that they were Exactly, yeah.
doing metalwork.
We're finding some of the residues
of metalworking,
and these are bigger shards
of crucibles here.
But they were
the ultimate recyclers
they've taken away all the metal
and left behind the things
that weren't any use to them. Yeah.
Metalworking right up on the hill,
does this suggest
there's something more there
than just a temporary military camp?
Absolutely. I mean, it's one
of the extreme locations
in Aberdeenshire today.
It's the first place to get snow.
But the evidence
we're beginning to get
into how these sites functioned
certainly suggests that
there are people living there.
Yeah. There are a few other
finds to look at here.
What have we got here?
They're intriguing.
It looks like a couple of pebbles
and then what looks like
a tiny pyramid.
Is it stone? Yes.
So, we think they are gaming pieces.
Again, it shows you more about
the kind of everyday lives
of the Picts Yeah.
and some of the leisure pursuits.
Yeah, it's not all work.
It's not all work.
Helps bring them alive a bit more,
doesn't it? It does, yeah. Yeah.
And then this?
It's actually Pictish pottery,
and if you'd asked me
a few years back,
"Were the Picts in this region
making their own pottery?"
We would have said no Really?
because there's so few sites
investigated.
Yeah. But now a few sites,
including Mither Tap,
we're beginning to find
a native tradition
of making their own pottery vessels.
So it's just been missed,
archaeologically?
Well, it's just there's been
so few sites found,
and the way the Picts
were building their structures
tends to be in very ephemeral ways.
So, down in the lowlands you can
imagine they just get ploughed away.
But in these upland sites,
because no-one has intensively
farmed these locations,
for obvious reasons,
being 550 metres up,
we're getting some of the everyday
objects of Pictish lifestyles.
So this suggests that you've got
these places which, I think today,
might feel to us to be quite remote
or difficult to get to, but actually
they're quite familiar and lived in.
Yes, absolutely.
And they probably had
a completely different concept
of what was marginal
and what was central
in that time period. Yeah.
I think this is incredibly visible
from the region roundabout,
so you can imagine to actually
place a hillfort on top,
that would be a real marker of power
and status being able to do that.
It's a statement. It is, yeah.
And you know, they seem
to be like any other group
in this time period
you know, warring societies,
expanding their territories
through conflict and conquest.
It's all sounding very
Game Of Thrones. It is a bit, yeah.
But it is fascinating to find out
more about their lifestyles
and their major sites.
The archaeology at Mither Tap
is showing us that it wasn't
just a temporary military outpost,
but home to a thriving
Pictish community all year round.
We dig for the gods
that leave no bones
For the ship that sailed
in the sunken sea
The vessel aloft
in a sky of storms
The famine road,
and the merchant's quay ♪
Some of the most imposing
ancient monuments in the north
are connected with the religion
that grew out of the Roman Empire.
Today, grand ruins like
the Holy Island of Lindisfarne
in Northumberland
and Rievaulx Abbey
in the North Yorkshire Moors
stand as reminders
of the importance
and wealth of the Christian Church
in the north through the centuries.
Pilgrimage was really important
in medieval life.
There were pilgrim sites
right across Britain and Ireland
and routes connecting them.
And if you really wanted
to pull those pilgrims in,
it helped to have a dead saint,
or at least a bit of a dead saint.
And this was big business,
this was the tourism of its day,
and there was a whole manufacturing
industry that went along with it,
providing merchandise
for the pilgrims to buy
a wealth of artefacts for
archaeologists to find in the future.
Our next investigation takes us
to one of the most important
Christian pilgrimage sites
in England — Durham.
Durham Cathedral,
a wonder of Norman architecture,
sits at the very heart of the city.
It's home to the shrine
of St Cuthbert,
one of the most important early
Anglo-Saxon saints in England.
A prior and then a bishop,
Cuthbert became famous for miracles
after his death,
and the pilgrims
came flocking to his tomb.
The Elvet Bridge dates back
to the 12th century,
allowing pilgrims to cross the River
Wear on their way to the cathedral.
And for more than 15 years,
scuba diver Gary Bankhead
has been working with
the University of Durham
to excavate the riverbed here.
To date, I've recovered
over 13,500,
typically small metal, finds.
The riverbed below the bridge
is full to the brim with small finds.
When I'm down underwater,
the visibility
actually isn't too bad.
I only need to be able to see
as far as my hands,
and I'm underwater
for about two hours
and during that time
I'll discover anything
from 80 to 150 small finds.
The process of excavating
the riverbed
is relatively straightforward.
Just like archaeology on the land,
things at the top
are the most modern.
But right at the very bottom, that's
where the Late Medieval objects are.
Gary takes every object he finds
to the University of Durham Museum,
and many of them are providing us
with connections to medieval pilgrims
crossing the Elvet Bridge.
Ampullae, for me,
are really, really exciting.
They are pilgrim badges, often known
or referred to as pilgrim signs.
Pilgrimage was undertaken
by people of all classes.
And just imagine
you visit a holy shrine,
you'd like a souvenir.
Today, you'd probably buy a T-shirt.
But in that medieval period,
they bought badges.
The original form are of this type,
so these are little lead ampullae,
essentially vessels
that were designed to hold
either consecrated oil, holy water,
or even dust
anything that had been
associated with,
or in contact with, the shrine
of a particular saint.
These were mass-produced objects,
so they were relatively cheap.
They were made of lead or pewter,
crimped shut at the top,
had little lugs on either side,
so they would have been worn
suspended around the neck.
These are incredibly rare finds
for the north of England.
Ampullae, in particular,
are very rare.
Gary thinks that these objects
weren't just lost,
they could have been
deliberately left here.
There is an assertion that pilgrims
would select specific objects
to throw into a river,
as a thank offering for, perhaps,
safe passage home.
And given that we have so many
pilgrim badges all found in a river,
it just adds to this theory.
Some of the finds even suggest
a specific link
to the north of England's most
important icon, St Cuthbert.
This particular object
is absolutely amazing.
It's a very small pectoral cross
with equal-length flaring arms.
The form of this particular
cross was incredibly similar
to that of St Cuthbert's
golden cloisonne cross.
It's incredibly rare.
It represents THE only material
culture evidence of pilgrimage
to the shrine of St Cuthbert
in Durham that's ever been found.
With this evidence of pilgrimage
surfacing in Durham
historian Onyeka Nubia
has come to the cathedral
to investigate the real story
of how the seventh—century bishop
St Cuthbert inspired a medieval cult.
I'm here at Durham Cathedral.
Its spire is magnificent.
It pierces the sky.
And yet the foundation of Durham
Cathedral isn't just rock and stone,
it's based on a person
St Cuthbert.
I've come to meet Richard Gameson,
an expert on medieval texts.
He's unearthed
some astonishing accounts
hidden in the
University of Durham Library,
which can tell us
about some of the earliest pilgrims
to the Shrine of St Cuthbert
and the offerings
that they would bring.
Hello, Richard.
Hello, good to meet you.
So, we've got some fantastic,
wonderful texts
that tell us about the pilgrims
and the pilgrimage
that took place in Durham.
Yes, this here is the authorial
manuscript of Simeon of Durham
describing the history of the Church
of Durham up to his own day,
which was the very beginning
of the 12th century.
Ah, so this book tells us about
the enduring legacy of St Cuthbert,
even though it wasn't written at
the time of the life of St Cuthbert.
Yes, indeed.
And this chapter explains a striking
miracle that was accomplished
at the site of Cuthbert's shrine.
And we read here about a woman
who's "infirmi" She was crippled,
but when she came to the place
where Cuthbert's body was,
she was healed.
OK, so we have this idea
from this story that
St Cuthbert is doing miracles
from beyond the grave. Yeah.
And the point about a shrine
is that you want people to visit it.
By advertising these cases
of healing,
they spread the word
of Cuthbert's potency
and attract more people
as pilgrims,
as visitors, to the shrine,
in the hope of healing miracles.
So, not to be too cynical on this,
is there a financial aspect to all
these ideas of healing and miracles?
There certainly is,
and this chapter highlights it
that when you came,
it was expected that you were
going to make an offering.
Here at the beginning
of this chapter, we read
that on top of the tomb
there was a "multitudinem
denariorium"
that there was a multitude of coins,
and therefore your revenue stream
is stronger,
the more people you attract. Right.
So who had access to this shrine?
A good question. And in fact, this
text answers that very precisely.
This is what's known
as the Rites of Durham,
and it's explained here
the shrine was kept sealed
into a cover,
which was locked.
And we're told after someone
has been identified as a VIP,
it will be unlocked and raised
so you can see the shrine.
Fascinating.
So we have differential treatment
for different types of pilgrims.
The ones who can pay more money
have greater access
than those who have less money
and less fame.
I'm afraid
that's what it boiled down to.
You would be within a foot or so
of the cover of the shrine Right.
but you would not see
the shrine itself.
No matter how virtuous
and faithful you are,
you still can't get access
if you haven't got money.
No. And halfway down
you can just about see
that if an offering
was silver or jewels Yes.
then it would be hung
on the shrine.
And if it is a stranger thing,
such as a unicorn's horn
or anything similar,
that was kept in the feretory.
So it was kept within
the sacred enclosure,
but not actually on the shrine.
The benefit you're getting
is proximity to the saint.
So if your offering is physically
attached to the shrine,
that's a hotline.
I see. So we can see here that
pilgrimage was a universal practice,
but practised differently.
Absolutely.
The sources here are clear
rich people thought that
St Cuthbert was THEIR saint.
But the archaeology
gives us another story.
Ordinary pilgrims,
denied direct access to the shrine,
of lead ampullae
and pilgrim badges to the river.
And yet, ironically,
it is those very humble offerings
that have stood the test of time.
I dreamt I flew with the saints
last night
I know them all by wing size
And up there
it just doesn't count for naught
Whether you're clever or wise ♪
Next, we return to the grounds
of the cricket club at Carlisle.
The team here are still trying
to understand
why the largest building ever found
along the embattled northern frontier
of the Roman Empire
is a luxurious bathhouse
with exotic North African
architecture.
And lead archaeologist
Frank Giecco believes
they've made a breakthrough.
Well, this is where it gets
really exciting,
when we have this IMP tile here.
These are very unusual.
Oh, wow, look at that.
So you get legionary stamps,
but this is the Imperial Court.
Isn't that fantastic?
So, I
P. P, all joined together.
Imperita.
Does that mean the emperor's here?
It means it's been
a commission for the Imperial Court.
It means he's ordered it?
He's ordered it.
And which emperor? Do we know?
Septimius Severus.
I would put money on it.
Would you? Yeah. Why?
Because he was from Libya,
and it links with the vaulting tubes
that we have from this building.
Those are very unusual,
architecturally? Very unusual.
A lot of people are more excited
about the vaulting tubes
than the imperial stamp.
So he came from North Africa
originally?
Yeah.
Septimius Severus was born in
the year 145 in Libya, North Africa.
He led military campaigns
in Mesopotamia and Africa,
and in 208 he arrived in Britain
with more than 40,000 soldiers.
His goal was to march north
and finally conquer what he saw
as the barbaric tribes
on the other side of Hadrian's Wall.
With this discovery
of an imperial connection,
it seems likely
that this huge bathhouse
was built for none other
than Septimius Severus.
Wow, look at that colour! What is it?
We think it's pigment.
Some kind of mineral?
It's up for debate.
We thought it was,
but they say it's now inorganic.
The experts agree
that it's not quartz,
but it's so unusual they have yet
to pin down exactly what it is.
That's extraordinary.
I've never seen anything like it,
but if we have got purple
pigment on this side Mm.
you can't get any more imperial
than that, can you?
Because, of course,
purple IS the imperial colour.
Nobody else is allowed to use it.
It was You know, you'd be
executed for using purple.
The emperor wore robes dyed purple.
Yeah.
And this is a direct commission
to the Imperial Court.
We know that Septimius Severus
was up in the north of England.
He comes up with his wife
and his children.
So for a short while,
the north of England
would have been the centre
of the Roman Empire.
Isn't that crazy?
The capital, effectively,
because the emperor's here.
The Imperial Court was here —
with his family, yeah. Yeah.
The evidence is suggesting
that this spectacular bathhouse
may have been used by the Emperor
Septimius Severus himself
and his court.
And our Dig Diary cameras
capture the moment
the team make their
most monumental discovery.
We've just found this,
what we thought was a large boulder,
but on the other side,
there's a sculptured face of a lady.
So incredibly excited.
This would be the first sculpture
we've had from our site.
And I think we're just about now
at the point of lifting it
and turning it over.
OK, one, two, three.
Oh. Oh, wow. Wow.
Oh, my gosh.
Incredible.
A bit more water.
Stunning.
Stunning. And the hairstyle.
Yeah. Tied in plaits.
Well, look at the hair here. Yeah.
This is braided hair.
Yeah. Yes.
It's very exciting.
This is our star find.
Probably the star find
of my whole career.
As the lucky volunteers
continue to dig,
they make another huge discovery.
Yes. Oh! Wow!
Another one.
We got another one.
These are absolutely mind-blowing.
Yes, stunning. Wow!
They're very weird.
They're very, very strange.
Is there anything like them
from Roman Britain? Nothing, no.
And a very strange style.
And a very strange style.
The question is, who are these
people they're representing?
You know, are they gods?
Are they the emperor and empress?
And the current thinking
is they're theatrical masks.
But why would you have
theatre masks on a baths?
Well, you have them because
they're sort of good-luck things.
So when you're naked in a bathhouse
and vulnerable,
they're sort of there
to protect you. So that's the idea.
So it's like to ward off evil.
Yeah. And then, you know,
it's not beautiful sculpture,
but it's really effective, isn't it?
I mean, you can see that
it hasn't been finished.
You can see the tool marks.
All these little peck marks here.
Yeah.
Not meant to be seen from behind.
So presumably they're meant
to be seen from a distance.
Yeah. If you could imagine,
it would be 2.5 or 3 metres away
on a wall of a building.
Yeah. From a distance,
you would never notice that.
You'd just see
the exaggerated eyes and nose
and mouth. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, could they have been on
a building with one on each corner?
Do you think you're likely to find
another two down in the trench?
That would be fantastic.
There's potential still down there.
I think they're extraordinary.
I love them.
What an incredible dig
showing us the apogee
of Roman civilisation
in all their finery and luxury.
But we need to remember
why that emperor was here.
He's about to launch
a reign of terror in Scotland.
So set against
those beautiful objects
and this astoundingly
magnificent bathhouse,
we've got the beginning
of one of the most brutal
and violent periods
in British history.
The landscape of Britain
is littered with abandoned
and forgotten settlements.
Some of them even
have their own acronym
DMV — deserted medieval village.
There are lots of reasons
for a place becoming abandoned.
It could be disease,
like the Black Death.
It could be a change of land use
a rich landowner deciding
to boot people off
to make room for more sheep.
Or it could be climate change
and crop failure.
Working out which factor
is responsible
has always been difficult.
But now,
with new scientific techniques,
we have the potential
to do just that.
Our next dig takes us
to East Heslerton,
20 miles south-west of Scarborough
and an Anglo-Saxon settlement,
which was abandoned
in the Early Medieval period.
A team of students from
the University of York
are hoping to get
to the bottom of the mystery
of the disappearing settlement
at East Heslerton.
This field has been
completely surveyed
using geophysical techniques.
Dominic Powlesland
is leading the dig.
And we can see a whole series
of blobs like these,
which are all over the field,
quite widely spread.
But if we were looking
at an Iron Age
or a Roman or even a Bronze Age
or a medieval settlement,
we would expect to see trackways,
field systems, property boundaries
and all the things that make up
what we would probably see
as a village.
Early Anglo-Saxon settlements
do not look like villages,
and it's not just here,
it's all over Britain.
Why do these things
look so different?
The fact that these Anglo-Saxon
settlements never developed
into more substantial villages
with interconnecting roads
suggests that
they were mysteriously abandoned
soon after they were established.
But the team are finding objects
that the people here left behind.
This is a piece of
early Anglo-Saxon pottery.
So you've got these ribs
with little marks in them
and there's multiple,
so they've probably been decorated
using a bone point.
And then this is the end
of a composite bone comb.
They're made out
of multiple sheets of bone.
This one has just come out,
so it's still covered with soil.
It has no extra decoration,
but what a lovely shape.
They're really beautiful
bits of personal equipment.
Dominic thinks that
the abandonment of East Heslerton
may be linked to a change in climate.
I believe the event
that triggers these changes
in Anglo-Saxon domestic settlement,
or stopped them developing,
is the what we call
the Late Antique Little Ice Age.
This site may have just died out
and it may have died out
due to bad weather.
The Late Antique Little Ice Age
was a period of rapid climate cooling
in the sixth and seventh centuries.
It's possible that
this cold spell was caused
by distant volcanic eruptions.
Large clouds of volcanic ash
can block out the sun,
causing temperatures to plummet
and crops to fail.
Could that explain the abandonment
of Anglo-Saxon East Heslerton?
If a volcano was to blame,
perhaps there could be evidence
at the site.
Project lead Nicky Milner
is looking for clues.
So, I'm going to be taking
some samples.
Tephra is volcanic ash and cinders,
and tiny particles can be carried
in the air,
far from the site of an eruption.
We don't need a lot.
The tephra is very, very small,
and we can just put
a small sample like that into a bag,
which will then be sent off
to the specialists to see
if there's any tephra within it.
This is a piece of new research.
Nobody's done it on archaeological
sites of this period before.
But if we can correlate the events
with the archaeology,
I think we're in a very good
position to start reassessing
the whole
of early Anglo-Saxon England.
Let's put it that way.
The sediment sample from
East Heslerton has been sent
to Simon Blockley at Royal
Holloway University for analysis.
Bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman
has headed there
to find out the results.
Simon is pioneering a technique
to look for tephra
for the very first time
on an Anglo-Saxon site
Hi, Simon.
Hi. Come in. Thanks.
and he's going to show me
how it's done.
So, Simon, we're talking about tiny
little microscopic pieces of ash.
That can't be an easy thing
to actually find.
It's incredibly difficult.
If we find a volcanic glass shard,
it'll be about
100 microns across,
which is a tiny amount. It's about
the thickness of one of your hairs.
Right. So what's new about this
is we're looking for it in an
Anglo-Saxon archaeological site.
And that's really, I think,
never been done before.
It does look quite challenging,
but can I have a go?
Please feel free, yeah. OK.
What exactly am I looking for?
So the first thing
to think of is try
and look for something that
makes you think glass shard.
And then also
fluted, elongated nature
they're classic features
of a tephra shard.
Some of them look similar,
don't they?
They do. You get quite
a lot of mimics.
But over time, you learn
to identify what is tephra.
Just to spot them.
Yeah, gosh, you can see Hmm
No. As I said
There you go. Look at that!
That one. Absolutely. Well done.
You found a needle in a haystack.
The linear structure
and the elongated features,
all of that is an absolutely
classic example. Well done.
Excellent. Thank you.
This is all from
your archaeological site,
so it's the first time
I've ever found
tephra in an Anglo-Saxon
archaeological site. OK.
It's really incredibly rare to do.
So this is exciting for you as well?
Hugely exciting.
It's evidence that there was
definitely a volcanic eruption
when this archaeological site
was being abandoned,
which is quite important.
It's real physical evidence.
Yeah, it's really exciting, isn't
it? Yeah, it's amazingly cool.
Finding tephra within the sample
proves the settlers
at East Heslerton
had to deal with a volcanic
ash cloud descending on them.
And with chemical analysis,
Simon is even able to determine
which volcano was the culprit.
So, what exactly are we
looking for in this chart, then?
So, this is a chemical plot
that summarises
the chemistry
of different volcanoes.
First of all, somebody has to go
to the volcano
to take samples
from close to the volcano
and analyse the chemistry.
And then this plot
is a plot of tephras that have
been found in England,
but have been correlated
to different Icelandic volcanoes.
And so down at the bottom left
we have products
of the Torfajokull volcano
and the Katia volcano.
Over to the right, we have the red,
which is the Hekla volcano.
And then at the top
we have the green,
which is the Askja volcano.
And our Heslerton data,
the yellow plots,
closest to the Askja tephras.
So we can say, quite confidently
actually,
that this is an eruption
from Askja,
which is really interesting
because no—one's found
an eruption from Askja at this time,
yet — until now. Brilliant. So this
is a brand-new volcanic eruption
that we didn't know about?
Absolutely, yeah!
That's very, very exciting,
but it also allows us to say
that there's an Icelandic volcano
erupting at the time that
this site was being abandoned.
The Askja volcano is hidden away
in the remote highlands of Iceland,
nearly 1,000 miles
from East Heslerton.
It's known to have erupted
in 1875 and in 1961.
But now, thanks to Simon's work,
we know Askja also erupted
in the sixth century
and that its ash cloud extended
all the way to Britain.
We do have historical accounts
and evidence of what happens
when you get Icelandic eruptions,
and you basically get one or two
years of cold, wet summers.
That means you don't grow crops.
If you get two years or so
of not growing crops,
a population like that
could be in trouble.
That's really, really interesting,
because it's quite difficult to find
any other evidence, isn't it,
of things like crop failures?
It just doesn't leave a mark
in the archaeology.
Not in the archaeology,
but what we have at this site now
is we have tephra
that says at least it's possible.
Which is amazing.
It is, yeah, yeah.
These tiny dots on a computer screen
are the first direct evidence
of events significant enough
to traumatise early Anglo-Saxon
communities
and force them
to leave their homes.
Clouds of volcanic ash from Iceland
may have caused upheaval
in the seventh century,
but 400 years later,
hordes of Norman invaders from France
had an even bigger impact
on the Anglo-Saxons.
And that story has brought me
to the village of Lowther
four miles south of Penrith.
Here, hidden among the fells,
waters and forests
of the Lake District,
is Lowther Castle.
It was built in 1806
by William Lowther,
the first Earl of Lonsdale,
and at its height,
it reputedly had one room
for every day of the year.
Today, the castle is undergoing
a transformative restoration.
It looks like an ancient ruin,
but it's only 200 years old.
It was lived in by three
generations of the Lowther family,
and then, in 1957, the then Lord
Lowther was running out of cash.
And so he demolished it,
or at least he took the roof off,
and he took a wrecking ball
to some of the walls.
And so now it just sits here
in the landscape
as a rather romantic ruin.
But there's a much older story
playing out in the grounds.
The history and influence
of the Lowther family
is well documented
back to the 13th century.
It's thought that they took
their name from the River Lowther,
which still flows
through the estate today
and traced their origins
to a descendant of the Vikings,
who arrived here in 1150.
But this area is not mentioned
in the Domesday Book.
In fact, there's no written evidence
at all for what was here
in the early Norman period.
You get to a point where
the historical records just run out
and we can't find out anything
more about this place,
apart from, of course, we can,
because that's when
the archaeology comes in.
Now, a team of students from
the University of Central Lancashire
is investigating a mysterious feature
hidden in the castle grounds.
The lead archaeologist
is Jim Morris.
Hello. Hello.
What are you doing down here?
The castle's up there.
Well, it does look like the castle
should be up there.
But what we're doing down here
is actually
we're looking
at the medieval origins of Lowther.
Deep in the woods,
Jim is investigating a huge
ditch and bank earthwork
more than ten metres across
and eight metres high.
It was completely overgrown,
so we've cleared
all this undergrowth.
He believes that this earthwork
predates any historic record
for the area.
So, are we walking through
the original entrance here?
We think, yes, that this is
the original entrance way.
OK, and there's a lovely cobbled
floor which is coming up. Yes.
And we think we've got this
spread across the whole interior.
So it's a yard inside here? Yeah,
that's a really nice way
of thinking about it.
And you've got a section
right through the bank there.
Can we go and take a look at that?
Yeah, of course we can.
This raised cobbled area
is surrounded on all sides
by steep slopes
perfect for defending the interior.
I mean, they're quite impressive,
aren't they?
They are quite impressive.
From the interior, quite small,
but actually, you can now see,
they're actually quite substantial
ramparts, especially on this side.
I think they're formidable. Yes.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of moving of earth.
It is, but it's not very technical.
So, actually, the reason
we've cut this trench across
and we've kind of gone down through
is to look and see
how this mound was created.
So, what we've found is layers
of stones, then a big mass of clay,
then another layer of stones
and a big mass of clay and
another layer of stones. Yeah.
So, relatively simplistic,
actually, to construct. Yeah.
It's like a motte-and-bailey,
but without the motte.
Without the mound in the middle.
Without the mound in the middle.
Yeah. So, in effect, you've got
the bailey part. Yeah.
Jim believes this simple earthwork
has the hallmarks
of an early Norman castle
but that's difficult
to appreciate from the ground.
So having chatted to Jim,
and sitting up here
so I can get a really good idea
of the shape of it,
I've drawn what it would
have looked like.
The trench that they've put
through the ramparts,
that's through this part just here.
And Jim thinks there would
have been a timber palisade
which runs all the way around
the ramparts on the top.
We've got the entrance down here,
which would have been guarded
by a gatehouse,
and then perhaps
a tower up here where I'm sitting
with this commanding view
over this little Norman fort.
This seemingly important site isn't
mentioned in the Domesday Book,
which was written two decades
after the Norman Conquest,
so to investigate when and why
the fortress was first built here,
medieval historian Sophie Ambler
has been trawling through the Lowther
family's personal medieval archive.
Sophie, hi. Hi, hello.
Oh, so these are
the historical documents.
What do they actually say?
Well, they tell us a little bit
about the landscape of the site,
because they are portioning up
very small portions of land,
an acre here, half an acre there.
And this one here is particularly
special because we can date it.
So this is given at Lowther
on the Saturday
after the feast of Easter
in the year 1278. Wow.
So it's given at Lowther,
which means it was given here
in the vill of Lowther,
probably very close to where
we're standing now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, this is absolutely wonderful.
And if we look here at this one,
so this charter dates to the 1280s,
and it's a charter
drawn up for Alice,
daughter of Peter of Thrimby.
She's renouncing her rights
in half a rood of land
that's an eighth of an acre
can you see? — above the castle.
Can you see "castellum", just
here on the fold of the parchment?
Oh, yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So do you think that castle
is the one in the woods?
I think it's very likely that
this is the castle in the woods.
Yeah. Exactly.
I think that in the 1280s,
this castle was still standing then.
The people living in the village
recognised it as a castle,
and they were using it
as a local landmark.
It might not have been in use then,
but it's definitely
It's definitely there.
But who built that castle?
This is the big question.
This is the big question.
Now, in Cumbria, we have
very little written evidence
for the Norman period. OK.
And that's because Cumbria
was not conquered in 1066
by William the Conqueror.
When was it conquered?
So, it was conquered in 1092
Really? ..by his son, William Rufus,
who led the conquest
of Cumbria in 1092.
Cumbria was an independent kingdom.
It wasn't part of the Anglo-Saxon
kingdom that we know
from southern England.
William Rufus led an expedition
to Cumbria
and then he sent peasant men
with their wives and children
from the Norman regime
in southern England to Cumbria,
so it's effectively
a plantation settlement
and a way of colonising Cumbria.
And we're speculating that this site
could be the first stage
of the Norman conquest
and settlement of Cumbria Yeah.
because that's the sort of castle
type that we would expect to see
in rural conquest.
Oh, it's just It is fantastic.
What an amazing archive to have.
Occupying forces through history
have established control
with fortresses
before sending in settlers
to colonise the region.
It seems this medieval settlement
at Lowther was no different.
Could this hastily constructed
wood-and-earth fortification
have been the vanguard
of the Norman's final victory
over the independent kingdom
of Cumbria
more than a quarter of a century
after 1066?
What a fantastic story.
It's wonderful to be here
just as the very first
archaeological investigation
of this castle is happening.
There's more to find out,
of course — there always is.
But we're already learning
so much about Norman Cumbria.
Next time on Digging For Britain
I join a dig revealing secrets
beneath Leicester Cathedral
How fantastic to have found this
sacred object in this sacred place.
It's an incredible find.
historian Onyeka Nubia investigates
what life was like for women
in a forgotten nunnery
Six nuns have run away.
Phenomenal number.
and from an RAF airbase,
beautiful Roman pottery.
This is the first time that somebody
has held this in their hands.
Since they put it in the ground.
1,600 years ago.
Come and search
for we who search
And looking for us scar the land
And dig for those whose stories lie
With buried past and futures won
And dig for us as we have done
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪
have a rich and varied history
stretching back thousands of years.
But hidden under the ground
and under water are some amazing
treasures just waiting to be found.
Whoo! Wow!
So each year, all across the country,
archaeologists dig, dive
and explore their way down
Oh, this is brilliant!
searching for fresh discoveries
And it is completely intact.
revealing traces
of ancient cultures
This is here is 2,803 years old.
Oh, wow.
and unearthing
fascinating artefacts.
Oh, that's a nice thing! What is it?
I've never seen anything
quite like it in my career.
Every dig adds new pieces to the
ever-growing archaeological jigsaw
That's so cool.
that is the epic story
of our islands.
This year, I visit digs in
some extraordinary locations
The ceiling just got a bit lower.
and I call on the help of a trio
of expert investigators
It's quite difficult to find
any other evidence of things
that just didn't leave a mark
in the archaeology.
This is a really powerful document
because we're getting to hear the
voices that we don't usually hear.
who delve deeper to answer
the questions raised by the finds.
Is all of this already
recorded in books?
There was none of this
in a book anywhere.
Finally, the archaeologists bring
their most amazing discoveries
into our tent
Astonishing!
for up-close analysis.
Genuinely rewriting history.
Welcome to Digging For Britain.
This time I'm travelling
around the north of Britain
to uncover the region's most
exciting new archaeological digs.
The largest single Roman building
ever discovered
along Hadrian's Wall
Possibly the star find
of my whole career.
shocks the experts
Whoo! Wow!
and reveals links to
a Roman emperor here in Britain.
The north of England would
have been
the centre of the Roman Empire.
Isn't that crazy?
On a remote Scottish peak,
a lost fortress pushes archaeologists
to their limits
It's the most challenging excavation
type you'll get in Britain.
but uncovers remarkable new finds.
That's so cool. You never find
the other half of these querns.
And in Durham, a riverbed
gives up its medieval treasure.
These pilgrim badges are incredibly
rare finds for the north of England.
The north of Britain is home
to one of the largest
ancient landmarks in the country
Hadrian's Wall
built after decades of
brutal and bloody conflict
with what the Romans called
"barbarian" tribes in the north.
The Romans built nearly 100 forts
along its 73—mile length
and stationed nearly
10,000 soldiers here
on this dangerous frontier.
Our first dig takes us to
the western end of Hadrian's Wall
to Carlisle.
I've come to Carlisle
because — you've guessed it
I've heard about a fantastic dig
that's happening
in a very unusual place,
Carlisle Cricket Club.
Now, the club is nearly
200 years old,
but the archaeology they're
finding here is much more ancient.
In 2005, the River Eden
burst its banks
and flooded the entire cricket club.
Now the club want to build
a new pavilion on higher ground.
But being so close to Hadrian's Wall,
they had to check the site for
any archaeological remains first.
And they called in
Wardell Archaeology,
assisted by a team
of enthusiastic volunteers.
They just expected to find
some medieval rubbish
but what they've actually
discovered is far more exciting
a huge Roman building
full to the brim with Roman finds.
Piece of plaster —
that'll be Roman, that'll be.
Lovely piece of Roman glass
and you can just see the colour —
it's a really lovely sky blue.
Something really special
is going on here,
so everyone's wildly excited.
Brilliant.
Oh, so it's quite big.
Yeah.
Frank Giecco is leading
this very surprising dig
So what is this building
that we're looking at?
Well, we call it a bathhouse,
but it's not
a conventional bathhouse.
It's 50 metres by 50 metres.
That's huge. It is,
and it's two storey.
How do you know it's two storey?
Some of the surviving bits of wall,
they're about a 1.20 metre wide,
and the foundations are at least
a 1.30 metre deep, so it's huge.
So you know that that's big enough,
solid enough to be supporting
You wouldn't need that for
a single-storey building. Yeah.
Now, I can see lots of intriguing
archaeology over there.
Can we have a bit of a tour? Yeah.
Let's just come into site.
This extraordinary Roman bathhouse
is bigger than the trench.
It is enormous.
In fact, we think it's the largest
Roman building
ever found along Hadrian's Wall.
A detailed 3D model of the site
reveals a complex
network of thick walls
and spacious rooms.
With underfloor heating,
or a hypocaust,
the floor would have rested
on these columns of tiles.
And being a bathhouse,
there are plenty of drains.
But why would the Romans have built
such a magnificent bathhouse
up here at the far northern edge
of the empire?
The team are hoping to find clues,
and the drains are proving
to be a rich source.
By painstakingly sieving
sediment from the drains,
they're discovering evidence
of Roman bathers' lost property
engraved gemstones
known as intaglios.
Hello. What was the excitement about?
We heard a bit of excitement.
I found an intaglio here, yes.
That's tiny.
So that would've been set
in a ring? Yes.
The team have uncovered
intaglios made from carnelian,
jasper and amethyst.
They're held in the rings
with a vegetable glue
that loses its stickiness
in a sauna Ah.
so they just fall out.
So this would have been
a standard occurrence at the baths?
Totally. You go to the baths,
you get home and go,
"Oh, my intaglio's gone."
Yeah. They were clever, these Romans,
but they needed to invent
a better glue. Glue. Yeah, totally.
That is beautiful.
These valuable personal items
link us back to the actual people
who once bathed here
wealthy Romans.
And hidden among the sprawling ruins,
the archaeologists
are also uncovering
unusual architectural details.
Jo, what have you got there?
We've got some lovely examples
of vaulting tubes
architectural structures
that fitted together
and formed part of
the roof structure.
That's really clever,
so terracotta tubes. Yeah.
These tubes would have slotted
together to create curved ribs
to support a vaulted roof.
Is it Is it a standard way
of building a bathhouse?
No, it's not.
I think there's only four examples
of vaulting tubes being used
In Britain?
in Britain, yeah,
that we've found.
They're a North African design.
Are they? Yeah.
So do we think that
there are architects
coming from that North African
part of the empire?
I think that's the idea, yeah.
I think that's the idea.
This isn't a natural
British way of building,
so they had to have somebody
who had the knowledge
to make these and to build them
into some sort of structures.
Maybe they were part of the troops,
maybe the architects
came along with the design
and they came with the structure.
Yeah. Yeah.
This intriguing discovery of
North African construction techniques
and the evidence
of numerous wealthy bathers
is prompting more questions
than answers at this stage.
We'll catch up with the team
in Carlisle later in the program me
to see if the archaeology
can explain
why this luxurious bathhouse
was built on the far edge
of the Roman Empire.
But for now,
we're heading further north.
In the rugged landscape
to the north of Hadrian's Wall,
the "last of the free",
the Caledonians,
stubbornly resisted Roman occupation.
But even these remote,
beautiful locations
are filled with clues
of thriving ancient cultures.
In Shetland, the Broch of Clickimin
housed an Iron Age community
more than 1,600 years ago.
And the Calanais Standing Stones
on the Isle of Lewis
were first raised
nearly 5,000 years ago
long before Stonehenge.
The Romans never conquered Scotland
and controlled
the Scottish Highlands,
and they built these great walls
coast to coast
to separate off
the province of Britannia
and protect it.
And you can imagine them
peering across the wall,
looking out at that wild country
full of "barbarians" — the Picts,
as the Romans described them.
Well, our next dig allows us to meet
the Picts on their own terms.
We journey to Bennachie,
20 miles north-west of Aberdeen.
Amongst the peaks
of this isolated range
is Mither Tap.
Its commanding summit stands more
than 500 metres above sea level
and perched on the very top
is an astonishing stone fortress
built by the Picts
in the Early Medieval period.
This year,
an intrepid team of students
from the University of Aberdeen
is embarking on one of the
most challenging digs in the UK
investigating the ancient ruins
at the top of Mither Tap.
These hills are among
the first places in Aberdeenshire
to get snow in winter
it's a particularly
inhospitable location.
So, what were the Picts
doing up here?
The team want to find out
if it was a temporary military camp
or something much more significant.
But it's a long way up.
It's day two and this climb is not
going to get any easier.
It's the most challenging excavation
type you'll get in Britain.
So well done, you made it up
the hill for a second day.
Just happy to be here.
I think they either love it
or hate it.
I just don't think
there's anything in between.
Gordon Noble is leading the dig.
We've opened quite a large trench
and we're just beginning
to get down now
to the settlement layers.
And so this is hopefully
where the excitement begins.
Our Dig Diary cameras capture
the huge variety of finds
emerging from the site.
I think it's a little bit of flint.
Um, there was an
audible gasp escaped Yeah, yeah.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you very much.
Little bit of iron.
A little bit of a tip
of a nail maybe.
And they've also unearthed
half of a quern stone.
It's nuts to think
that they'd have been
grinding grain up here.
That's incredible, isn't it?
Do we have a finds bag
big enough for that?
No.
Now just need to find
the other half.
My God! Yay!
That's so cool.
You never find the other half
of these querns.
That's very nice.
Evidence that the Picts
were grinding grain here
could point to
a more permanent settlement
at this imposing location.
The remains of two
formidable stone ramparts
encircle an upper
and a lower citadel.
It's accessed by steep steps.
All built around a spectacular
rocky outcrop in the centre.
This year, the team are opening
trenches in the lower citadel,
looking for evidence
of settlement here,
and as the dig progresses,
traces of Pictish life
start to emerge.
What have you got there, Thomas?
It's an animal bone.
I believe it's cattle.
Tooth!
Probably pig. Tells us
that they're eating
different things on site, they're
butchering different things.
Pigs are often associated
with high status
and they're usually quite
a convenient animal
for feasting as well.
And along with this evidence
of fine dining,
the team are also uncovering
traces of industry.
Bit of burnt clay,
and on one side of it there's
what looks to be vitrified material,
almost like it's been used
in the metalworking process.
So we could have some sort
of a metalworking area here maybe.
Oh, my God.
That's incredible.
The team is starting to
build a more complex picture
of life within the fortress
but they're finding themselves
at the mercy of the elements.
We've got a thunderstorm moving in.
The realities of digging
in northern Scotland. Yeah.
With the weather closing in,
I've asked Gordon to join me
in the Digging For Britain tent
to share everything he's learned
about Pictish life at Mither Tap.
Gordon, this seems like
a pretty incredible site.
What were you hoping,
what were you expecting when
you first set out to dig there?
Well, it's one of the more extreme
sites we've dug, that's for sure,
and it must be one of the best
preserved hill forts in Scotland.
And now on this hilltop,
we're actually finding
some of the best evidence
for the kind of everyday lives
of the Picts
that we've got, really,
from this region.
So what have we got here, then?
So we've got some of the indicators
that this was
a high-status location.
So we've got little tiny
shards here from crucibles.
Right. So these are
the little clay vessels
they're using to melt down
bronze or silver Yeah.
and pour it into moulds,
and this is what these are.
Probably for casting
a big penannular brooch,
which would have been one of
the big status symbols of the day.
I mean, that's such
a tiny fragment It is.
to be able to know what this is
and the relevance of it.
And you're not finding the metal,
then?
You're just finding the evidence
that they were Exactly, yeah.
doing metalwork.
We're finding some of the residues
of metalworking,
and these are bigger shards
of crucibles here.
But they were
the ultimate recyclers
they've taken away all the metal
and left behind the things
that weren't any use to them. Yeah.
Metalworking right up on the hill,
does this suggest
there's something more there
than just a temporary military camp?
Absolutely. I mean, it's one
of the extreme locations
in Aberdeenshire today.
It's the first place to get snow.
But the evidence
we're beginning to get
into how these sites functioned
certainly suggests that
there are people living there.
Yeah. There are a few other
finds to look at here.
What have we got here?
They're intriguing.
It looks like a couple of pebbles
and then what looks like
a tiny pyramid.
Is it stone? Yes.
So, we think they are gaming pieces.
Again, it shows you more about
the kind of everyday lives
of the Picts Yeah.
and some of the leisure pursuits.
Yeah, it's not all work.
It's not all work.
Helps bring them alive a bit more,
doesn't it? It does, yeah. Yeah.
And then this?
It's actually Pictish pottery,
and if you'd asked me
a few years back,
"Were the Picts in this region
making their own pottery?"
We would have said no Really?
because there's so few sites
investigated.
Yeah. But now a few sites,
including Mither Tap,
we're beginning to find
a native tradition
of making their own pottery vessels.
So it's just been missed,
archaeologically?
Well, it's just there's been
so few sites found,
and the way the Picts
were building their structures
tends to be in very ephemeral ways.
So, down in the lowlands you can
imagine they just get ploughed away.
But in these upland sites,
because no-one has intensively
farmed these locations,
for obvious reasons,
being 550 metres up,
we're getting some of the everyday
objects of Pictish lifestyles.
So this suggests that you've got
these places which, I think today,
might feel to us to be quite remote
or difficult to get to, but actually
they're quite familiar and lived in.
Yes, absolutely.
And they probably had
a completely different concept
of what was marginal
and what was central
in that time period. Yeah.
I think this is incredibly visible
from the region roundabout,
so you can imagine to actually
place a hillfort on top,
that would be a real marker of power
and status being able to do that.
It's a statement. It is, yeah.
And you know, they seem
to be like any other group
in this time period
you know, warring societies,
expanding their territories
through conflict and conquest.
It's all sounding very
Game Of Thrones. It is a bit, yeah.
But it is fascinating to find out
more about their lifestyles
and their major sites.
The archaeology at Mither Tap
is showing us that it wasn't
just a temporary military outpost,
but home to a thriving
Pictish community all year round.
We dig for the gods
that leave no bones
For the ship that sailed
in the sunken sea
The vessel aloft
in a sky of storms
The famine road,
and the merchant's quay ♪
Some of the most imposing
ancient monuments in the north
are connected with the religion
that grew out of the Roman Empire.
Today, grand ruins like
the Holy Island of Lindisfarne
in Northumberland
and Rievaulx Abbey
in the North Yorkshire Moors
stand as reminders
of the importance
and wealth of the Christian Church
in the north through the centuries.
Pilgrimage was really important
in medieval life.
There were pilgrim sites
right across Britain and Ireland
and routes connecting them.
And if you really wanted
to pull those pilgrims in,
it helped to have a dead saint,
or at least a bit of a dead saint.
And this was big business,
this was the tourism of its day,
and there was a whole manufacturing
industry that went along with it,
providing merchandise
for the pilgrims to buy
a wealth of artefacts for
archaeologists to find in the future.
Our next investigation takes us
to one of the most important
Christian pilgrimage sites
in England — Durham.
Durham Cathedral,
a wonder of Norman architecture,
sits at the very heart of the city.
It's home to the shrine
of St Cuthbert,
one of the most important early
Anglo-Saxon saints in England.
A prior and then a bishop,
Cuthbert became famous for miracles
after his death,
and the pilgrims
came flocking to his tomb.
The Elvet Bridge dates back
to the 12th century,
allowing pilgrims to cross the River
Wear on their way to the cathedral.
And for more than 15 years,
scuba diver Gary Bankhead
has been working with
the University of Durham
to excavate the riverbed here.
To date, I've recovered
over 13,500,
typically small metal, finds.
The riverbed below the bridge
is full to the brim with small finds.
When I'm down underwater,
the visibility
actually isn't too bad.
I only need to be able to see
as far as my hands,
and I'm underwater
for about two hours
and during that time
I'll discover anything
from 80 to 150 small finds.
The process of excavating
the riverbed
is relatively straightforward.
Just like archaeology on the land,
things at the top
are the most modern.
But right at the very bottom, that's
where the Late Medieval objects are.
Gary takes every object he finds
to the University of Durham Museum,
and many of them are providing us
with connections to medieval pilgrims
crossing the Elvet Bridge.
Ampullae, for me,
are really, really exciting.
They are pilgrim badges, often known
or referred to as pilgrim signs.
Pilgrimage was undertaken
by people of all classes.
And just imagine
you visit a holy shrine,
you'd like a souvenir.
Today, you'd probably buy a T-shirt.
But in that medieval period,
they bought badges.
The original form are of this type,
so these are little lead ampullae,
essentially vessels
that were designed to hold
either consecrated oil, holy water,
or even dust
anything that had been
associated with,
or in contact with, the shrine
of a particular saint.
These were mass-produced objects,
so they were relatively cheap.
They were made of lead or pewter,
crimped shut at the top,
had little lugs on either side,
so they would have been worn
suspended around the neck.
These are incredibly rare finds
for the north of England.
Ampullae, in particular,
are very rare.
Gary thinks that these objects
weren't just lost,
they could have been
deliberately left here.
There is an assertion that pilgrims
would select specific objects
to throw into a river,
as a thank offering for, perhaps,
safe passage home.
And given that we have so many
pilgrim badges all found in a river,
it just adds to this theory.
Some of the finds even suggest
a specific link
to the north of England's most
important icon, St Cuthbert.
This particular object
is absolutely amazing.
It's a very small pectoral cross
with equal-length flaring arms.
The form of this particular
cross was incredibly similar
to that of St Cuthbert's
golden cloisonne cross.
It's incredibly rare.
It represents THE only material
culture evidence of pilgrimage
to the shrine of St Cuthbert
in Durham that's ever been found.
With this evidence of pilgrimage
surfacing in Durham
historian Onyeka Nubia
has come to the cathedral
to investigate the real story
of how the seventh—century bishop
St Cuthbert inspired a medieval cult.
I'm here at Durham Cathedral.
Its spire is magnificent.
It pierces the sky.
And yet the foundation of Durham
Cathedral isn't just rock and stone,
it's based on a person
St Cuthbert.
I've come to meet Richard Gameson,
an expert on medieval texts.
He's unearthed
some astonishing accounts
hidden in the
University of Durham Library,
which can tell us
about some of the earliest pilgrims
to the Shrine of St Cuthbert
and the offerings
that they would bring.
Hello, Richard.
Hello, good to meet you.
So, we've got some fantastic,
wonderful texts
that tell us about the pilgrims
and the pilgrimage
that took place in Durham.
Yes, this here is the authorial
manuscript of Simeon of Durham
describing the history of the Church
of Durham up to his own day,
which was the very beginning
of the 12th century.
Ah, so this book tells us about
the enduring legacy of St Cuthbert,
even though it wasn't written at
the time of the life of St Cuthbert.
Yes, indeed.
And this chapter explains a striking
miracle that was accomplished
at the site of Cuthbert's shrine.
And we read here about a woman
who's "infirmi" She was crippled,
but when she came to the place
where Cuthbert's body was,
she was healed.
OK, so we have this idea
from this story that
St Cuthbert is doing miracles
from beyond the grave. Yeah.
And the point about a shrine
is that you want people to visit it.
By advertising these cases
of healing,
they spread the word
of Cuthbert's potency
and attract more people
as pilgrims,
as visitors, to the shrine,
in the hope of healing miracles.
So, not to be too cynical on this,
is there a financial aspect to all
these ideas of healing and miracles?
There certainly is,
and this chapter highlights it
that when you came,
it was expected that you were
going to make an offering.
Here at the beginning
of this chapter, we read
that on top of the tomb
there was a "multitudinem
denariorium"
that there was a multitude of coins,
and therefore your revenue stream
is stronger,
the more people you attract. Right.
So who had access to this shrine?
A good question. And in fact, this
text answers that very precisely.
This is what's known
as the Rites of Durham,
and it's explained here
the shrine was kept sealed
into a cover,
which was locked.
And we're told after someone
has been identified as a VIP,
it will be unlocked and raised
so you can see the shrine.
Fascinating.
So we have differential treatment
for different types of pilgrims.
The ones who can pay more money
have greater access
than those who have less money
and less fame.
I'm afraid
that's what it boiled down to.
You would be within a foot or so
of the cover of the shrine Right.
but you would not see
the shrine itself.
No matter how virtuous
and faithful you are,
you still can't get access
if you haven't got money.
No. And halfway down
you can just about see
that if an offering
was silver or jewels Yes.
then it would be hung
on the shrine.
And if it is a stranger thing,
such as a unicorn's horn
or anything similar,
that was kept in the feretory.
So it was kept within
the sacred enclosure,
but not actually on the shrine.
The benefit you're getting
is proximity to the saint.
So if your offering is physically
attached to the shrine,
that's a hotline.
I see. So we can see here that
pilgrimage was a universal practice,
but practised differently.
Absolutely.
The sources here are clear
rich people thought that
St Cuthbert was THEIR saint.
But the archaeology
gives us another story.
Ordinary pilgrims,
denied direct access to the shrine,
of lead ampullae
and pilgrim badges to the river.
And yet, ironically,
it is those very humble offerings
that have stood the test of time.
I dreamt I flew with the saints
last night
I know them all by wing size
And up there
it just doesn't count for naught
Whether you're clever or wise ♪
Next, we return to the grounds
of the cricket club at Carlisle.
The team here are still trying
to understand
why the largest building ever found
along the embattled northern frontier
of the Roman Empire
is a luxurious bathhouse
with exotic North African
architecture.
And lead archaeologist
Frank Giecco believes
they've made a breakthrough.
Well, this is where it gets
really exciting,
when we have this IMP tile here.
These are very unusual.
Oh, wow, look at that.
So you get legionary stamps,
but this is the Imperial Court.
Isn't that fantastic?
So, I
P. P, all joined together.
Imperita.
Does that mean the emperor's here?
It means it's been
a commission for the Imperial Court.
It means he's ordered it?
He's ordered it.
And which emperor? Do we know?
Septimius Severus.
I would put money on it.
Would you? Yeah. Why?
Because he was from Libya,
and it links with the vaulting tubes
that we have from this building.
Those are very unusual,
architecturally? Very unusual.
A lot of people are more excited
about the vaulting tubes
than the imperial stamp.
So he came from North Africa
originally?
Yeah.
Septimius Severus was born in
the year 145 in Libya, North Africa.
He led military campaigns
in Mesopotamia and Africa,
and in 208 he arrived in Britain
with more than 40,000 soldiers.
His goal was to march north
and finally conquer what he saw
as the barbaric tribes
on the other side of Hadrian's Wall.
With this discovery
of an imperial connection,
it seems likely
that this huge bathhouse
was built for none other
than Septimius Severus.
Wow, look at that colour! What is it?
We think it's pigment.
Some kind of mineral?
It's up for debate.
We thought it was,
but they say it's now inorganic.
The experts agree
that it's not quartz,
but it's so unusual they have yet
to pin down exactly what it is.
That's extraordinary.
I've never seen anything like it,
but if we have got purple
pigment on this side Mm.
you can't get any more imperial
than that, can you?
Because, of course,
purple IS the imperial colour.
Nobody else is allowed to use it.
It was You know, you'd be
executed for using purple.
The emperor wore robes dyed purple.
Yeah.
And this is a direct commission
to the Imperial Court.
We know that Septimius Severus
was up in the north of England.
He comes up with his wife
and his children.
So for a short while,
the north of England
would have been the centre
of the Roman Empire.
Isn't that crazy?
The capital, effectively,
because the emperor's here.
The Imperial Court was here —
with his family, yeah. Yeah.
The evidence is suggesting
that this spectacular bathhouse
may have been used by the Emperor
Septimius Severus himself
and his court.
And our Dig Diary cameras
capture the moment
the team make their
most monumental discovery.
We've just found this,
what we thought was a large boulder,
but on the other side,
there's a sculptured face of a lady.
So incredibly excited.
This would be the first sculpture
we've had from our site.
And I think we're just about now
at the point of lifting it
and turning it over.
OK, one, two, three.
Oh. Oh, wow. Wow.
Oh, my gosh.
Incredible.
A bit more water.
Stunning.
Stunning. And the hairstyle.
Yeah. Tied in plaits.
Well, look at the hair here. Yeah.
This is braided hair.
Yeah. Yes.
It's very exciting.
This is our star find.
Probably the star find
of my whole career.
As the lucky volunteers
continue to dig,
they make another huge discovery.
Yes. Oh! Wow!
Another one.
We got another one.
These are absolutely mind-blowing.
Yes, stunning. Wow!
They're very weird.
They're very, very strange.
Is there anything like them
from Roman Britain? Nothing, no.
And a very strange style.
And a very strange style.
The question is, who are these
people they're representing?
You know, are they gods?
Are they the emperor and empress?
And the current thinking
is they're theatrical masks.
But why would you have
theatre masks on a baths?
Well, you have them because
they're sort of good-luck things.
So when you're naked in a bathhouse
and vulnerable,
they're sort of there
to protect you. So that's the idea.
So it's like to ward off evil.
Yeah. And then, you know,
it's not beautiful sculpture,
but it's really effective, isn't it?
I mean, you can see that
it hasn't been finished.
You can see the tool marks.
All these little peck marks here.
Yeah.
Not meant to be seen from behind.
So presumably they're meant
to be seen from a distance.
Yeah. If you could imagine,
it would be 2.5 or 3 metres away
on a wall of a building.
Yeah. From a distance,
you would never notice that.
You'd just see
the exaggerated eyes and nose
and mouth. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, could they have been on
a building with one on each corner?
Do you think you're likely to find
another two down in the trench?
That would be fantastic.
There's potential still down there.
I think they're extraordinary.
I love them.
What an incredible dig
showing us the apogee
of Roman civilisation
in all their finery and luxury.
But we need to remember
why that emperor was here.
He's about to launch
a reign of terror in Scotland.
So set against
those beautiful objects
and this astoundingly
magnificent bathhouse,
we've got the beginning
of one of the most brutal
and violent periods
in British history.
The landscape of Britain
is littered with abandoned
and forgotten settlements.
Some of them even
have their own acronym
DMV — deserted medieval village.
There are lots of reasons
for a place becoming abandoned.
It could be disease,
like the Black Death.
It could be a change of land use
a rich landowner deciding
to boot people off
to make room for more sheep.
Or it could be climate change
and crop failure.
Working out which factor
is responsible
has always been difficult.
But now,
with new scientific techniques,
we have the potential
to do just that.
Our next dig takes us
to East Heslerton,
20 miles south-west of Scarborough
and an Anglo-Saxon settlement,
which was abandoned
in the Early Medieval period.
A team of students from
the University of York
are hoping to get
to the bottom of the mystery
of the disappearing settlement
at East Heslerton.
This field has been
completely surveyed
using geophysical techniques.
Dominic Powlesland
is leading the dig.
And we can see a whole series
of blobs like these,
which are all over the field,
quite widely spread.
But if we were looking
at an Iron Age
or a Roman or even a Bronze Age
or a medieval settlement,
we would expect to see trackways,
field systems, property boundaries
and all the things that make up
what we would probably see
as a village.
Early Anglo-Saxon settlements
do not look like villages,
and it's not just here,
it's all over Britain.
Why do these things
look so different?
The fact that these Anglo-Saxon
settlements never developed
into more substantial villages
with interconnecting roads
suggests that
they were mysteriously abandoned
soon after they were established.
But the team are finding objects
that the people here left behind.
This is a piece of
early Anglo-Saxon pottery.
So you've got these ribs
with little marks in them
and there's multiple,
so they've probably been decorated
using a bone point.
And then this is the end
of a composite bone comb.
They're made out
of multiple sheets of bone.
This one has just come out,
so it's still covered with soil.
It has no extra decoration,
but what a lovely shape.
They're really beautiful
bits of personal equipment.
Dominic thinks that
the abandonment of East Heslerton
may be linked to a change in climate.
I believe the event
that triggers these changes
in Anglo-Saxon domestic settlement,
or stopped them developing,
is the what we call
the Late Antique Little Ice Age.
This site may have just died out
and it may have died out
due to bad weather.
The Late Antique Little Ice Age
was a period of rapid climate cooling
in the sixth and seventh centuries.
It's possible that
this cold spell was caused
by distant volcanic eruptions.
Large clouds of volcanic ash
can block out the sun,
causing temperatures to plummet
and crops to fail.
Could that explain the abandonment
of Anglo-Saxon East Heslerton?
If a volcano was to blame,
perhaps there could be evidence
at the site.
Project lead Nicky Milner
is looking for clues.
So, I'm going to be taking
some samples.
Tephra is volcanic ash and cinders,
and tiny particles can be carried
in the air,
far from the site of an eruption.
We don't need a lot.
The tephra is very, very small,
and we can just put
a small sample like that into a bag,
which will then be sent off
to the specialists to see
if there's any tephra within it.
This is a piece of new research.
Nobody's done it on archaeological
sites of this period before.
But if we can correlate the events
with the archaeology,
I think we're in a very good
position to start reassessing
the whole
of early Anglo-Saxon England.
Let's put it that way.
The sediment sample from
East Heslerton has been sent
to Simon Blockley at Royal
Holloway University for analysis.
Bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman
has headed there
to find out the results.
Simon is pioneering a technique
to look for tephra
for the very first time
on an Anglo-Saxon site
Hi, Simon.
Hi. Come in. Thanks.
and he's going to show me
how it's done.
So, Simon, we're talking about tiny
little microscopic pieces of ash.
That can't be an easy thing
to actually find.
It's incredibly difficult.
If we find a volcanic glass shard,
it'll be about
100 microns across,
which is a tiny amount. It's about
the thickness of one of your hairs.
Right. So what's new about this
is we're looking for it in an
Anglo-Saxon archaeological site.
And that's really, I think,
never been done before.
It does look quite challenging,
but can I have a go?
Please feel free, yeah. OK.
What exactly am I looking for?
So the first thing
to think of is try
and look for something that
makes you think glass shard.
And then also
fluted, elongated nature
they're classic features
of a tephra shard.
Some of them look similar,
don't they?
They do. You get quite
a lot of mimics.
But over time, you learn
to identify what is tephra.
Just to spot them.
Yeah, gosh, you can see Hmm
No. As I said
There you go. Look at that!
That one. Absolutely. Well done.
You found a needle in a haystack.
The linear structure
and the elongated features,
all of that is an absolutely
classic example. Well done.
Excellent. Thank you.
This is all from
your archaeological site,
so it's the first time
I've ever found
tephra in an Anglo-Saxon
archaeological site. OK.
It's really incredibly rare to do.
So this is exciting for you as well?
Hugely exciting.
It's evidence that there was
definitely a volcanic eruption
when this archaeological site
was being abandoned,
which is quite important.
It's real physical evidence.
Yeah, it's really exciting, isn't
it? Yeah, it's amazingly cool.
Finding tephra within the sample
proves the settlers
at East Heslerton
had to deal with a volcanic
ash cloud descending on them.
And with chemical analysis,
Simon is even able to determine
which volcano was the culprit.
So, what exactly are we
looking for in this chart, then?
So, this is a chemical plot
that summarises
the chemistry
of different volcanoes.
First of all, somebody has to go
to the volcano
to take samples
from close to the volcano
and analyse the chemistry.
And then this plot
is a plot of tephras that have
been found in England,
but have been correlated
to different Icelandic volcanoes.
And so down at the bottom left
we have products
of the Torfajokull volcano
and the Katia volcano.
Over to the right, we have the red,
which is the Hekla volcano.
And then at the top
we have the green,
which is the Askja volcano.
And our Heslerton data,
the yellow plots,
closest to the Askja tephras.
So we can say, quite confidently
actually,
that this is an eruption
from Askja,
which is really interesting
because no—one's found
an eruption from Askja at this time,
yet — until now. Brilliant. So this
is a brand-new volcanic eruption
that we didn't know about?
Absolutely, yeah!
That's very, very exciting,
but it also allows us to say
that there's an Icelandic volcano
erupting at the time that
this site was being abandoned.
The Askja volcano is hidden away
in the remote highlands of Iceland,
nearly 1,000 miles
from East Heslerton.
It's known to have erupted
in 1875 and in 1961.
But now, thanks to Simon's work,
we know Askja also erupted
in the sixth century
and that its ash cloud extended
all the way to Britain.
We do have historical accounts
and evidence of what happens
when you get Icelandic eruptions,
and you basically get one or two
years of cold, wet summers.
That means you don't grow crops.
If you get two years or so
of not growing crops,
a population like that
could be in trouble.
That's really, really interesting,
because it's quite difficult to find
any other evidence, isn't it,
of things like crop failures?
It just doesn't leave a mark
in the archaeology.
Not in the archaeology,
but what we have at this site now
is we have tephra
that says at least it's possible.
Which is amazing.
It is, yeah, yeah.
These tiny dots on a computer screen
are the first direct evidence
of events significant enough
to traumatise early Anglo-Saxon
communities
and force them
to leave their homes.
Clouds of volcanic ash from Iceland
may have caused upheaval
in the seventh century,
but 400 years later,
hordes of Norman invaders from France
had an even bigger impact
on the Anglo-Saxons.
And that story has brought me
to the village of Lowther
four miles south of Penrith.
Here, hidden among the fells,
waters and forests
of the Lake District,
is Lowther Castle.
It was built in 1806
by William Lowther,
the first Earl of Lonsdale,
and at its height,
it reputedly had one room
for every day of the year.
Today, the castle is undergoing
a transformative restoration.
It looks like an ancient ruin,
but it's only 200 years old.
It was lived in by three
generations of the Lowther family,
and then, in 1957, the then Lord
Lowther was running out of cash.
And so he demolished it,
or at least he took the roof off,
and he took a wrecking ball
to some of the walls.
And so now it just sits here
in the landscape
as a rather romantic ruin.
But there's a much older story
playing out in the grounds.
The history and influence
of the Lowther family
is well documented
back to the 13th century.
It's thought that they took
their name from the River Lowther,
which still flows
through the estate today
and traced their origins
to a descendant of the Vikings,
who arrived here in 1150.
But this area is not mentioned
in the Domesday Book.
In fact, there's no written evidence
at all for what was here
in the early Norman period.
You get to a point where
the historical records just run out
and we can't find out anything
more about this place,
apart from, of course, we can,
because that's when
the archaeology comes in.
Now, a team of students from
the University of Central Lancashire
is investigating a mysterious feature
hidden in the castle grounds.
The lead archaeologist
is Jim Morris.
Hello. Hello.
What are you doing down here?
The castle's up there.
Well, it does look like the castle
should be up there.
But what we're doing down here
is actually
we're looking
at the medieval origins of Lowther.
Deep in the woods,
Jim is investigating a huge
ditch and bank earthwork
more than ten metres across
and eight metres high.
It was completely overgrown,
so we've cleared
all this undergrowth.
He believes that this earthwork
predates any historic record
for the area.
So, are we walking through
the original entrance here?
We think, yes, that this is
the original entrance way.
OK, and there's a lovely cobbled
floor which is coming up. Yes.
And we think we've got this
spread across the whole interior.
So it's a yard inside here? Yeah,
that's a really nice way
of thinking about it.
And you've got a section
right through the bank there.
Can we go and take a look at that?
Yeah, of course we can.
This raised cobbled area
is surrounded on all sides
by steep slopes
perfect for defending the interior.
I mean, they're quite impressive,
aren't they?
They are quite impressive.
From the interior, quite small,
but actually, you can now see,
they're actually quite substantial
ramparts, especially on this side.
I think they're formidable. Yes.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of moving of earth.
It is, but it's not very technical.
So, actually, the reason
we've cut this trench across
and we've kind of gone down through
is to look and see
how this mound was created.
So, what we've found is layers
of stones, then a big mass of clay,
then another layer of stones
and a big mass of clay and
another layer of stones. Yeah.
So, relatively simplistic,
actually, to construct. Yeah.
It's like a motte-and-bailey,
but without the motte.
Without the mound in the middle.
Without the mound in the middle.
Yeah. So, in effect, you've got
the bailey part. Yeah.
Jim believes this simple earthwork
has the hallmarks
of an early Norman castle
but that's difficult
to appreciate from the ground.
So having chatted to Jim,
and sitting up here
so I can get a really good idea
of the shape of it,
I've drawn what it would
have looked like.
The trench that they've put
through the ramparts,
that's through this part just here.
And Jim thinks there would
have been a timber palisade
which runs all the way around
the ramparts on the top.
We've got the entrance down here,
which would have been guarded
by a gatehouse,
and then perhaps
a tower up here where I'm sitting
with this commanding view
over this little Norman fort.
This seemingly important site isn't
mentioned in the Domesday Book,
which was written two decades
after the Norman Conquest,
so to investigate when and why
the fortress was first built here,
medieval historian Sophie Ambler
has been trawling through the Lowther
family's personal medieval archive.
Sophie, hi. Hi, hello.
Oh, so these are
the historical documents.
What do they actually say?
Well, they tell us a little bit
about the landscape of the site,
because they are portioning up
very small portions of land,
an acre here, half an acre there.
And this one here is particularly
special because we can date it.
So this is given at Lowther
on the Saturday
after the feast of Easter
in the year 1278. Wow.
So it's given at Lowther,
which means it was given here
in the vill of Lowther,
probably very close to where
we're standing now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, this is absolutely wonderful.
And if we look here at this one,
so this charter dates to the 1280s,
and it's a charter
drawn up for Alice,
daughter of Peter of Thrimby.
She's renouncing her rights
in half a rood of land
that's an eighth of an acre
can you see? — above the castle.
Can you see "castellum", just
here on the fold of the parchment?
Oh, yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So do you think that castle
is the one in the woods?
I think it's very likely that
this is the castle in the woods.
Yeah. Exactly.
I think that in the 1280s,
this castle was still standing then.
The people living in the village
recognised it as a castle,
and they were using it
as a local landmark.
It might not have been in use then,
but it's definitely
It's definitely there.
But who built that castle?
This is the big question.
This is the big question.
Now, in Cumbria, we have
very little written evidence
for the Norman period. OK.
And that's because Cumbria
was not conquered in 1066
by William the Conqueror.
When was it conquered?
So, it was conquered in 1092
Really? ..by his son, William Rufus,
who led the conquest
of Cumbria in 1092.
Cumbria was an independent kingdom.
It wasn't part of the Anglo-Saxon
kingdom that we know
from southern England.
William Rufus led an expedition
to Cumbria
and then he sent peasant men
with their wives and children
from the Norman regime
in southern England to Cumbria,
so it's effectively
a plantation settlement
and a way of colonising Cumbria.
And we're speculating that this site
could be the first stage
of the Norman conquest
and settlement of Cumbria Yeah.
because that's the sort of castle
type that we would expect to see
in rural conquest.
Oh, it's just It is fantastic.
What an amazing archive to have.
Occupying forces through history
have established control
with fortresses
before sending in settlers
to colonise the region.
It seems this medieval settlement
at Lowther was no different.
Could this hastily constructed
wood-and-earth fortification
have been the vanguard
of the Norman's final victory
over the independent kingdom
of Cumbria
more than a quarter of a century
after 1066?
What a fantastic story.
It's wonderful to be here
just as the very first
archaeological investigation
of this castle is happening.
There's more to find out,
of course — there always is.
But we're already learning
so much about Norman Cumbria.
Next time on Digging For Britain
I join a dig revealing secrets
beneath Leicester Cathedral
How fantastic to have found this
sacred object in this sacred place.
It's an incredible find.
historian Onyeka Nubia investigates
what life was like for women
in a forgotten nunnery
Six nuns have run away.
Phenomenal number.
and from an RAF airbase,
beautiful Roman pottery.
This is the first time that somebody
has held this in their hands.
Since they put it in the ground.
1,600 years ago.
Come and search
for we who search
And looking for us scar the land
And dig for those whose stories lie
With buried past and futures won
And dig for us as we have done
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay the dead out in the sun
To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪