Digging for Britain (2010) s11e06 Episode Script

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.
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 shoe is 2,803 years old.
Oh, wow.
and unearthing fascinating
artefacts.
Ooh, 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, isn't it?
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 don'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 year, because of the sheer number
of brilliant digs there,
we're returning to the west of the
United Kingdom.
In the middle of a modern city,
we unearth evidence of people living
here 3,000 years ago
What we've got here is the oldest
house
yet known in Cardiff.
With a treasure trove of finds.
And what was it like when you found
them?
Find of a lifetime for me, that is.
- Right on my doorstep.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Teetering on the edge of a crumbling
cliff,
a forgotten fortress finally gives up
its secrets.
We didn't know that we were going to
find this stonking great big
stone roundhouse.
Big, chunky stone building, super
clear to see, very satisfying.
And a new discovery at one of our
best known Roman villas
shocks the experts
I couldn't believe it.
This date goes against the established
narrative.
And could revolutionise our
understanding of Britain's past.
It's one of those times we can
genuinely say
this is rewriting history.
The west of Britain is home to some of
our most well-known castles,
like the stunning 11th century
Chepstow Castle
and the Norman fortress at
Skenfrith,
both guarding the ancient border
between England and Wales.
But other castles have almost
disappeared into the landscape here.
Our first dig takes us to the village
of Snodhill,
12 miles west of Hereford.
This is Snodhill Castle.
It's actually quite easy to drive
straight past it,
up The Golden Valley, without noticing
it's here.
There's just a couple of romantic
ruins
cresting the top of the hill.
But now archaeologists are getting the
chance to excavate it
and uncover just how important this
castle was in its medieval heyday.
Left to fall into ruin,
the castle was declared critically at
risk of collapse in 2016.
This prompted a group of locals and
enthusiasts to set up
the Snodhill Castle Preservation
Trust,
to conserve and investigate the
site
probing its 14th century origins
at the height of the medieval
period.
This year, they're getting a helping
hand
with volunteers and students from
Manchester and Cardiff Universities
joining the excavation.
They're revealing impressive walls
and unearthing intricate finds.
This is perfect. We're discovering
things.
- Oh!
- Wow!
The castle is surprising the
archaeologists -
it's so much larger than expected.
Tim Hoverd is leading the dig.
- Tim, hi.
- Hiya.
- So what are you finding
out about this castle?
We're just beginning to find out
that it was actually
a very complex castle and a very large
castle,
and probably a very important one.
So where are we here? Where am I
standing?
This looks like a doorway or a
gateway.
You're standing in the middle of the
back door of the castle,
so the postern gate.
So this is the way that they would
have come out of the castle,
- their emergency exit, if you like.
- Yeah.
The postern gate would have been
guarded by a heavy metal grill
or portcullis.
Through it, soldiers could have snuck
out,
perhaps to launch surprise attacks
against any enemy laying siege
to the castle
but this postern gate has some
unusual features.
Normally we just have one postern
gate
which goes out into a gatehouse.
Here we have a postern gate that leads
out into a corridor,
which turns around 90 degrees
and goes through yet another postern
gate,
with yet another doorway and
portcullis.
- A double portcullis?
- Yes. - Yeah. - Yes.
They appear to be utterly paranoid
about people getting into
- this castle.
- Is that another portcullis slot over there, then?
That's the other portcullis slot
over there.
This means that this castle was one of
the strongest castles.
- Really?
- The defence in depth is amazing. - Yeah.
I mean, you've not only got a
two-and-a-half-metre thick wall,
but then you've got at least two, if
not three,
defended gateways to get through.
- And that's just the back door.
- Yeah. - It's quite remarkable.
And this isn't the only bit,
presumably.
No, this isn't the only bit.
I mean, if you think this is a strong
piece of castle,
then you ought to see the panic room.
- The panic room?
- Yes, the panic room.
- Definitely want to see that.
- Right. Well, that's just round here. - OK.
Last year, the team excavated within
this monumental tower.
The walls here are the thickest in the
entire castle,
even stronger than the outer defensive
walls
so if Snodhill ever came under
attack,
the castle's elite could retreat
inside this inner sanctum,
which even had its own well.
Well, these walls are absolutely
enormous.
I mean, they're so thick.
They're huge, aren't they?
- Yeah.
- It's complete overbuild.
Here, they're three metres thick when
compared to the curtain wall,
which is only two metres thick.
So this was built for a purpose,
for people to use this space in an
emergency.
And when do you think this is built?
This is part of a strengthening of an
existing castle.
Under the floor, we found a
selection of pottery.
We've got these green-glazed wares,
and the date range all coincides with
a date of around
the very late 1390s to 1400 range.
- OK.
- So we're looking at something that must have been built
by about 1405, 1410, something like
that.
OK. So the obvious question is,
you've got a date for this
strengthening of the castle,
what is it they're worried about?
They're worried about the Welsh,
but more specifically, they're worried
about
the revolt of Owain Glyndwr.
- OK.
- And he, we know,
got to this part of Herefordshire and
North Herefordshire
in about 1406 and laid waste.
Owain Glyndwr led a long and bloody
Welsh revolt
against English rule starting in the
year 1400.
After racking up several victories,
he was crowned Prince of Wales in
It's precisely around the time when
the fortifications
at Snodhill Castle were revamped
with new gatehouses and this extra
strong panic room.
Now, across on the other side of the
site,
the team are unearthing the remains of
an enormous chapel,
more than 25 metres long and housed
within the castle walls.
This chapel holds more clues to the
castle's importance.
The chapel ends just here,
but then we have this room that's been
added to it,
possibly again in the early 1400s,
which appears to have been a strong
room
- with a cupboard and then a small cupboard
- Ah.
Which is known as an aumbry.
So we think that whatever silver
plate, etc., was being used
in the services in the chapel were
being stored in here.
This is where the treasures are
kept.
- That this was built to keep things very, very safe indeed.
- Yeah. - Yes.
And we had this little figure
- Oh, wow!
- ..which is quite remarkable.
- Can I open it?
- You can indeed, yeah.
It's French, from Limoges, from about
1250 to 1275.
And it is a little person. You can
see the face there.
- Yes, in a robe.
- Isn't that lovely?
And there's traces of gilding on him
as well.
- So that would've been really beautiful.
- Yes.
And it's designed to be attached to
something.
Yes, it was riveted to something.
What was it riveted to?
- Either a processional cross
- Yeah.
- Or a reliquary box.
- OK.
So a box that held very important
things, perhaps bones of a saint
or something like that.
Perhaps hence the strong room.
- Yeah. And the heavy defences.
- And the heavy defences, yes.
You've got a lot of unusual features
in this castle, haven't you?
- Yes.
- An unusual postern gate with two portcullises,
an unusually large tower there on the
north side,
and now an unusual chapel.
What's it all telling us?
It's telling us that Snodhill is a
remarkable castle.
It's almost forgotten about in terms
of its importance.
- Very much so. It became hidden.
- Mm.
- And, as you say, forgotten. Indeed.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Thanks to the team digging here,
we're starting to understand
how Snodhill Castle fitted into the
wider medieval landscape
in these battle-ravaged borderlands.
There really are only a few fragments
of this castle
surviving above ground.
But it's also clear that the
archaeologists
have been genuinely surprised at how
much remains
below the surface.
And what they're discovering is that
this castle was
much more complex and much larger than
they'd originally thought.
Takes us back to this time of great
turmoil and strife
in this landscape,
when Snodhill Castle was one of the
largest and most impressive
in Herefordshire.
Just a lonely radio
Just a makeshift show and tell
Playing out the lives of the lost
and found ♪
The west of Britain was only partially
conquered by the Romans,
but they certainly left their mark on
the landscape.
The region is home to some of the best
preserved Roman remains
in the country, like the world-famous
baths in Bath.
And the amphitheatre at Caerleon,
built to entertain the Roman Legion
that was based here.
The transition from Roman Britain into
what we call the Early Medieval
period was a time of radical change,
political instability.
We know that.
But, actually, this period is quite
murky.
We just don't have much in the way of
documentary evidence,
so it means the archaeology is really,
really important.
And this next dig is incredibly
exciting because it's showing us
that some of our assumptions about
what was happening
in this period are just wrong.
Our next dig takes us to the village
of Chedworth,
14 miles east of Gloucester.
This is the world-famous Chedworth
Roman Villa.
It's a sprawling complex with more
than 30 rooms,
and elaborate mosaics.
Grand villas like this were thought to
have been abandoned
even before the Roman army withdrew
from Britain in 410,
marking the beginning of the Early
Medieval period.
In 2017, a team from the National
Trust
re-excavated a stunning mosaic that
had been covered up
ever since the villa's original
discovery in the 19th century.
They used photogrammetry to record the
intricate patterns
and then reburied the mosaic to
preserve it.
Martin Papworth led the investigation.
One of the things we did,
we decided to take radiocarbon dates,
and then the results came back.
I looked at it and I couldn't believe
it.
The results were a complete shock.
This initial radiocarbon date
suggested the mosaic
wasn't actually Roman.
It was created later, in the
post-Roman or Early Medieval period,
when it's long been thought that
villas like this
had been abandoned.
The earliest it could possibly be,
in a 95% probability range,
was 424AD.
So no-one really wants to believe
that.
The radiocarbon date didn't seem to
make any sense.
Martin needed to be sure,
so this year he used a different
method to double check the date
of the mosaic.
You shouldn't be making mosaics in
the mid to late fifth century.
You shouldn't be.
This date goes against this
established narrative
that the Roman Empire just stopped and
everything collapsed.
But they produced this.
That looks huge,
so we're here to test it.
To take the samples,
Martin needs to uncover the mosaic
again,
and it's drawing quite a crowd.
It's really good to see it again.
It's very exciting.
Had quite a crowd for the uncovering.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to
see the mosaic in all its glory.
You've got Blue Lias, which is this
blue stuff here,
Cotswold limestone of different types-
there's whiter and yellowy types -
and these are just sawn-up bits of
clay roof tile,
these little red ones. So you've got
red, white, yellow and blue
forming all these patterns.
The team is taking samples for a
dating method called
optically stimulated luminescence.
Martin is hammering a plastic tube
into the foundations
just beneath the fragile mosaic.
It's a delicate thing to do.
Well, that was relatively painless,
wasn't it?
So this is a tube of soil from
directly under the edge
of this mosaic before it was covered.
And therefore, if we date this soil,
it'll say how old this mosaic is.
Martin and the team set about
reburying the mosaic
to preserve it for future generations.
It's difficult to know when it will
be ever seen again.
It could be hundreds of years.
Martin has sent the sample to the
lab
for optically stimulated luminescence
dating,
and bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman has
come to find out more.
I'm at the University of
Gloucestershire,
where Martin's samples are being
processed.
I'm going to meet Phil Toms to find
out exactly
how optically stimulated luminescence
dating actually works.
Phil runs the luminescence dating
laboratory,
measuring and dating samples from all
around the world.
To avoid contaminating the sample,
it needs to be prepared in darkroom
conditions.
So, Cat, we're now in the
measurement lab.
We've extracted fine sand quartz from
that sample,
so you end up with a small tube with a
little bit of white powder
at the bottom of it. And if you just
have a look down
your low-powered microscope there
- Yeah.
- ..you should be able to see a little one-centimetre disc.
Oh, yes.
And it's got a ten by ten grid
of 200 micron holes in there.
Tiny little holes.
OK, I've got a funny feeling I'm going
to have to put a grain
- of sand in.
- Yeah, so you don't have to do it one at a time.
OK, brilliant.
And we're just going to tip the sand
onto the disc.
And now your job, Cat, is to try and
grip the disc
at the same time as brushing across
it.
- OK.
- You can't muck it up.
- OK.
- Well, you can.
Well, you say that! I can try.
Each of these tiny grains are quartz
crystals found in the sample
from underneath the mosaic.
When the Chedworth mosaic was first
built,
it covered over thousands of these
crystals
that exist in the surface soil.
Once covered by the mosaic,
radiation that occurs naturally passes
through the quartz,
trapping electrons inside the crystal.
These electrons steadily build over
time.
When they are then exposed to light
again,
the electrons within the quartz are
freed,
creating a signal that we can measure
called luminescence.
The amount of luminescence we detect
tells us how long the quartz has been
underground.
Gosh, quite tricky, isn't it?
I keep getting new grains over.
You have to have a very steady hand,
don't you?
You get used to it fairly quickly.
Yeah, I can imagine.
But I keep on thinking I'm done and
then I see a little grain.
That's looking pretty good to me.
Phil loads the slide into the machine,
which fires very precise
lasers at each of the microscopic
grains of quartz.
So each one of these is one grain,
and these big spikes are what we're
looking for.
Absolutely. That big initial spike
followed by decay,
that means we've got an optically
stimulated luminescence signal
in there.
And so how long is this going to
take, then, for this to be finished?
For Chedworth, we expect the sample
to be in for about three days.
Right, OK. So now I just wait.
The original radiocarbon date
suggested this mosaic was created
well into the fifth century.
If that's true, it means that wealthy
people carried on living
a Roman lifestyle in their luxurious
villas and
commissioning fabulous decorations
long after the Roman period
officially came to an end in Britain.
Now the new test results are in,
and I want to know if they'll back up
that fifth century
radiocarbon date,
so I've invited Martin Papworth to the
windswept and rain-soaked
Digging For Britain Tent.
So, Martin, you've been
reinvestigating
one of the most famous Roman villas
in Britain, and you've come up with
something
which is actually mind-blowing.
- That's right. - Yeah.
- Yes.
Once again, nice clear cut result.
420AD-560AD.
5th-6th century.
No, no, no, no.
This isn't right for a Roman villa.
Yes. The thinking is, you shouldn't
have a mosaics industry surviving
into the late fifth century.
- Yeah.
- Because behind that is an economy with towns, urbanism.
Mm. I mean, this is when we start
talking about Anglo-Saxons.
- Yes.
- You're moving us into what we conceive of as a very different
period in British history.
- There's a huge amount still to talk about in this period.
- Mm.
This is so exciting, and it's unlikely
to be unique.
- Yeah. Why would it be?
- It's unlikely that this is the only villa
that carries on into the fifth, maybe
the sixth centuries.
We have to go back and look at all the
rest.
It's one of those times where we can
genuinely say,
this is rewriting history.
- You can feel the electricity, can't you? Yeah.
- Yeah.
The grass is long in the valley, my
love
And there we'll go to lie
When the hawk is high above the
house for us
And he guards over the blue sky
Let's gather us up to the heavens
above
We can always come back, my love. ♪
Some of the most dramatic
archaeological features
in our landscape are Iron Age forts
like this one,
some of them inland, others right on
the edge,
right on the coast, where they're very
much
threatened by erosion.
And our next dig sees a team of
archaeologists racing against time
to rescue archaeology before it falls
into the sea.
Now we journey to the western edge of
Wales,
just a mile to the south of St Davids,
to Caerfai Bay.
This headland is the site of an Iron
Age coastal promontory fort.
Today, this coast is a haven for sea
birds, seals, and dolphins.
But it was once home to prehistoric
tribes
living on the edge
in the Iron Age.
Crashing Atlantic waves are
continually eroding these cliffs,
and the remains of the fort above are
in real danger.
This year, a team of volunteers
working with DigVentures
are racing against time to investigate
the promontory fort
before parts of it disappear forever.
The dig is being led by Stephanie
Duensing.
There is very little known about
these hill forts
and what people were doing inside of
them,
and what they were using them for.
The promontory is defended by a
series of four
formidable banks and ditches.
Huge barricades like these would have
helped to protect the people
inside against any threats from
less-than-friendly neighbours.
But it's always hard to find any hard
evidence of hostilities.
We haven't actually got a lot of
evidence to show that
there's been a lot of conflict or a
lot of warfare going on.
So there are other options that we are
trying to consider
about why you would maybe want to put
so much work into
making these big ramparts.
This year, the team are focusing
their attention
just inside the ramparts,
on the isthmus that gets narrower
every year.
Archaeologist Jodie Hannis is
supervising the excavation.
People coming together and doing
this - and it would have been
a monumental effort to do this -
there's got to be some value and some
reason to do that.
So much archaeology must already
have been lost to erosion,
but remarkably, they've still found
something very exciting.
This is trench three,
and, as you can see, we are right at
the edge of the cliff here,
and we didn't know when we opened up
this trench that we were going
to find this stonking great big stone
roundhouse.
It's an absolutely massive stone
structure, really obvious.
Big, chunky stone building,
super clear to see, very satisfying.
This roundhouse, with its sturdy
stone walls, would have provided
shelter against the strong winds that
batter the site.
And the team have even found traces of
the hearth inside.
So you can see that we've got that
really nice dark charcoal-y band
that suggests that there have been
fires.
And within that, where we've been
finding chunks of animal bone,
you can just see a little bit poking
up here as well,
they're cooking here, and they're
disposing of their waste.
The roundhouse is full of evidence
of domestic life,
but nearby, the team are also finding
subtle traces of industry.
One of the most interesting things
that has come out
as we've been clearing down through
all of this nice rubbly fill
is this lovely, very smooth, very
tactile whetstone.
So this is a lovely thing that just
fits right in your hand.
Most likely, these things are for
sharpening blades and tools,
perhaps smoothing leather and things
like that.
Clean up my crumbs.
The impressive ramparts grab the
attention,
and it's easy to focus on those
defences,
but the archaeology here is revealing
another side to the fort,
with domestic and industrial activity.
I think the romantic view with this
stuff is that it's all
out-and-out tribal warfare and
everyone's always
at each other's throats and fighting.
We can't say that for sure.
And the bigger question is,
why were people living here on this
windswept promontory?
With the dig coming to a close,
I've asked Steph to battle through the
wind and rain to join me
in the Digging For Britain Tent and
share everything the team
have learned about Iron Age life at
Caerfai.
Steph, you're there digging the site
because it is under threat,
so this really is a chance to get some
evidence that is at risk
of disappearing forever. What have you
found?
So we've actually found quite a bit
of material,
considering the constraints.
What you can see here is we've got a
post structure roundhouse here.
Where are the posts?
- So the post holes are these spots here.
- Yes!
- They come all the way around.
- Yeah. - Like that.
- So they're holding up the roof timbers.
- That's right.
And then you've got a stone-built
roundhouse?
- Yes, so a lovely stone structure.
- This was a bonus!
It was completely hidden underneath a
mountain of rubble.
- Yeah.
- It was amazing. We were very pleased to find that, yes.
And inside those roundhouses, you've
got some vines.
Yes. This one came from the stone
roundhouse,
which shows up a lot more domestic
use.
- Yeah.
- And we weren't quite sure what it was, to be honest.
It looks a bit like wood, but it
doesn't quite feel like wood.
It's heavy, isn't it? It's heavier
than wood.
Heavier than bone.
So that is actually part of a shale
bracelet.
- Ah, right! OK.
- So it's delaminated quite badly on the outer edges,
- as you can see there.
- Yeah.
Which gives it that striated effect
that makes it kind of look like wood.
Yeah, it really does, doesn't it,
under here? Yeah.
But it's actually just the layers of
the shale
- that have started to separate.
- That's right.
You're quite lucky to have got to
that before it completely
- fell apart in the ground.
- Absolutely.
I mean, it looks like it's not going
to have survived for much longer.
That's right, yeah, so we were just
thrilled.
We've got finds from both of our
roundhouses.
The timber structure was clearly the
locus of industry.
And what have we got over here?
A lovely crucible there, that lovely
chunk with copper alloys still
- Yes, that's right.
- Yeah! That lovely green.
- It was beautiful. It just jumps right out at you.
- Yeah.
- On a site like this, with not a lot of colour on the ground
- Yeah.
It just peeked out of the soil. It
was a fantastic last-day find,
of course. You always find the best
thing on the last day.
- Yeah, isn't that lovely?
- Isn't it beautiful?
So if they were standing together,
you've got a domestic house,
the stone structure with a lean-to
workshop.
Yes! It is really genuinely what it
seems to be.
And just to put it in its wider
context,
what do we think this promontory fort
was about?
Why is it there in such an exposed
place?
It IS an exposed place, but I think
that the bigger picture
that is starting to emerge here is
that this was
a very prominent location for a
reason.
The ramparts are kind of backwards in
the sense that they are taller
- in the back and get smaller as you go into the interior.
- Yeah.
Which I think, more and more, it's
looking like they were
trying to announce their whereabouts
across the seas.
They wanted to be noticed and they
wanted to be a landmark of sorts.
So I think that it was some kind of an
industrial trade post,
perhaps. We know that they're
processing bronze on the site.
- We've got the remnants of it from the metalworking hub.
- Mm.
- But they're also clearly trading with seafaring individuals.
- Yeah.
Other people along the coast or
possibly even in Ireland.
It means that, actually, it is well
defended, but it's not necessarily
about defence all of the time.
Along the coast, archaeologists may
choose to dig sites
that are under threat from erosion.
In our cities, with their deep layers
of history,
archaeologists face different
challenges.
Our next dig takes us to the capital
of Wales -
Cardiff.
Excavating in the middle of dense
modern cities
often means digging down
through centuries of occupation
layers.
But this green space in Cardiff
has never been built on
in living memory.
Recent surveys, though, suggest that
interesting archaeological remains
may underlie this manicured turf.
This is Trelai Park,
and it's home this summer to a
fantastic community dig,
which is very apt because this is a
wonderful green space
enjoyed by all the community -
walkers, runners, people playing
football and rugby.
But over there, they're going down
underneath this beautiful turf
and uncovering evidence of what people
were doing
in this area 3,500 years ago.
Now, as part of a project to involve
the community in archaeology,
a team of local volunteers and
students from Cardiff University
are focusing on the remains of a very
ancient building.
A building that dates all the way
back to the Bronze Age.
The team are excavating the site in a
chequerboard pattern,
keeping track of the finds emerging
from each square.
This is a rare opportunity to take a
detailed look at how people
were living here in the west of
Britain 3,000 years ago.
I've come to meet lead archaeologist
Oliver Davis.
It is an absolute hive of activity,
and the archaeology is interesting.
I can spot the features, I think.
These round pits are significant, are
they?
They certainly are, Alice.
What we've got here is the oldest
house yet known in Cardiff.
Cardiff's first house.
It was made of timber, and obviously
the timber, the wood's all rotted
away, and we're left with the holes
that people dug
to put the timber posts in
to create the walls that kind of
define the house.
- So these are all post holes, are they?
- Exactly.
You can see them in their kind of
curving arc here,
and they take up the entire trench,
and the trench is ten metres wide.
So that gives you a sense
of the scale of this house.
- Yeah.
- It's at least ten metres in diameter.
So it's a really vast structure,
enormous amount of resources and
effort
- had gone into building it.
- Yeah. Can we get down into the trench?
Go for it.
Within the maze of post holes,
the team has found evidence of a burnt
area
in the middle of the roundhouse.
So this is the centre of the action.
- This is the hearth.
- This is the centre of the house.
Exactly right. And we've got the
hearth just in front of us here,
and then we've got a spread of
ceramics, of pottery,
- all sorts of decorated and
- What's in there?
Undecorated Bronze Age sherds
coming up,
presumably for either cooking or
serving food.
I want to kind of try and imagine
what it looked like
in my mind's eye as well.
So it's a ten metre diameter house
with a conical roof.
How tall do you think that roof was?
Well, that roof's going to have to
be pretty tall.
And you imagine when you walk into it,
it's going to be dark.
There might be a fire here burning in
the centre of the house,
it's going to flicker light around the
house.
It's going to be smoky, it's going to
be smelly.
So it's going to be a sort of a blast
of the senses, I think.
I almost feel like I'm there.
The team are also investigating a bank
and ditch enclosure
which surrounds the house.
And here, archaeologist Anna-Elyse
Young
has found a particularly delicate
flint artefact.
- Anna, hi.
- Hi!
I know you've had some very
beautiful finds coming out.
- Yes, we have.
- And there was something in particular
- that really piqued my interest.
- Yes, yes.
From the ditch over here,
we've had this very lovely arrowhead
come out.
You'd expect it to have two little
barbs coming down
on either side.
- Yes. - But it hasn't quite worked.
- It hasn't quite worked.
We have also found at this site, but
from the roundhouse,
a complete barb and tang.
- Oh, that is
- You can see
- Isn't that beautiful?
- Yes!
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because obviously we're talking about
the Bronze Age.
We know that people are using metal,
but flint is a fantastic material.
You don't ditch that, you just start
to use bronze for some things.
Yes. Yeah. And in this area
particularly,
flint is quite a rare commodity
because there's no naturally occurring
flint in this area,
so it had to have been brought in from
somewhere else.
And do you know where it might have
been brought in from?
The complete arrowhead looks to be
chalk-based flint,
- so possibly from Wiltshire or somewhere like that.
- Yeah.
So we're looking at, you know, raw
materials
- moving around the landscape as well.
- Yes. Yeah.
You learn so much, don't you, just
from looking in detail
- at one small object?
- Yeah. - They're wonderful.
With no natural source of flint in
what is now South Wales,
this arrowhead provides evidence of
people moving around
or trading with other communities. in
Bronze Age Britain.
25,000 people live in the suburbs
surrounding Trelai Park.
It's a green heart for this part of
the city,
well used by dog walkers, sports
teams,
and for leisurely strolls.
The excavation here is proving to be
another great way
for the community to come together and
learn about their heritage.
We've had lots of finds, so it's
really interesting
and it's just amazing, the history
that exists in this park as well.
I love history.
I never really got a chance to study
history in school.
This gave me the opportunity, then, to
learn about the Bronze Age.
Some lucky locals are making
extraordinary discoveries.
Metal detectorist Wes Offer has
brought along a couple
of small objects he found just 200
metres away
from our Bronze Age roundhouse.
- Can I have a look?
- Of course you can. - Wow.
So these are axe heads?
Yeah.
And what was it like when you found
them?
- How did you feel?
- Incredible.
- Yeah!
- It was just one of the best feelings.
I mean, I just can't describe.
So this is a bronze axe head.
This is called a flanged axe.
- Yeah.
- And that probably dates to about the same time
as our roundhouse.
So if you imagine all the timber that
was needed to build
- that roundhouse
- Yeah.
You would have needed a few of
those to help you cut all that down
and shape it. And I wouldn't be
surprised -
I can't prove it - but I wouldn't be
surprised if that axe was used
to make one of these houses.
- Yeah!
- Wouldn't that be a wonderful story?
Oh, isn't that beautiful?
But this is the one that you really
like, isn't it, Wes?
It is, yeah.
It's just a monstrous heavy axe
head.
- That's actually called a Migdale axe.
- Right.
And it's a little bit earlier than
our house -
- it dates to the early Bronze Age.
- Yeah.
So maybe a few hundred years before
our house was built,
but it shows that people are in and
around this area.
Yeah. And when you first found them,
did you know immediately
what they were? Did you know they were
ancient?
I definitely knew this one was
definitely ancient.
- Yeah.
- This one, I thought when it first came out of the ground
that it looked a bit modern.
But as soon as I gave it a little
wipe,
I could see the lovely brown and the
green on it
- Yeah.
- ..I knew it was definitely ancient. - Yeah.
- So then, I'm part of a club
- Yeah.
- Which we have a finds liaison officer there.
- Yeah.
- So I handed them in. They do a report
- Yeah.
Obviously for the date, and then
return them to me
- three months later.
- Yeah. That's brilliant.
So that's all kind of entered the
archive.
- Yeah.
- We know exactly where they were found, what they are.
- Fantastic. - Incredible.
- It's part of the story of the Bronze Age.
- It is, yeah. - Here.
- A find of a lifetime for me, that is. - Is it?
- It is, yeah. - Yeah.
- Right on my doorstep. - Yeah, yeah.
During the excavation, the team were
filming themselves
as they discovered the most dramatic
find of the dig -
a large Bronze Age pot
So we've got the top of the pot
here,
we've got the base here,
and then another bit of the base
coming in here.
Which had lain undiscovered for
more than 3,500 years.
A lot of mud underneath it, but
that's keeping that together.
So that's
The fragments of this Bronze Age pot
are rushed to the conservators for
restoration.
To find out the latest from the site
and see the reassembled pot,
I've invited Ollie and conservator
Leonie McKenzie
to the Digging For Britain Tent.
Ollie, you just had a couple of days
left excavating at Trelai Park
after I left you.
What else did you find?
And now, having had a bit of time to
reflect,
how have your ideas changed?
Well, it's really what we found out
after the dig
that's the really exciting thing.
- Mm.
- There was something underneath the roundhouse, a series of pits.
But when we plotted out where all
those features are,
you can see that they're in that
beautiful circle.
That just looks like another
roundhouse, surely, Ollie!
So for some reason, they've decided
to demolish the house
and then completely rebuild it,
- but rebuild it in exactly the same location and the same footprint.
- Mm.
There's various theories about why
people might do that in the past.
One idea is that houses themselves
might be related to the lifespans
of important individuals or
households,
and when that household comes to an
end or that person dies,
the house itself almost has to die as
well,
and they take it down, they rebuild
it, and it's kind of
a new household then comes in and
lives in it.
- That's a dramatic renovation, isn't it?
- A dramatic Yes. - Yeah.
Speaking of pottery jigsaws, Leonie,
you've been very busy.
Yes, very.
This is quite incredible.
To start with, how many sherds of
pottery are in that?
So we found 83 sherds of pottery.
83 sherds of pottery! So how long
did it take you to reconstruct it?
You've had to do quite a bit of
filling in the gaps here,
- haven't you?
- Yeah. It took me about 120 hours just to clean the sherds.
- Goodness me.
- And then about another sort of 50 to 60 hours
sticking it together and doing the
fills and all the colour matching.
And there's lots of decoration on
the side of it here.
Yep. So we've got this wonderful
horseshoe decoration.
Actually, there's three horseshoes.
And then you've also got a pattern
just above that,
which looks like it's been pressed in.
Yes. It's either cordage or a wooden
comb,
and it's just a repeated diagonal
pattern.
And in terms of that pattern, is it
something that we see elsewhere?
Is this a kind of recognised style?
The impressed chord is very
characteristic of a type of
pottery called Trevisker Ware.
It was very common in the Bronze Age
in places like Cornwall and Devon.
- Right.
- But the horseshoe shape and actually the shape of the vessel
is much more akin to a type of pottery
called Deverel-Rimbury,
which is very common in southern
England in the Bronze Age.
- Yeah.
- Where we found this, in Cardiff,
is kind of the midpoint between these
two styles.
So here we've got this kind of merging
of ideas
or exchange of ideas.
I think this is so fascinating,
isn't it, when we look at
culture of this time, because the only
way that styles
- are going to move is with people.
- Absolutely.
It's all going to be face-to-face.
It's all going to be people moving.
They've been in one place.
This is the way we do the pots there.
They've moved to another place.
They're bringing those ideas with
them.
And then to see that kind of blending,
I think, is fantastic.
- Yeah.
- It's incredible, isn't it?
I mean, you don't expect this in that
park.
- Really don't, no. It's a wonderful find.
- Yeah.
The west of Britain is home to
Salisbury Plain,
300 square miles of rolling hills and
chalk grasslands.
The area is famous for its rich,
ancient archaeology
and some of our most iconic landmarks,
like the nearly 5,000-year-old
Stonehenge.
But not all archaeology here is so
ancient.
Until recently, many small communities
lived throughout
Salisbury Plain, and I even have a
personal connection
with one of them.
Our next story takes us to a
restricted location
in the middle of Salisbury Plain,
20 miles southeast of Bath.
This is Imber.
It's a completely deserted village.
It was once home to a bustling, close
community.
But the farmers and their families
that lived here
in the Second World War were
evacuated,
and this whole area was commandeered
for military training.
In 1943, the residents of Imber,
around 150 people,
were given just seven weeks' notice
before they had to pack their bags
and leave their village.
Since then, most of the village's
original buildings
have been demolished, and some
replaced
with new breeze block structures to
help simulate urban warfare.
The lost village of Imber became part
of the largest military
training ground in Britain,
with troops regularly taking part in
live firing exercises.
The story of how Imber came to an end
is well-known, well-documented,
but the archaeologists want to go back
centuries earlier,
to look at the history of the people
farming in this area.
Imber was mentioned in the Domesday
Book,
and its church, St Giles, dates back
to the 13th century.
Now the military wants to dig new
foxholes and combat trenches
at Imber, so a team of volunteers and
ex-soldiers
from Operation Nightingale
have come to investigate what's left
of the medieval village
under the ground.
Richard Osgood is leading the dig.
- Hello! - Hello. How are you?
- Welcome to Imber, good to see you.
So this is a ghost village?
It is a ghost village. This was
evacuated in 1943,
and we're trying to find traces of
what remains below the turf line.
You obviously think there's
something in this field.
Yeah, that's right. Well, we've got
the map from the earlier part
of the 20th century.
Now, the maps show us that a load of
buildings were once here.
Where are we standing, then, with
this map?
We're standing pretty much around
this point here.
- OK, so there should be buildings all around us.
- There should be!
Ah, so you've only had the trenches
open for a couple of days?
Yeah, it's really, really early
stages, and it's small holes
- to start with.
- There's something in that one.
Yeah, there's a nice wall in that.
That's certainly going to bear further
investigation.
Judging from the maps, we're on the
location of a place
- called Brown's Farm. There is no physical trace.
- Mm.
So that's why archaeology is so
important,
that we will find what lies still in
the ground.
Dig diaries capture every moment of
discovery
as the team uncover evidence of the
lost village.
This is the pond that was here,
and it's been back filled full of lots
of rubbish.
This we've just a few seconds ago
pulled out.
It doesn't look like any of the
cottages of then,
- but that's really ornate, and that's a surprise.
- Yeah.
- Digging away here, just found a key, which is fantastic.
- A key!
- Absolutely brilliant. Maybe a cupboard key?
- Cupboard key.
Yeah. We're hoping it's a jewellery
box,
but I won't tell you if I find it.
Veterans Elaine and Cecily are
excavating what they believe
to be part of Brown's Farm.
Hello, Elaine and Cecily.
- How are you doing?
- Fancy seeing you here!
And they're starting to find
evidence of life here
in recent centuries before the village
was abandoned.
You have found something. What is it?
Well, hopefully it's part of Brown's
Farm.
- This bit here seems to be solid stone so
- Does it?
- We don't know if it's a door lintel or
- Yeah.
And in terms of finds, what have you
got coming out?
Bits of pottery.
- A few bits of pottery. A quarry tile.
- A tile.
- Some nice nails.
- Oh, yeah.
Now, what I want to know is whether
there's anything earlier.
We did have a little bit of clay
pipe.
- Ooh, yeah.
- That's from the person who lived here.
Which I think we claim is the first
pipe found in sit
Do you? Because there was a bit of
clay pipe
found in trench one as well. But do
you think this one was found first?
- I think so.
- Well, we've announced it first, so we'll claim it. - OK.
We'd had it for a while before we
declared we had it, so
I like this healthy competition.
I think you've got to beat them by
finding the first bit
of definitely medieval archaeology on
site.
I'll let you know what we find.
- Good luck. - Thanks very much.
- Thank you.
The dig has only just got started,
so I'm going to leave the team
to hunt for clues of medieval life
here.
But before I go, I'm going to take
this rare opportunity
to explore what's left of Imber
village.
Rather strangely, there's a bit of a
connection here for me as well,
in that a close friend of my family,
well, HER family used to live here in
Imber.
This photograph, taken in 1912,
shows the Dean family standing outside
Seagram's Farm,
the building they called home for
generations.
So this building here is what remains
of Seagram's Farm.
I've seen old photographs of it,
and it seems to be a much longer
building with a second storey,
so I need to have a bit of a closer
look.
Ah, now, this is looking familiar.
These stone window surrounds -
mullions -
are there in the old black and white
photo.
But then it's been extensively
remodel led.
You can see a bit of the chimney
sticking out there,
so it's been brought down to just a
single storey.
So this is really new.
This is breeze block, but this is old
brick down here,
and this stone is going down to the
floor.
So I think what we've got here is the
front door.
And if I stamp that down
Yes, look at that.
That's what remains of the hinge.
So 80 years ago, I would have been
standing in the front door
of the farmhouse.
So it's changed a lot over the
decades,
but it's still recognisably the same
building.
After my visit, the dig carries on for
another week
and the team eventually begin to
uncover traces
of medieval Imber.
We're beginning to get some medieval
data.
We're getting pottery, roof slabs, and
some carved stone,
so hopefully we'll get an earlier
origin for this part
of the village of Imber.
Just found these two pieces of
pottery.
Probably it's medieval, but it could
even be a bit earlier.
Ooh.
So we're definitely getting some
diagnostic stuff out here,
aren't we, for dating this?
Ooh, that IS nice, isn't it? That's
medieval.
Yeah, it came out just quite deep,
that was.
- That's all right, isn't it?
- Have you just found that?
- Yeah, quite deep.
- Yeah. - Quite busy here.
- Absolutely.
- That's exciting.
Yeah.
I've invited Richard Osgood to the
Digging For Britain Tent
to share all his latest finds.
So the big question is, did you find
medieval Imber?
Yes, eventually.
So one of the buildings did eventually
get down to some
post holes that were medieval.
And we know that from the pottery that
we were finding within it,
and it's quite tightly dated.
It's this sort of material here.
Green-glazed ceramic you get in the
sort of 13th, 14th centuries.
- Yeah.
- Really quite diagnostic.
So it's not huge amounts of evidence,
but it's all we needed.
- But it's definitely there.
- Definitely medieval. - Fantastic.
And then what about these objects
here?
- This looks like roof tiles.
- Yeah, it does.
And you've got two phases here of the
roofing.
We've got quite a few of these, and
these are at the lower levels,
in and amongst the pottery and this
sort of thing.
- So this is a stone roof tile. - Yeah.
- You can see the hole for the nail.
So this is more your medieval, and
this is a bit more modern.
- Yeah.
- The clay roof ridge tile.
- So again, you can see the house has been rebuilt.
- Yeah.
Along with these clues to Imber's
medieval past, the team have found
some artefacts dating to the very end
of its occupation.
We're looking at it being your less
fancier Pompeii,
where you've got an exact date
for the ending of a settlement.
- Yeah.
- And that's a rare experience in archaeology,
- to see where a village just stops.
- And a really abrupt end as well.
Very much so.
Most of the pottery we were finding is
fairly kind of rudimentary,
and this is the fanciest thing.
- Believe it or not, that's what's left of a teapot.
- Oh, is it?
We're postulating whether that might
have been a wedding present
left behind in one of the houses, or
maybe got broken and then binned,
because it's fancier than all the
other pottery we're finding,
which is very utilitarian.
And then you've got a bit of a
bullet here.
That is a bullet case, and you've
even got the stamping on it.
It's got a couple of letters. "SL" and
"43" on it.
So you've got a date on it.
1943, and SL is Saint Louis. Saint
Louis, Missouri.
So that's an American case, and that
represents the American
- training taking place in Imber, and that's why it was evacuated.
- Yeah.
So that is from the year that it
ceased being a lived-in village.
That's right. So that really does
mark the sort of ash and pumice
layer you get at Pompeii, that tells
you the dates
- of the evacuation of Imber.
- Yeah, and that was it.
That WAS it.
Yeah. I mean, it's quite a curious
story, isn't it?
It's a sad story. For the people
that were tenants at the time,
it must have been horrible,
I guess the argument being if it saved
one life on D-Day,
then maybe it was worth it. But it
must have been really tough
- for those villagers.
- Mm.
You think about the soldiers making
sacrifices
and the families of soldiers during
the Second World War,
but all of those people living in that
village
made a significant sacrifice.
Completely. That's their
contribution to the war effort.
So this is definitely representative
of that total warfare
- that takes place in the Second World War.
- Yeah. Yeah.
We also found one more thing which
marks, again, a full stop,
and that was actually a discovery made
in the archives.
We found an image of the site in 1943.
- Oh, fantastic.
- Just before it was evacuated.
- And you didn't know you had it?
- No. - No!
Brilliant!
- So there you go. This is
- An aerial photograph.
- This is dated in March 1943.
- Yeah.
So this is literally a few months
before the village is evacuated.
The Second World War is at its height
at this point.
- That's extraordinary, isn't it?
- Completely.
At this point, there were still
functioning pubs like The Nag's Head
- over here - Yeah.
- ..or The Bell over at this point.
It's really quite a powerful image, I
think.
It's a real snapshot of the end of
life as those people knew it.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
And that would be great for all of the
families,
- the people whose ancestors lived there.
- Yeah, I think so. - Yeah, yeah.
What are you finding in here?
Apart from rocks.
Absolutely mind-blowing.
It is a bit, yeah.
We dig for the gods that leave no
bones ♪
What a year of archaeological
adventure it's been.
Archaeologists have been able to peel
back time
and reveal a Neolithic tomb
Medieval monasteries
and the first archaeological
evidence of a mud dock.
We've crisscrossed our islands,
uncovering more traces of people who
once lived here.
An astonishing archaeological
discovery just here.
Magnificent.
Wherever we went, new stories were
waiting.
I do love an archaeological mystery.
Look at that colour!
What is it?
I want to clean that up. Have you got
a spare trowel?
Absolutely.
Who built that castle?
This is the big question!
We've got brutal and violent British
history
disease
climate change
and the end of civilisation.
That makes it quite exciting, doesn't
it?
Well, that's part of the challenge.
If it was simple, we'd have finished
years ago.
- That's tiny!
- This is our special find.
I mean, it's outrageous!
I'm already wondering what
archaeological discoveries
are lying in wait for us next year.
Coins for the eyes
And keys for the door
Fortress, grave goods, chambered
tomb
Abandoned villages, rumours of war
We dig for pattern, read the rune
And so a clue to who we are
And where we were and why we will
Inheritors of knowledge now
And ancestors to those who still
might
Dig for us as we have done
To lay us dead out in the sun. ♪