Digging for Britain (2010) s12e01 Episode Script

1
These islands we call home have a rich
and varied history
stretching back thousands of years.
But hidden below the surface
Look at that!
..are some amazing treasures just
waiting to be found.
- Wow!
- Look at me, I'm shaking.
- So each year, across the country,
archaeologists dig,
dive and explore their way down,
searching for fresh discoveries
There's something quite magical about
digging down
through this dark soil, and then,
suddenly, there's the gleam of gold.
..uncovering traces of ancient
lives
- It's amazing, isn't it?
There's nothing like this anywhere
else in Europe.
- It still moves.
- Yeah.
- ..and finding fascinating objects
I've never seen anything quite that
profound.
..as every dig provides a new piece of
the puzzle,
new details of Britain's forgotten
past.
This is the epic and unfolding story
of our islands.
In this episode, I'm exploring the
east of England,
looking at this area's most
fascinating digs.
An Anglo-Saxon cemetery gives up its
secrets
Wow, she's got so many objects buried
with her.
Oh, look at that one!
- That's amazing, isn't it?
- ..with some of the most
extraordinary grave goods
we've ever seen on Digging For
Britain.
Oh, my goodness.
THEY LAUGH
Oh, my goodness!
- Isn't this the best Anglo-Saxon
sword you've ever seen?
- I've never seen anything like that.
Deep in the Thames, a team of divers
explore a unique shipwreck
- It's as important as the Mary Rose.
- ..in a race against time before it's
washed away.
- It's the most high-risk wreck we
have in our waters.
- And a curious find on one of the
largest excavations
in the country astounds the experts.
- Oh, it's fresh!
I have never seen one so fresh!
It's like it left the mint yesterday.
- But first, we're heading to rural
Kent,
ten miles south of Canterbury.
So, what do I know about this site?
Well, it's got the archaeologists
really, really excited
because, here, they believe we have
the potential to shine a light
on the Dark Ages,
to do some modern archaeology, use the
latest scientific techniques
we have at our disposal, and get to
the bottom of a mystery.
After the Roman era in Britain,
it seems that Kent reverted to being
an independent kingdom
..in the Early Medieval period.
We don't have much written evidence
from this period,
so archaeology is extremely important.
This year, archaeologists from the
University of Central Lancashire
have a unique opportunity to find out
more about the people of early
medieval Kent
..as they start the first thorough
investigation of this cemetery,
filming every astonishing discovery
they make.
- Is always tricky, and the bit that
makes you nervous.
- Ah! Oh, amazing.
- There we go. One early Anglo-Saxon
spear.
It's really nice.
We are really pleased to have that. I
think it's fantastic.
- Oh, it's coming!
- There we go.
There you go, there's a knife.
- It's incredible.
It's the first time I've seen
something like this.
It's amazing.
- Yeah, it's nice, isn't it?
Wow.
- Has it got the handle underneath?
- Brilliant.
- Yay! Well done.
- Duncan Sayer is leading the dig.
He's fascinated by this period of
history.
- Hi, Alice. How are you?
- Hello.
Hi, how are you?
- Good to see you again.
I'm good, yes.
- You've been hunting Anglo-Saxons
again?
- We've been hunting Anglo-Saxons
again.
And we've found some, which is
fantastic.
- Yeah.
- Really good.
- And you've got some grave goods,
have you?
I can see there's something there in
the middle of that one.
- Yeah. So, that burial there has a
knife in the middle of it.
As far as we know, because they're
common in both
male and female graves
- Yeah.
- ..they're tools.
Not used as weapons.
- Everyone had a knife.
- Everybody had a knife.
Even children, sometimes have knives.
- OK.
- Yeah.
I think there's a point where a child
passes a rite of passage
and they get their knife, and it's
used for everything,
sort of interacting with the world,
isn't it?
Whittling, cutting wool or string,
eating, cutting food, preparing
animals, all that sort of stuff.
- So, what we're seeing there is
something that somebody
would have had about their person as
an everyday item.
- Exactly. So it's their dress.
It's what they're wearing every day
and that's
what they're being buried with.
- Other graves contain larger items,
and only a few metres away, site
supervisor Gemma Sweeney
thinks she's identified a very
characteristic find.
Gemma.
- Hi.
- Hi.
Duncan has instructed me to come over
here be
ALICE GASPS
He said you had a seax.
- Yep.
- And that's it?
- Yeah, this is a seax, yeah.
- A seax is a specific type of small
sword.
It may even have given the Saxons
their name.
So, the seax itself is Is that
iron?
- Yeah, it's iron, isn't it? Yeah.
- Yeah.
And then you've got a copper alloy
buckle.
- Yeah.
- So you're almost ready to lift that,
then.
- Yeah. So, now I'm going to lift it,
which is, er, very tricky, and
..very fragile.
- Wonderful.
Well done. Very expertly done.
As well as the seax, this burial
contains an iron spear point.
And has every grave had some grave
goods in?
- Yeah, every burial we've found,
it has had some kind of weapon in.
- So, there's a bit of variety.
- Yeah.
Every grave is different, yeah.
- Yeah.
Each grave provides more evidence of
this culture
and tells us something about the
identity of these individuals.
The largest burial on the site is a
female grave.
- A really, really big one.
- That's huge.
- It's absolutely massive, isn't it?
I think the chamber says a lot about
this person,
because it's absolutely massive.
- What's under here?
- It's a bucket.
It's part of a type of vessels that
are made
of wood and then bound with this
copper alloy.
- Yeah.
These buckets are well known from
Anglo-Saxon burials,
with the earliest found in Kent.
- This is beautiful, because we've
still got the woods just around
- Bits of wood here.
- Yeah, all of that wood is still
intact.
- Oh, wow. That's fantastic.
- Two or three a cemetery. So, often
associated with people
with some substantial wealth.
- Wow, she's got so many objects
buried with her.
- She's magnificent.
- I can see beads.
There's glass beads here.
- Yeah, these sort of blue and red
glass beads.
- Oh, look at that one!
- That's amazing, isn't it?
The sort of yellow and the green and
the blue and the red
all the way through.
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- Huge great big thing.
- So, there's a beautiful little
brooch there.
- Yeah. So, we've got a cruciform
brooch.
And then down here
..we have
- What's that?!
- So, this is part of a pair of wrist
clasps.
There's another one here which you can
see really clearly.
- And they're gilded?
- So you've got Gilded.
These circular objects, this sort of
ring-and-dot decoration
around them, and then gilt.
And they're both in the same pattern.
- Wow.
- So it looks like they've
deliberately gilded the outside
- Yeah.
- ..and the interior.
- They are beautiful.
- Aren't they fantastic?
- Absolutely beautiful.
- Yeah.
- Oh, my goodness.
- She's got loads of stuff.
- So, this is the most richly
furnished grave
that you've got this year.
- It is, yeah. Absolutely, it is.
And this is probably one of the
earliest graves
we've got on the site.
- So, when you say early, what kind of
date
are we talking about here, then,
Duncan?
- Probably late fifth century.
- And this has always been such a big
question.
You know, what happened in what became
England
in the fifth and sixth centuries?
- Yeah.
- It's been a bit of a black hole as
far as history is concerned.
- It's often called the Dark Ages.
- It is, yeah.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
We're really getting close to these
people, aren't we?
This cemetery keeps on producing
spectacular finds,
and conservator Dana Goodburn-Brown
and archaeologist Andrew Richardson
have the star find from the site so
far.
And I'm just about to get a look.
Hello. Oh, my goodness.
THEY LAUGH
Oh, my goodness! Andrew, hello.
- Hello.
- Dana, hello, hello.
ALICE GASPS
- Nice to finally show you this.
- Isn't this the best Anglo-Saxon
sword you've ever seen?
- I don't I've never seen anything
like that.
That's so well preserved.
- It is.
- Oh, my goodness.
- It is.
- I mean, you've got everything there.
The hilt and everything.
- Yeah.
- Isn't that beautiful?
What have we got here? Is that gold?
- This is silver, but it's gilded.
- Silver, yeah.
- So, you've got a silver pommel.
And a wonderful thing about it is it's
got this ring,
you see on the pommel?
- Isn't that gorgeous?
- So it's known as a ring sword.
- What's that for? Because it doesn't
look like you'd be able to get
anything through it.
- It hasn't got a practical function.
It's not for tying your wrist to the
sword or anything like that.
It's not strong enough.
- Yeah.
- We think that it symbolises some
sort of bond or oath
between the sword bearer and somebody
like a king or a lord,
or possibly an oath to a god, or
something like that.
So it's certainly
It's a very high-status object.
Whoever was carrying this and was
buried with this,
was somebody pretty important.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And when I get the chance to work on
it,
you'll see it's got really fine tool
marks through here.
It's been punched with little
triangular punches
and filled with probably yellow.
Zigzag line in the middle.
- Oh, wow.
- It's hard to see.
- So, you're going to do some work on
this
and bring out all of those details?
- Yes.
- Alongside this incredibly
well-preserved sword,
the same burial contained yet another
extraordinary object.
- We found one more thing in the
grave.
We presume this is the grave of a man.
It's a weapon burial.
But we also found this in the grave.
- Oh, wow.
- Which is a gold bracteate.
- Isn't it beautiful?
- And the workmanship, even this
simple beaded wire
I mean, imagine that The wires,
there's not machines to make that,
so you're hammering out gold thin,
and then, like a paper straw, twisting
it, maybe.
- Mm.
- And then hammering the little beaded
design in.
It's just, like, amazing.
- It's incredible, isn't it?
What a beautiful thing.
And what have we got here? Is it a
dragon?
- It's a serpent. These bracteates are
definitely associated with
..Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon paganism.
- OK.
- Erm, possibly the cult of Odin or
Woden.
These probably symbolise mythological
scenes
from that religion.
- Yeah, yeah.
What does "bracteate" mean?
- It's basically a sort of pendant,
and it's usually worn as a series of
them
strung on a necklace by very
high-status women.
- Right.
- Erm, so it's really unusual to find
it in a burial with a sword.
There's no other female dress
accessories in the grave.
This person was not dressed as a
woman.
They're buried as a man,
and I think this might be a keepsake
from a female relative or ancestor.
- We'll return to these spectacular
finds later in the programme,
as Dana applies modern technology to
understand
more about the techniques that went
into making them,
and we'll learn more about this
incredible culture.
MUSIC: Lost And Found by Johnny Flynn
# Reams of stories reeled me in
# Caught my ear and hooked my chin
# A lost and found
# A newest sound
# Bullet from a golden gun
# Ah, ah, ah, ah
# Ah, ah, ah, ah. #
Our next dig is in the town of
Leiston,
25 miles north-east of Ipswich.
Here on the Suffolk coast, a team from
Oxford Cotswold Archaeology
is excavating in advance of
construction work
at the new Sizewell C nuclear power
station.
Jo Caruth will lead the
post-excavation analysis.
- We've identified some really quite
significant archaeology
relating to settlement and occupation
that we had no idea was here.
- And after nine months of excavation,
the team make a very strange
discovery.
- All of a sudden, this big, very dark
feature
appeared underneath the digger bucket.
When I took it out, I had never seen a
piece of lead that big.
It was very exciting.
I came away actually shaking.
- HE LAUGHS
This mysterious lump of lead was
buried in the ground
nearly a thousand years ago, at the
end
..of the Early Medieval period.
The find is transported to the lab
where the lead is opened up
..revealing hundreds of silver coins
inside it.
- Oh, my goodness.
- Oh!
- That's the first time anyone's
touched that.
- Mm-hm.
- Wow.
- Conservator Pieta Greaves is
painstakingly excavating this hoard
one coin at a time.
And they appear to be very well
preserved,
so it should be possible to identify
and date them.
- So, what we're doing here is making
sure that we know
when we take the coins out, exactly
where in this hoard
they've come from. So, what we're
doing is we're just laying down
a little number. So, every coin gets a
number.
We take a photo
..and then we take the coin out so
that we know exactly
where it came from.
And then we can move on to the next
one.
So, that sort of sequence will help us
build up a picture
of how the coins came in to the hoard.
- Thank you very much. And there's
your next.
- Coin specialist Alexander Bliss
eagerly inspects them.
- The earliest coins that we can see
thus far
are from around sort of 1036,
and we have also coins of Edward the
Confessor
in there, from about 1042 to 1044.
A really interesting period in
England's history.
- This careful analysis in the lab
is just the first step in trying to
understand
why this hoard of coins might have
been hidden
in the first place.
- Hoards go into the ground for a
number of reasons across history.
We can theorise, we can look at the
historical context.
- I'd say that's the mystery of the
story, isn't it?
- Mm.
- Like, you'll never know why someone
put it there.
- No.
- But it's quite a lot of money to
wrap up and put in a hole.
- Alexander is also intrigued by just
how perfect
some of these coins appear.
HIGH-PITCHED:
- Oh, it's fresh!
- It is, it's a nice one. I knew you'd
make that noise!
- Blimey!
I've never seen one so fresh!
It's like it left the mint yesterday.
Phwoar.
- Which one? What is that one?
- Absolutely crisp.
That's another
I think that's another Harold.
They're definitely a lot shinier now.
Really lovely.
It's just as struck.
- A few weeks later, the lab work is
complete,
and now Alexander and Jo
have brought some of the most
interesting coins to show me.
These are very beautiful coins.
- I know, they're beautiful, aren't
they?
- I mean, somebody was going to go
back, weren't they, presumably?
"I can safely bury that there and get
back to it."
And then they didn't.
- Yes.
- One assumes you don't bury it next
to your house. That you've
As you say, you've got This is
The corner of these ditches on the
third tree
from the right, or whatever.
- Yeah.
- And we think
- But a landscape they would've been
familiar with.
- A landscape they're familiar with.
- Yeah.
- For whatever reason that might be,
they never returned
- Yeah.
- ..to reclaim their treasure.
- Yeah. I mean, it IS a treasure,
isn't it?
- It is.
- How many coins were in it?
- So, in total, there are 321
individual coins.
- Yeah.
- And the actual total sort of, er,
value of the hoard
is 320 pence, because we have 319 full
pennies
and two cut ha'pennies.
- Now, £3.20 doesn't sound like
treasure, Alex.
- Yeah, well, we do know that in the
sort of late 10th and 11th century,
the value of a cow is approximately 20
silver pennies.
So using that metric
- Oh, OK.
- So using that metric, 320 pence,
it's what? 16 cows, basically
- Yeah.
- ..if we use that as a metric.
- That's actually a really useful way
of looking at it.
You can have something meaningful that
we go,
"Right, OK, that's actually"
- Yeah.
- "That is a lot of money."
- Yeah, it is. It's someone with
means,
someone with money, but not someone at
the top of the chain.
- Are there any particular ones that
we can pick out
- Yeah, absolutely.
- ..that you can actually say we know
the precise date of this, or?
- Yeah, absolutely.
And I think a really good coin to
illustrate this
is this coin here,
erm, which is a wonderful, wonderful
example.
So, this is a penny, a jewel cross
type penny,
struck in the name of Harthacanute.
- When you say it's a jewel cross
- It's a jewel cross.
So it's The name "jewel cross"
refers to the design on the reverse,
which is sort of like an item of
jewellery, like a pendant.
- Yes, it does look like that.
- With those sort of lovely lobed
sort of petals on the sort of arms of
the cross.
- Yeah.
- And that coin was minted in Exeter.
- OK.
- So, good Wessex mint.
- How do you know?
- How do we know?
- How do you know it was minted in
Exeter?
- On all these coins,
the name of the mint and the moneyer
are present on their reverse faces.
And that particular coin is struck by
a moneyer named Eadmer.
So, it will So, it reads "Eadmer on
Exec,"
which is the mint signature for
Exeter.
- This ends up in Suffolk, then,
with coins that have come from all
over the place.
There's something interesting going on
here
in that late Anglo-Saxon period.
- Yeah.
This is what we're looking for now,
because we're sort of getting a
picture.
It's quite a well-to-do area,
and we're thinking this might be a
wealthy farmer or a freeman
or something like that, aren't we?
- Yeah.
- So, perhaps, you know, in one of
these other areas
Well, what we're hoping for is that
we'll find his
We'll actually find a farmstead of the
right date
that we can start to look at.
- How amazing.
Yeah, yeah. That'sthat's brilliant.
And then, on the other side
- Yeah.
- ..we've got the king.
- Exactly. We have the portrait of
Harthacanute.
Well, a sort of stylised portrait.
- Yeah.
- Facingfacing right.
And that piece will date, you know,
about 1036.
So we can be so precise about some of
these.
One of the most important coins in the
hoard, I think,
and one of my favourites, I have to be
honest,
is this particular coin here.
Erm, this coin is a jewel cross type
penny
struck in the name of Harold I.
And it's wonderful, because it is the
sole instance
of a sort of 11th-century street name
on an Anglo-Saxon
..sort of late Anglo-Saxon penny.
- Oh, where's the street name?
- So, the coin reads
So, the reverse reads,
"Eadwold on Estcep Lu."
"Lu" is the mint signature for London,
and "Estcep" is Eastcheap.
- It still exists?
- Yeah. Eastcheap, London.
- And at this point, is the value of
the coin linked
to actually the weight of the silver?
- Exactly so, yes.
This is an They have an intrinsic
value.
They're made of good silver.
Very good silver, in fact.
- Yeah.
It's interesting, because that means
if you're hiding a hoard,
whatever happens, you can melt that
down.
You can get the silver.
- Yeah.
- It's still worth something.
- So, the evidence suggests that this
hoard went into the ground
early in the reign of Edward the
Confessor.
- And this is quite a turbulent time,
isn't it?
- Yes, there isthere is a degree of
instability.
The sea change in the country that
happens in that year
with Edward the Confessor returning to
the throne,
is quiteis quite big.
- And that's after a Danish takeover.
- Yes, exactly.
- Yeah.
- Edward's returned to rule,
you know, return to kingship in 1042
marks that return to the rule of the
House Of Wessex.
So there is instability.
There are people connected with the
previous
Scandinavian-affiliated regime who we
know lose their money
and their wealth and their property,
some of them quite high up.
And I think that's something that can
percolate downwards.
Unstable times.
It's not the sole reason why people
put money in the ground,
but it can be a big player.
- Yeah.
- Not knowing what's going to happen
to you.
- You're excited about this, aren't
you?
- I love it. I just love it, yeah.
- Yeah.
- It's very It is exciting.
I mean, it's all about stories, isn't
it?
- It's about stories, but it's also
about
knowing that story for the first time.
- Yeah, that's what's exciting, isn't
it?
- So, this hoard has come along and
said, "There is a story here."
- Yeah, it has.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Throughout history, the fertile
plains of Britain's east
have been fought over.
The region is littered with medieval
castles
..and even the odd Iron Age fort
..bearing witness to shifting patterns
of power and land use.
And every year, new insights emerge,
adding to the picture.
The latest discovery comes from the
village of Norton,
40 miles south of Norwich.
2,000 years ago, this was the
territory of the Iceni,
a powerful British tribe.
In 61CE, the queen of the Iceni,
Boudica,
led one of the most famous revolts in
all of British history
..against
..the occupying Romans.
Boudica's revolt destroyed several
cities in Britain.
The Romans eventually crushed the
rebellion
and tightened their control over Iceni
territory.
And over the next few centuries,
we'd see the indelible mark of Roman
culture on the landscape.
It's always nice to approach a site
knowing that somewhere here there's a
Roman villa.
But, in fact, this is a villa site
with a difference,
because the archaeologists are not
focusing
on the house itself.
And that's because the main villa
building is, we think,
right underneath the more modern
rectory.
But a team from University College
London
are investigating the fields and
gardens around the rectory
which once formed the wider villa
estate.
They want to find out what life was
like for the earliest Romans
living here on the edge of Iceni
territory.
And they've already discovered an
enormous bank and ditch
that would have encircled the villa.
Kevin MacDonald is leading the dig.
- Hello, Alice.
- Hello, hello.
- Welcome.
- Hello, hello.
- Wonderful to have you here.
- That's a big ditch.
- It's a very big ditch.
- Oh, my goodness. This seems very
unusual
for a villa site, doesn't it?
What did your LiDAR show up?
- Well, I have it here.
I can show you.
- Where are we standing?
- We are right around here.
- OK.
- And here is the remnants of this
really quite large
rectilinear bank and ditch.
- The LiDAR scan shows the extent of
the defensive bank and ditch
around the Roman villa.
And it's revealed more features across
15 acres
of the surrounding landscape.
And what are your big questions here?
What do you want to solve?
- We are here at the extreme southern
limit
of the territory of the Iceni.
So this is a frontier area,
and we want to understand the origins
of the villa.
- The team has opened up nine trenches
spread out across the landscape.
- So, we're digging a ditch over here.
We're not entirely sure what it is,
but you can see the sort ofthe
different features.
We haven't found anything interesting
yet, but hopefully
..hopefully we will.
- Now, what we found is, erm,
probably an 18th century, 19th century
tombstone.
- What are we doing?
- We are finding the edge, because we
got it wrong.
- There's no wrong in archaeology.
There's only
There's only dig.
Quite a few bones have come out of it.
Lots of animal bones.
- Whoo!
- It was the jaw.
- Oh, lovely.
- Archaeologist Murray Andrews has
assembled some of the best finds
to give me a glimpse of daily life at
the villa.
So, what does it tell us?
- So, well, we get quite a lot from
here, really.
- That's lovely. What's that?
- Oh, this is incredible.
So, this here A very delicate
thing, if you want to hold it.
- Ah! Yeah! Look at that.
It stillit still moves.
- Yeah. Well, initially
- That's amazing.
- So, this is a chain, obviously.
- Wow.
- We think this is maybe for
suspending a oil lamp
or a cauldron or something of this
ilk.
- OK.
- It's
- So, there could've been a few of
these.
- Yeah.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah.
- Isn't it wonderful?
- Yeah.
It's incredible, isn't it? But
something inside there anyway,
which is giving us a kind of glimpse
of, you know, heat and light
and sound that we just
- Sparkly, beautiful things.
- Absolutely.
Yeah, and this would have been a
bright kind of brassy orange colour
at the time. We don't get it now, it's
all green.
- Yeah.
- This is a very visually impactful
object.
- Isn't that lovely?
- So, it's fantastic.
- Lovely thing.
- Yeah.
- What's that?
- This is fantastic.
- Can I pick it up?
- Yeah, you can.
- Ooh, it's OK, so that's heavy.
- Yeah.
- So I think that's a knife handle.
- That is a knife handle.
- And I think it's actually got the
I mean, that's really unusual, isn't
it?
- Yeah.
- You quite often find the iron knife
with its tang.
- Yeah.
- And the handle's gone completely.
- Absolutely.
- And here you've actually got the
handle, which looks like bone.
- Yeah. So, the handle is made of
bone.
- Isn't that lovely?
- And as you say, we don't have many
of these things
in this kind of condition. We mostly
just get the surviving bit of
either the blade or the handle.
- Yes.
- So to have the two together is very
satisfying.
- Yeah, it is really satisfying.
That's really lovely.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, you are just kind of getting a
glimpse
of these people, aren't you? Just,
like, little, little
windows into their lives.
- Yeah.
And, I mean, I think this object is a
stellar one
for thinking about people too.
- Yeah.
- It's a cup, you know.
- It's a bottom of the cup.
- Absolutely. So, if we turn it
around
- Ah!
- ..we've got some initials
underneath.
- Oh, isn't that fantastic?
- Yeah.
"FN." Now, we don't know who FN is.
Presumably, it's the person that owned
the cup.
Maybe it's the guy who owns the villa,
and he's writing his name on it in the
same way you might do,
you know, in the office space. We
don't want you to use my cup,
it says, "Keep off it!"
- Get off!
- It's the closest thing we've got,
that immediate link with whoever
was here in the past. They've written
their initials on here.
- Yeah. That's It's, you know
It's things like that where
You know, I'm holding this now,
and to know that that was somebody's
personal cup.
- Yeah.
- I really love this.
I mean, you've got such a great
collection of finds here
which show us what was going on in the
estate all around this villa.
A broad overview, and then you home in
on just one individual,
and you're getting Just getting
really close to the people.
- It's quite special, isn't it?
- It is special, yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
It's lovely.
The small finds paint a vivid picture
of life at the villa.
But there was one strange discovery
here
which doesn't quite fit on the finds
table.
So, have you had any datable material
out of this ditch?
- Yes, we have.
And it's in the box in front of us.
- In the heavy box.
- Yes.
- OK, so, we've got animal bones.
- Yes, lots of animal bones.
- And what species is that, then,
Kevin?
- That is a horse.
- OK.
There's quite a lot of horse. Is it
butchered animal remains?
- No, no, it is, in fact, from an
intact individual.
- A whole horse.
- A whole horse.
A whole horse right at the entranceway
to the villa.
And here we have a photograph
- Oh, wow, look at that.
- ..of the horse as it was excavated.
And you can see it's very much posed.
It's in a sort of running posture.
This, you know
If horses die naturally, they are not
in the ground like this.
- This is very strange, isn't it?
Because it's been
deliberately placed in the ditch,
then.
I mean, this is a horse burial.
- Yes, it's a horse burial.
It's a relatively large horse.
We're looking at withers height of
about 152cm,
which is at the large end of Roman
horses.
It's the sort of size class of Roman
military horses.
- So, have you got a date on this?
- Yes, we have an accelerator date on
one of the teeth
which falls between 80 and 130AD.
- OK.
- So
- So, definitely Roman.
- And early Roman.
- Yeah.
- We're still within a period of
living memory
from the rebellion of Boudica, 60,
61AD.
- Yeah.
- So, we're You know, we're looking
at something which is probably
starting being built maybe 20, 30
years maximum
after the rebellion.
And so, Roman military-sized horse,
quite early,
there is a thought that if this villa
is a kind of colony
imposing itself on the landscape,
it's tempting to think of this as
being founded by some veteran
who's receiving this land as a kind of
gift.
- Yeah.
- It's someone who's a safe pair of
hands,
who can effectively colonise this
landscape
which had previously been held by the
Iceni.
This is his pension.
- Yeah.
- And then, when his beloved horse
dies,
it goes at the entry point of the
villa complex.
- That is surely what we're looking
at.
We're looking at somebody's favourite
horse.
It's always interesting to think about
how
the landscape changes through time.
Going back into the Roman period,
there would have been similarities,
certainly, with today.
Today, it's peaceful and idyllic.
What was it like back then?
I think there was more of an edge to
it.
There's that huge defensive ditch
around the villa.
I think the owners were a little bit
worried
about people in the surrounding
landscape.
Next, we return to that extraordinary
Anglo-Saxon sword
found in one of the Early Medieval
graves in Kent.
Conservator Dana Goodburn-Brown has
brought the sword,
and her microscope, to give me a
closer look.
I want to come and see what you're
looking at
underneath the microscope there. This
is the sword.
Wow.
- I don't know where to even start.
There's so many amazing things.
This is like a dream for me, this
work.
- I mean, it's such fine
craftsmanship, isn't it?
- Absolutely. And I
My different tools here, I've got
porcupine quills,
toothpicks, because I need to tease
out the soil,
but not damage the organic materials.
- Yeah.
It's painstaking work, isn't it?
- It's really slow going,
but the reward is like finding these
exciting little
..little glimpses into the past.
So, if we start at the top of the hilt
here,
look at these little tool marks.
They are so tiny, you kind of need the
microscope to appreciate them.
- Yeah.
- I like to think of
- And then there's
all these little triangles as well.
- Yeah.
I love to think about the craftsmen in
the workshop when they made it.
- Yeah. I mean, that level of detail.
- Isn't that amazing?
- Just extraordinary.
- That craftsperson must have been so
thrilled with their work.
- The metalwork is mind-blowingly
intricate and accomplished,
but there are organic remains too,
which add to the picture of this
incredibly special
high-status sword.
- We know that it's in its scabbard.
- Yeah.
- So, this is wood. And then, really
cool
is the high-status ones are beaver
fur.
- What, on the inside of the
- Inside
- ..scabbard?
- Yeah.
That stringy striation along there, I
think that's beaver fur.
- That's the fur. So it's a whole idea
when you're pulling a sword out,
it makes this kind of metal noise. It
wouldn't have at all.
It would have been very silent coming
out of the scabbard.
- Yeah.
- Under the microscope, there are more
clues here.
But they're not actually part of the
sword or its scabbard.
- I've also found fly pupae, which
again, is really cool to find.
OK, there's the fly pupae there.
Ermthere.
- Oh, yes.
- You see there?
- Yeah.
Does that tell you that the body was
lying in the grave
for a certain amount of time?
- Yeah.
So, that's the whole CSI thing about,
and why people talk about
maybe they were there for five days
with their clothes on.
Enough time for a fly to land, lay an
egg and then to pupate.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And the sword has one.
- And it means that the body
isn't being placed in the grave and
then immediately covered with soil.
- No, they were out, and people would
say their goodbyes.
- They were learning something about
the funerary practice as well.
- Yeah. So, it's slow going, but the
rewards are huge.
- Yeah.
- The stories that can be told from
what we're seeing.
To think about the people that
actually made it
and to find little glimpses that tell
me
- Yeah.
- ..yeah, about their workshop, or
help me visualise it
- Yeah.
- ..to me, is really exciting.
- It takes you back, doesn't it? Yeah.
Duncan has also brought in some of the
other finds
which have now been cleaned.
Duncan, you've had a chance to look at
some of these objects
in a bit more detail. So what can you
tell about them now?
- So, we've got a range of things to
show you and to talk about.
And what's really nice about that is
that they
tell quite an interesting story.
- Yeah.
- So, we've got a series of glass
beads
and stone beads as well.
- Wow, is that rock crystal?
- It's a rock crystal bead.
- Isn't that beautiful?
- It's lovely, isn't it?
This one is a really pretty buckle.
- Mm.
- And Dana's cleaned it up really
nicely.
And you can see here, we've got this
sort of
- There's a pattern.
- ..patterning.
Incredibly decorative object.
- It's wonderful, because we're only
getting little glimpses
of what they were wearing, and
obviously the durable materials
remaining in the grave, but they
obviously cared
about how they looked.
- I think they did, hugely.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Absolutely.
- Many of the grave goods are objects
which would have been made locally
in Kent,
but there are some more exotic items
too.
- So, I've got another buckle here,
which seems to suggest
we've got this sort of connection to
France, OK?
This object is much more of a French
character than other objects.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And that would make sense in Kent
to have that connection across the
Channel.
And over here, what we've got are the
objects that were found
in that really deep female grave.
- Yeah, down the bottom.
- These in particular, these wrist
clasps here
..are really quite special.
I've never seen another example of
this in the UK at all.
- Really?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- So they're unique to
- So
- ..to your site.
- They're unique to the site, but
almost certainly
Scandinavian in character.
And that's interesting, isn't it? That
we've got that connection
to France, and our connection to the
northern continental,
northern Europeans
- Yeah.
- ..in those earlier ones.
So, in this deep grave with the
Scandinavian-character wrist clasps,
we also find this small bucket.
So, we've got things that are far away
and things that are much more local.
If she is from the same place as those
wrist clasps,
then what's interesting is that she's
bringing
her way of doing things, but she's
also interacting with people
with their way of doing things.
So we're seeing her coming along not
just as a foreigner,
but as someone who's bringing ideas
together
and creating something very new.
- I think we're looking at something
really interesting here,
because we are looking at these
crucial, crucial centuries
after the break-up of the Western
Roman Empire
when we're seeing people on the move,
we're seeing ideas on the move,
objects on the move,
but it's almost like people are trying
to re-establish
or invent their identity.
- Absolutely.
- Later graveyards and cemeteries are
a familiar feature
in our landscapes,
and there's a certain conformity of
practice
with burials in shrouds or wooden
coffins clustered around churches
marked with tombstones.
But people in the more ancient past
buried their dead
in many different ways.
One of the most unusual burials
discovered this year
came from a site just outside
Peterborough.
A team from Headland Archaeology
unearthed an enormous
stone sarcophagus.
And it's filled with white gypsum,
a naturally occurring mineral used to
make plaster.
This is a burial practice dating to
..the Roman period.
The team transfer the stone coffin to
the lab
to carefully excavate the plaster in
controlled conditions.
The huge sarcophagus weighs more than
600kg.
It's more than 2m long
and its sides are nearly 10cm thick.
Conservator Morgan Creed from York
Archaeology,
and Osteologist Don Walker from Museum
of London Archaeology,
are peeling back the layers of plaster
inside the sarcophagus.
- So, we're micro-excavating to expose
the bone
and also to try and get the pieces of
plaster out.
- We don't exactly know why they used
to pour this liquid
into the coffins.
However, I think, in general, the
evidence we have got tells us
that perhaps these were more wealthy
individuals.
I think we're quite lucky with the
preservation of the bones, really.
We can clearly make out the various
elements of the individual,
at least the main elements of the
individual.
We can see that the ends of the bones
are fused on.
That shows that the individual has
stopped growing,
the person has reached maturity and
they're an adult.
- The bones contain clues to the
identity of this individual,
but there are other precious remains
here too.
- There's some really beautiful
features.
This one in particular has got some
really, really lovely folds
in it from the burial shroud.
This one has actually got, erm, some
textile still remaining in it.
You can actually see sort of, like,
the warp and weft
on the textile impressions.
Ancient fabrics.
That's really exciting.
- Yes.
- We can do it.
- The largest surviving fragment of
plaster
- We've got it.
- ..has partially preserved the shape
of the body.
- Nice.
I'm actually really pleased that this
has come out
in one big fragment.
You can see you've got the two perfect
voids
where the legs would have been.
Erm, he had quite big legs.
And, erm, there's some bone fragments
still stuck in there.
But to have got it out in one piece
Yes!
- There's much more analysis to be
done once the contents
of the stone sarcophagus have been
excavated.
But this wasn't an isolated burial.
The huge sarcophagus was surrounded by
a remarkable collection
of other graves.
Senior Finds Officer Sara Machin has
come to talk to me
about this extraordinary cemetery,
and show me another fascinating burial
from the site.
- So, this is the site.
This is just a kind of sketch plan of
what was going on on the site.
- And you've just got that single
stone coffin.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Interesting. Stone coffins are not
that common at all.
There's probably about 50 across, erm,
Roman Britain.
- So, presumably that is about status.
- That is the assumption, yes.
There is something that singles them
out from the rest of the community,
some sort of leader or dominant figure
in that area
that means that they have all that
investment of time
and money and effort
- Yeah.
- ..to put them in the centre.
- I mean, I'm looking at the
orientation of those graves,
and, you know, some of them are
east-west,
some of them are north-south.
And really, the rule just seems to be
about what they're next to.
- Yes.
- You know, they're just being fitted
in, aren't they?
- They've actually just framed around
that one in the middle.
- It is tempting, isn't it, to see
that as a founding grave
in the centre, and then actually for
it to be a family burial ground?
- We have 23 burials.
We've got everything going on in a
very small cemetery,
and the blue ones are graves with
finds.
So, there are a lot that have grave
goods in them.
- So, tell me about this individual,
then.
What do we know about this person?
- She was within the enclosure of the
cemetery.
So within the plan, alongside the
stone coffin.
And we're just at the initial stages.
We know this is a young lady.
- Yeah.
- Looking late teens, early adulthood.
- Yeah.
So, she's got her first and second
molars fully erupted,
and I can see the wisdom tooth there
is just coming through
at the back of her mouth there.
- Yes.
- So, we've got finger rings here.
- Yeah.
So, this is a silver ring. That's the
signet off the front
of the silver ring.
- And lots of bracelets.
- Lots and lots of bracelets.
- Is that a bracelet as well?
- Yes.
- Isn't that beautiful?
- That is absolutely beautiful.
- And then some tiny little beads,
which presumably were part of either
bracelets or necklaces.
- Yes.
We have a couple of hundred beads, but
I just got a few out.
- You're kidding?
- I didn't have time to get them all
out.
Yeah.
- A couple of hundred beads out there.
- So, there's a couple of hundred
beads from there.
I mean, the earrings are silver.
- Mm.
- They are incredible.
We think they're little trowels.
They look like little archaeology
trowels.
- Can I pick that up?
- You can, absolutely.
- So, that was also buried with her.
- Yes.
So, that's a lower Nene Valley Colour
Coated Ware.
A little beaker
- Yeah.
- ..which could have had a small
drink, or a bit of a libation,
or something like that.
- That's a beautiful pot.
- So, you're looking at third, fourth
century
date for that.
- And this glassware, that looks like
a little glass beaker.
- It is a glass beaker. It is
beautiful.
- Isn't that absolutely lovely?
- It is.
And that's one of two that was in her
grave as well.
So, the glass vessels and the little
beakers are perhaps
a final toast at the interment.
Or sometimes, if they went in later,
it could be a commemoration event,
an anniversary or something. People
come and have a drink
and leave the vessel behind.
- So, you've got this whole collection
of jewellery,
and the little beaker, and the glasses
all buried at her feet.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- All of it together.
So, with the bracelets, you'd expect
them to be maybe on the arms.
The earrings up here, the rings by the
fingers.
But no, they were all at the bottom.
And there is a theory, and it's only a
theory, that this is a dowry.
So, she is a young female who didn't
get married in her life.
So they have put her dowry with her to
take with her
- Yeah, yeah.
- ..to the next life.
And that's why it was all bundled up
together.
There may have been asome sort of
fabric bag
or some container that held it all
together.
There are so many questions we've got
about this group of people.
- It's a fascinating collection of
burials.
- It is remarkable.
- MUSIC: Murmuration by Johnny Flynn
Every year, archaeological sites
across the east of Britain
are at risk
..whether from coastal erosion,
or the farmer's plough.
Archaeologists are often in a race
against time to learn everything
they can from sites before they
disappear.
# ..to the heavens above
# We can always come back, my love
# We can always come back, my love. #
Our next story is about archaeology
under threat,
but it's also an extraordinary tale of
dedication,
persistence and perseverance,
and the moment when that pays off.
We're heading to Southend-on-Sea
and the mouth of the River Thames.
Here, below the shifting tides of the
Thames Estuary,
there are more than 770 known
shipwrecks
from all periods of history.
But one of the most significant is a
heavily armoured 17th-century
warship called the London
..taking us back to the Early Modern
period.
The wreck has been preserved under
layers of silt
for hundreds of years.
But today, it's under threat from
modern shipping traffic,
dredging, tides and currents.
As the silt in the estuary shifts,
parts of the wooden ship become
exposed,
and they'll break up and rot away in a
matter of weeks.
For more than a decade, a team of
volunteer divers
has been recording and recovering
precious artefacts
from the London
..before the wreck is completely
washed away.
The lead diver is Steve Ellis.
- I've been diving on the site of the
London for 14 years.
It's been down there hundreds of
years, but it's really opened up.
Stuff has been washed out of it.
It's like a historic building what's
on fire
and we're trying to get in there to
rescue everything
before it's been washed away.
- The London was a 76-gun warship
built in 1656
during the Commonwealth era.
She became famous as one of three
ships to bring King Charles II
back to England to restore the
monarchy in 1660.
But tragedy struck only a few years
later,
when the London blew up and sank in
the Thames Estuary,
killing more than 300 people.
Today, a new part of the wreck has
emerged out of the silt,
so the team suit up for another dive.
- The Thames Estuary is like, erm
To me, it's unique.
It's not really been explored much.
- Steve has special permission from
Historic England to dive
the protected wreck site and learn
what he can from what remains.
- It's the most high-risk wreck we
have in our waters.
- The London is two miles offshore,
so the team use a RIB to reach it.
Once their dive boat is in position
and safely anchored,
they're 18m above the wreck of the
London.
- There's no-one dives the Thames.
It's quite horrendous diving, to be
honest with you.
It's a challenging site.
- The currents here are so strong,
there's a risk the divers
could get pulled out to sea.
- You have to be connected to a line
to the boat all the time.
Because if that line gets
disconnected, with the currents,
you could end up miles away.
- The estuary is full of churned-up
silt.
So as the team descend, the visibility
gets worse and worse.
- When the visibility is really poor,
you concentrate.
You can study the wreck in more
detail.
In the winter months, I can actually
feel my way around it
and I know exactly where I am.
- The team are filming when Steve
makes an incredible discovery.
- It just started to appear out of the
silt,
and I thought it was a part of an old
anchor.
Then I felt the button,
and I knew exactly what it was, you
know?
But, yeah, it was It really was a
wow moment.
- He found one of the London's
cannons.
It's solid bronze and 2.5m long.
- It's as important as the Mary Rose.
It's a unique time capsule,
and a fantastic underwater puzzle to
try to work out.
- The dive team is also finding
personal items from those on board
when the London sank.
- This is a unique wreck, you know?
It's
You know, it's special.
That's what I like about diving the
site.
You know, the I'm just really
privileged.
- With another successful dive under
his belt,
Steve is keen to show me some of the
most recent finds
from the wreck of the London.
And he's joined by Vittorio Ricchetti
from Southend Museum.
Steve, how many years is it now, this
project?
- I've been diving it with my team of
divers for, like, 14 years.
- Does it change every year, then?
Is the sand shifting around?
- Between every dive it changes.
- Yeah.
- Since the Channel was dredged to
make way for these big ships,
the site is being washed away.
So we're trying to save as much
information as possible.
- Steve, how many finds have been
recovered so far?
- Over 1,200.
- 1,200 finds?
- Yeah.
- Yeah. And this must represent a big
conservation challenge,
because they've been preserved
underwater all this time.
Presumably, as soon as they're brought
into the air,
then you have to worry about them
degrading pretty quickly.
- Yes. They become immediately very
fragile if they dry up too quickly,
they have to stay in water.
- Can I handle this one?
- Absolutely.
These are linstocks.
- What's a linstock?
- A wooden linstock is a slow match.
It's basically a match for cannons.
- And this hole at the end, is that
for a wick?
What goes in there?
- Yes.
So, slow-burning.
- Yeah, yeah.
So that's used to light the cannon?
- Yes, as you would see in films.
- So, you've got all these cannon on
board,
and then you've got a storeroom with
the powder for the cannon.
- Yes, indeed.
- So, it is
..it is a dangerous set-up.
- Yes.
- You have to be very, very careful
about that.
- Very careful.
- And then what's this curious object?
- These are the top of a wooden
lantern.
- Top of a wooden lantern. OK, so, I
can see a hole at the top here,
and I can see that there would have
been one, two, three, four,
five holes here.
- Little wooden staves what went to
the base.
- Presumably that would have had glass
around it?
- No, no, not in this period.
- No?
- No, just wooden battens with a naked
candle inside.
- So there was a naked flame in the
middle of that lantern.
- What's really intriguing
..got little scorch marks.
Got scorch marks here.
This is possibly one of the reasons
the London blew up.
- Oh, my goodness.
- See
- Yeah.
- ..for me
- So, this hole here, that is actually
the hole at the top of the lantern
to let the hot air out. But this has
been scorched all the way
I mean, it's been burned, actually.
- Yes.
- So, this is completely burned
through. This is burned through.
I mean, looking at this, you've got
something where there's evidence of,
er, actually a naked flame burning
through the top of it.
- Yeah.
- And you're talking about a ship
where there was
an accident where it exploded.
- Yep.
That was found down in the hold of the
ship.
- And then, onboard, you've got this
store of gunpowder.
- And the experts think that an
accident in the powder room
is probable cause of the incident.
We can't say for certain, but
- It's a tragic accident.
- Tragic, absolutely.
- Yeah.
- And this, I think, really is that
kind of object
that tells you how heartbreaking this
tragedy is.
- You've got a thimble.
- Yes.
- And is that a button?
- And a button, yes.
- They're lovely.
- And we know that onboard of the
ship,
there were also family members, wives,
partners, kids.
- Really?
- Yes, because the
- Why were there family members
onboard a warship?
- It was the moment where the ship was
to take off.
It was the last moment where you were
allowed to say goodbye
to your loved ones and your family
members.
This makes the story even more tragic,
really.
- Yeah, yeah. No, it is an even deeper
tragedy.
In some ways, it would be great to
leave most of the archaeology
down there now, because it's
preserved,
but actually, it's under threat at
this moment in time.
- I believe everything should be left
in situ if possible.
- Yeah.
- But sadly, from what we've seen with
the London, it's not the case.
- When are you going down next?
- Erm, nextend of next week.
- Are you?
- Yeah.
- You can't wait, can you?
- No, I can't wait. I can't.
- Next time on Digging For Britain
Ooh!
..in Kettering, archaeologists are
amazed to discover
an enormous Roman villa complex
What you're saying is that this trench
is just opening up a window
onto a tenth of it?
- Yes.
- ..the windswept Cambridgeshire
Claylands
yield up their Iron Age secrets
- We're looking at pioneers heading
out into the wilderness.
- Really?
..and in Oxfordshire, we travel back
165 million years
to find Britain's most fearsome
dinosaur.
What's it eating?
- Whatever it liked!
- Yeah!
That is the answer, isn't it?
# Come and search for we who search
# And looking for a scarred land
# And dig for those whose stories lie
# With buried paths and futures won
# And dig for us as we have done
# To lay the dead out in the sun
# To lay us dead out in the sun. #