Digging for Britain (2010) s12e04 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 a 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.
This time I'll be travelling around
the north of Britain,
looking at that region's most exciting
archaeological digs.
An excavation in the grounds of a
bishop's palace
SHE GASPS ..turns up an incredible
find.
So that is gold.
- It is gold.
- So you can imagine the wealth of the
bishop's household.
- In Yorkshire, we see evidence of an
ancient crime.
Totally unexpected discovery.
- It's punishable by crucifixion.
You don't want to be caught with this
material.
- And in Cumbria
- Oh, my God.
- ..a detectorist discovers a stunning
Bronze Age hoard.
- Oh, my God, there's another one!
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, look at that!
- First we're heading to a site in
Bishop Auckland, County Durham.
Standing proud in this market town is
Auckland Palace.
For centuries it was the seat of the
Prince Bishops of Durham,
extremely powerful clergy who governed
swathes
of north-east England.
This 17th century Bishop's palace is
one of the best
preserved in Europe,
but what we see today is not the first
palace that stood here.
In 2022, we joined a team from the
University of Durham
and the Auckland Project as they
uncovered part of a much
earlier palace complex.
It had been built in the 14th century
by a Bishop of Durham
called Antony Bek.
- A bit of a rock star bishop, we
might want to call him.
He was clearly a man who liked the
good things in life.
- The dig revealed the remains of an
opulent chapel
and feasting hall.
But this year, the university students
are back to investigate
what happened here centuries later,
in the period following the English
Civil War.
This year the team are focusing on the
17th century here,
that tumultuous, turbulent period of
British history
where we had the abolition of the
monarchy,
the decapitation of a king,
the establishment of the Commonwealth
and then the restoration of the
monarchy.
And incredibly, what the
archaeologists are telling me,
is that they can see evidence of those
political shifts
in the ground.
The team are looking for evidence of
what happened here
during Oliver Cromwell's brief
republic,
when wealthy bishops were ousted and
their estates seized.
John Castling is curator of
archaeology
at the Auckland Project.
John.
- Alice.
- Hello, Hello.
Oh, my goodness, You've been busy.
- Yeah.
- Tell me what you're looking for this
year.
- Here the big story that we're
looking at is 20 years or so
in the middle of the 1600s, when the
nation is in turmoil
and we see that turmoil reflected in
the buildings that are pulled down
and put up and pulled down again and
put up again in the site here.
Sir Arthur Haselrig is the governor of
Newcastle
and he sets about getting rid of the
bishops' evidence, that he hates.
He's a big enemy of the Church of
England.
It's not that he's not religious,
he just doesn't like the hierarchy of
the Church of England.
- Yeah.
- And he doesn't like
- And the bishops and the kings are
like that.
- Yes, exactly.
And he wants to see the end of both of
those things.
- During the Civil War, Oliver
Cromwell rose up the ranks
to lead the parliamentarian forces.
Sir Arthur Haselrig, a staunch
parliamentarian and supporter
of Cromwell, would be appointed
governor of Newcastle in 1647.
When the Bishop of Durham was banished
from Auckland Palace,
Haselrig bought it, demolished the
medieval buildings
and set about constructing himself
what he considered to be a suitably
modest home for a modern statesman,
but no-one's ever seen a physical
trace of that house until now.
- This house, from the documentary
records,
it tells us it only stood for ten,
maybe 15 years at most,
if it was ever finished.
- Yeah.
- We knew that the house was allegedly
somewhere here under the lawns,
that it had allegedly been built from
the stones
of the medieval chapel, but we hadn't
actually confirmed that
with archaeological evidence.
- So this is incredible because you've
got this archaeological,
architectural record of this
incredible period of political
instability and tumult.
- Exactly.
- So show me the archaeological
evidence, then.
- Let's go and have a look.
So we think these are the walls of
Arthur Haselrig's
17th century house.
- OK.
- And in the wall, we've got evidence
that he did, as the documents say,
take down the bishop's medieval chapel
in order to build this.
- You don't think this is part of the
Bishop's Palace?
- No, because
- You think this is 17th century? Why?
How do you tell?
- Because if you look in the walls
here, we have little bits
like this piece of tracery here.
Can you see the glazing bar there?
- Oh, my goodness.
Tracery is the carved stone framework
that supports window glass.
- This is exactly the kind of material
that we excavated
from the Bishop's Chapel.
- Yeah, yeah.
- There's another piece of window
tracery just over there.
- Isn't that incredible, that once you
start looking,
you can see that this was built out of
these medieval buildings
which have been demolished.
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
- And that's what the documentary
evidence tells us,
but without the archaeology we weren't
able to verify it.
- And a beautiful bit of masonry from
a medieval chapel, perhaps,
that has ended up as a bit of rubble
infilling this wall.
- Yeah, it's no more than the loose
stone.
- Yeah.
- They don't care that it once had
beautiful stained glass
within that glazing bar.
- What fantastic archaeology right
there.
- Couldn't ask for better and clearer
evidence.
- No, no.
As well as this evidence of the
recycling of medieval building
material, the team are also able to
make out the layout
of the building.
- Come and look at this here.
These are some of the pieces of the
building.
- Ah, there's a door here.
- Yes, exactly.
So we've got a pintle there and then
the door would hinge
out this way.
- Yeah. Lines up.
- And this, these four stones are the
nicest ones on site we've got.
This is, I think, probably an external
face of the building.
So imagine this going all the way up
to two, two and a half storeys.
- Yeah.
We're getting a really good idea of
the proportions of this building,
what it would have looked like.
- Yeah.
- Haselrig's effective reign in the
North didn't last long.
In 1660, following Cromwell's death
two years earlier,
the monarchy was restored
and Haselrig was imprisoned in the
Tower of London,
where he died early the following
year.
Auckland Palace was given back to the
church
and the new Bishop of Durham, John
Cosin,
began the cycle of demolition and
rebuilding all over again.
- Bishop Cosin has done his job very
well of eradicating that brief,
as he would see it, blip in British
history,
which this House represents.
- He's erased it.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Very deliberately so.
- Yeah.
One question that the historical
sources can't answer
is whether Haselrig's house here was
ever finished,
but John's team think they've found an
important clue.
- It is some plaster.
- OK.
- There. So that's the rough side
and if you turn it over, you can see
on this smooth side
embedded into it are the impressions
and even bits of timber.
- Oh, is that where it's had wood up
against it?
- Yes, absolutely.
- Look at that.
- So what we think this is is the
plaster
from the inside of the building
- OK.
- ..which has then had timber
panelling against it.
- That's incredible.
And this means that the building had
got to the point
where they were starting to do
interior decoration.
- Absolutely. This is evidence that
the building has windows,
it has a roof.
- Yeah.
- And it's got far enough
Who knows if it's properly occupied,
but it's certainly got far enough
in places that it's got plaster and
timber.
- You didn't know whether this
building had ever got to the point
where it was actually fully
constructed.
- Yeah.
- Now we know it had a roof on it.
- Absolutely.
- And they were actually decorating
the inside of it.
- Absolutely.
- That is a brilliant piece of
archaeological evidence, isn't it?
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
- Exactly.
- Fantastic.
This isn't the only trench that John's
team have opened
in the grounds of Auckland Palace.
They're also digging just beyond the
original hall of the medieval
palace, later converted by Bishop
Cosin into a chapel.
Here they're finding refuse from
medieval feasts,
but archaeologist Caitlin Wakefield
has a special find to show me.
- You are very welcome.
- Hello, hello.
- Have a look at our lovely, lovely
find here.
- So that is gold.
- It is gold.
- Oh, my goodness!
- Absolutely incredible.
- What is it?
- We think it's a potential strap
mount,
roughly dated to about 1350 to 1500s.
- This delicate gold flower may once
have decorated a strap or belt.
Have you photographed that?
- We have indeed.
Would you like to hold it?
- May I hold it, please?
- Of course you can.
So you get detail on the other side.
It's absolutely incredible.
- Isn't that lovely?
It's a primrose.
That's really lovely.
- So you can imagine this is just the
wealth of the bishop's household.
- Yeah.
It's such a gorgeous object.
There's something quite magical about
digging down
through this dark, black soil
and then suddenly there's a gleam of
gold.
- Definitely, definitely.
- Dig leader Chris Gerrard has more
finds to show me.
Is that a little dice?
- Yes. You can see it's black.
It's jet black.
- Is it jet?
- It's jet, yeah.
Jet has these special properties in
the later medieval period.
So it has a sort of occult natural
material
which is used for things like
divination.
So you would roll the dice to say
something about your future
or about things that may come to pass.
- I see, yeah.
A little bit of the occult bought by
the Bishop's Palace.
Ah, that is lovely!
So is this part hollow?
- Completely hollow in the centre,
moulded.
- Wow.
- And you can see the cup here, which
would have been like a coupe shape,
the sort of thing you might drink
champagne from.
And then here is a shell, which is a
scallop shell,
which is the sign of Saint James.
So it's a kind of appropriate
symbolism for a bishop's palace.
It has a religious touch to it, but
it's fairly
This is elite.
- That is beautiful.
Any ideas to the date of that?
- Yeah, it's datable to the early part
of the 17th century.
- OK.
- So this is just the period before
the beginning
of the Civil War.
- Yeah.
But Chris has saved the best find till
last.
Oh, wow!
- So that is a very nice knife
- With a bone handle?
- It's actually elephant ivory.
- It's not!
- Mm, it is.
- Oh, my goodness, look at that.
- It's gold and silver and iron.
The idea, I think, is that the blade
is made somewhere different,
even in another country.
This is probably a Dutch artefact.
It's probably made in Amsterdam.
- Yeah.
It's so rare to find a complete object
like this
- Yeah, yeah.
- ..when it's made of so many
different components.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
- I mean, it's very high status,
extremely expensive.
- It's one of the most beautiful
objects I have ever seen.
It's really, really lovely.
- It's a lovely thing.
- It's a treasure, isn't it?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- The impression here is of a very
active household,
which has lasted for the last 600
years on this site.
Yeah.
- When we get to 1650, everything
changes.
Sir Arthur Haselrig comes in, the
bishop is ousted,
departs the building and the country.
- So the bishop is expelled.
Bishop's palace is comprehensively
destroyed.
And isn't it interesting because you
can look at that destruction
as being an act of sacrilege,
but, to him, this was sacrilege to
have that much wealth on display.
- It really is regime change, isn't
it?
- Mm.
- And it happens very, very rapidly in
the middle of the 17th century.
- It's been such a brilliant dig here
this year
and we're really seeing that turmoil
of the 17th century represented here
in physical terms in the archaeology,
with Haselrig's house being literally
built out of the remains
of the Bishop's Palace that he's
knocked down,
that magnificent bishop's palace, so
opulent,
and even down to the smallest objects
in his household,
everything is just gorgeous.
Look at the ornate craftsmanship of
this tiny knife.
It's one of the most beautiful objects
I've ever seen
and it speaks to the riches of those
medieval bishops.
Scattered across the landscape of
the north are ancient sacred sites
and prehistoric hill forts.
Monumental landmarks constructed by
people living here millennia ago.
There are thousands of metal
detectorists operating in the UK
and they might be finding things like
nails or ring-pulls,
but occasionally a very ancient metal
object
or two very ancient metal objects
or, if you're really lucky, six very
ancient metal objects.
Next, we're travelling to the
south-west coast of Cumbria,
to the small town of Millom.
Millom is famous for its mining
history.
In the 19th century it was home to the
largest iron mine in the world.
But this dig is going ahead thanks to
an astonishing discovery
that predates industrial Millom by
nearly 3,000 years,
taking us back to the Bronze Age.
Just outside the town of Millom, a
community dig is taking place
led by Dan Elsworth from Greenlane
Archaeology.
- For years people have been picking
things up and finding things,
and people are going out metal
detecting and fieldwalking
and finding everything from
prehistoric stuff right through.
- 40 local volunteers have come
together in search of Millom's past.
They're digging next to a farmhouse
that was once a medieval castle.
- So this is a parliamentarian musket
ball dating from the 1640s.
And this was found this morning.
- The volunteers have unearthed a huge
variety of pottery,
including the largest collection of
medieval pottery
ever recorded in Cumbria.
- The local area has always been my
interest
and it's just brilliant to be able to
get people involved
and just have a go and join in.
- Quite deep down now, aren't we?
- Yeah.
- But this community dig, which has
harnessed so much local interest,
only got started thanks to a stunning
discovery
made by one of the volunteers here
today,
local metal detectorist Josh Carr.
- I've been metal detecting for about
five and a half,
six years now.
I went out with my brother Steve metal
detecting one Saturday.
Me and my brother's first time on that
field.
We've just got this nice signal.
It's going to be my last signal.
We were out a good couple of hours and
then I got this good signal.
I saw it in the ground and I kind of
knew what it was.
We've stumbled across something
significant here.
- This is getting bigger and bigger,
isn't it?
- I ran over to my brother and said,
"It's a Bronze Age axe head."
He was, like, "What is it?"
I said, "It's a Bronze Age axe head,
it's about 3,000 years old!"
Yes!
- Oh, my God!
There it is, baby. Oh, it's tiny.
- It's a smaller one.
- Look at that!
- So I went back to the same area and
found another two.
I've got three now.
Two in one hole. Look how deep that
hole is!
We went back the following week and
found another one.
We just kept going back every weekend
and finding
more and more and more.
I found six axe heads all altogether.
Yes!
- Oh, my God.
- This is the best thing I've ever
found.
- The axes were really, like, just
brilliant timing in terms
of really spurring people's interest
into the whole idea of doing
this kind of thing, which we've needed
some sort of excuses
to come and do, really, so
- The axes are destined for Beacon
Museum in Whitehaven,
but before they go on display, Josh
and axe expert Dot Boughton
have brought them to the Digging for
Britain tent.
I mean, Josh, that must have been such
an exciting day
when youwhen you discovered these.
- It was mind-blowing. Absolutely
mind-blowing.
It's good to see them again,
I haven't seen them for a couple of
months.
- Which one did you find first?
- This one.
- That one?
- And this one's got a socket break.
Is that what you call it?
- Yeah.
Yeah, it's got like a rip.
- Oh, yeah.
- See it's got a If you drive the
handle into the socket
with a little bit too much oomph or
you use it with too much oomph
- MAKES CRACKING SOUND
That's it, you've broken through the
bronze.
There's quite a range in sizes, aren't
there?
- Yeah, it's a bit like when you have
your own tool set at home.
You need some bigger ones for chopping
down trees and some
smaller ones for trimming off the
branches.
- When do they date to, Dot?
- It's the late Bronze Age, so tenth,
ninth century BC,
just before the Iron Age started.
- So just under 3,000 years old.
- Yeah, yeah.
In Cumbria, Lancashire, the
north-west,
you don't get that many Early Bronze
Age hoards.
They are really, really rare.
- What about the style of them? I
mean, do theydo we see
different styles in different places?
- Yeah, we do.
For whatever reason, they all pretty
much are
They're either plain or they have
these ribs.
- So, do you think these were made in
Cumbria?
- So there's no reason to think these
couldn't have been made in Cumbria.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But there were connections all over
the place,
to Yorkshire and Scotland and the Isle
of Man and Ireland,
so they could have just been brought
in. We don't know.
If Josh goes out and finds me a
mould
- Which would be good!
- That would be good!
- Yeah, it would be good.
- Really good.
- We'd be a step closer to answering
that question, I think.
- What about these? What are they?
- Well, I call them sword handles, but
the real name are
- Yeah, so they are from a sword.
They are the plates of a sword that
the handle would have come round.
So if you look at them, they have
rivet holes,
one here and one there.
- Yeah.
- And you would have attached an
organic handle to make
it a nice round thing to hold.
- Oh, OK, so it's in the middle of it,
to give it strength, presumably.
- Yes, yes, precisely. And the sword
would have been cast in one.
So you would have the hilt, the
shoulders and then the blade.
- So this leads us on to the next
question, then.
Why have these been buried in the
ground together?
- That's the $100 million question
and there are so many theories about
why they got buried in the ground,
why they got deposited and not picked
up again.
- Yeah.
- I mean, what we do know is that at
the end of the Bronze Age
they all got dumped. We have so many
more hoards at the Late Bronze Age
than we do in the Middle Bronze Age
and in the Early Bronze Age.
You mustn't forget, at the beginning
of the Iron Age,
people realised quite quickly iron is
harder,
it's maybe a bit easier to come by,
you don't need to alloy it.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were
stocks of bronze,
they got hidden and they would go
back, maybe dig out a couple of bits
and they could be recast, recycled
into something else.
- They're wonderful objects, aren't
they?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, they are.
- A day I'll never forget or, well, a
week I'll never forget.
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's an incredible connection
back to, you know,
life in Cumbria 3,000 years ago.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Fantastic.
I can't wait to see what you find
next, Josh.
- Yeah!
More axe heads, please!
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- We continue our journey through the
north,
heading east from the Lake District
and into the Yorkshire Dales.
Here we meet the source of the River
Aire,
which flows towards Leeds and beyond.
Our next dig takes place on the banks
of the Aire,
ten miles east of Leeds, just outside
the town of Castleford.
This is one of the newest bridges over
the Aire at this point
and there's an incredibly noisy weir
down there, as well.
But, in fact, the River Aire is the
whole reason
that Castleford is here.
The river forms such an important
strategic transport link
through what is now Yorkshire.
And in the first century CE, an
invading army recognise
the tactical advantage of setting up
camp right here
..in the Roman period.
A few decades after the Claudian
invasion, by 71 CE,
the Romans were really pushing north
and they built a fort
right here on the banks of the River
Aire.
It became known as Lagentium
and when the Roman army was in town
there was an opportunity to make a lot
of money.
The Roman fort provided a boost to the
local economy
and a town grew up here
and now a routine excavation ahead of
a nearby housing development
is revealing how this entrepreneurship
extended
into the surrounding countryside.
But not all business was above board.
A team from West Yorkshire
Archaeological Services suspect
they've discovered evidence of an
ancient crime.
David Williams is leading the
investigation.
David, you're obviously digging here
ahead of construction,
but what did you know about the site
before you started opening trenches?
- Yeah, so we actually knew very
little about the site
before we started. We didn't get a
chance to do any geophysics
because it was too muddy and we just
couldn't get the kit on to do
any sort of geophysical survey.
- Yeah.
- So we had to put some trenches in
and that started turning up features,
archaeological features,
with Roman pottery in them.
- What sort of things have you found?
- Lots of hobnails.
- It turns out we've got what we think
is a reasonable
sized Roman settlement.
Possible evidence of houses, burials.
But, yeah, early days,
and we're looking forward to getting
on with it.
- Two months later and the team have
uncovered an extensive Roman
field system and traces of buildings.
- We're actually standing just on the
side
of a really big enclosure.
We think probably some sort of
settlement just on the outskirts
of Roman Castleford.
So it's local people living and
farming, but also tied into
this wider Roman network of trade and
exchange.
- As the team continue to investigate
this Romano-British agricultural
landscape, they uncovered evidence of
a secret that appeared
to have been deliberately buried.
- In this corner of the site, this
small pit here is the single feature
that's caused quite a lot of
excitement.
As we've machined across the site and
we found
this pit we started excavating
- Yeah.
- ..we've found a stack of coin
moulds.
- Just here we've got a nearly
complete coin mould.
This is the stack of all the discs sat
on top of each other.
These bits here, I mean, that's
another mould right there.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
We've got another one just in there.
- Wow.
- Project officer Tim Cobbold has
identified over 100 fragments
from clay moulds used for casting
Roman coins.
One mould is completely intact and
he's attempting to remove
it in one piece.
- I'm scared to now.
It's delicate.
It's very fragile.
It's a pretty fantastic find,
so I'm going to have to be very
careful.
So, the moment of truth.
In it goes.
- This is an agricultural farming
landscape.
What are they doing minting coins
here?
- How they ended up in this small pit
here we don't know.
In the Roman Empire there were
sanctioned mints
and we're not near one at all.
So it's, yeah, a bit of a mystery,
really.
- A totally unexpected discovery.
- Really unexpected.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- To try to unravel the mystery of why
these coin moulds were buried here,
coin expert Murray Andrews has joined
me, along with Tim,
the archaeologist who found them.
I'm amazed that you did find them in
that little tiny pit.
- Obviously, you find something like
that,
you get straight on the phone to the
office, send pictures.
He came straight back and was like,
wow, these are quite unusual.
- Yeah.
- Quite special. These are a Roman
coin moulds.
- Can we have a look, Murray?
- Let's get some out.
- We've got hundreds of fragments of
complete ones, incomplete ones.
And this is all from a small pit
that's no more than 10, 15cm deep.
- Is this a standard way of making
coins, then?
- So this is a standard way of making
counterfeit coins.
- Ah!
- It's a way of being able to copy
coin.
And it's often used as a way of making
what look
like more valuable coins out of less
valuable materials.
Counterfeiting is a crime in the Roman
Empire.
To counterfeit silver coins is an act
of treason
and it's punishable by crucifixion,
so you don't want to be caught with
this material.
- Official Roman coins would have been
struck, not moulded,
so this is definite evidence of
forgery, but why would anyone
have taken such a huge risk at this
time?
Have you managed to identify any of
them,
and are they recognisable Roman coins?
- Yeah, absolutely. You can already
see some faces popping out.
You can just about see a woman's head
on a crescent.
That's Salonina. That's the wife of
the Emperor Gallienus,
who is around in the 260s.
We have another coin of Victorinus.
He's a breakaway rebel emperor from
the Gallic Empire
in the late 260s, very early 270s.
- Yeah. So this is the crisis of the
third century?
- Absolutely.
- This is when things are going a bit
crazy
- Absolutely.
- ..in the Western Roman Empire.
- Yeah, so this is a time in which
there's
hyperinflation, essentially. Coins are
getting increasingly debased
because they're trying to pay off
soldiers with a small amount of
silver.
So, prices are rising, people have to
resort to using fakes and copies
in their place instead.
- Yeah.
- I have a lovely vision of
potentially somebody being here
and they can see some official coming
down on horseback
on the opposite hillside and just
thinking, "Oh, no!"
- "Bury them!"
- "That guy's coming, quick, quick.
Bury them!"
- Get rid of the evidence.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And they thought they'd completely
got rid of it and that was that
and then you come along.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
You've uncovered a crime from 1,700
years ago.
But just how good would these
counterfeit coins have been?
Archaeologist Stuart Prior is meeting
conservator
and experimental archaeologist Dana
Goodburn-Brown
to try his hand at a bit of coin
forgery.
- This is our little production line
for making fake Roman coins.
- Wow. OK, so how's it work?
- We're going to use the real deal,
real Roman coins.
- First off, we press Dana's Roman
coins into discs of clay to create
mirror images of the head and tail
sides.
Line up the coin onto the mould. OK.
- Press that in,
so you've got an impression of that
coin in each side.
- OK.
Then that one goes upside down on
there
and push down.
We repeat the process.
The impressions are then stacked into
towers
of five individual moulds.
Next, we cut into the moulds to create
an opening
for the molten metal to be poured in.
- So I take it down till it kind of,
you can feel the resistance of the
coin in there.
- OK.
We then prise the clay discs open and
remove the original coins.
This is the scary bit.
- Yeah.
- Terrified of damaging the coins.
There you go, straight away.
That definitely worked.
And I can see a really clear
impression on there of the coin.
- And our stack is a little wonky
compared to the ancient ones,
They're more crisp.
- They would have been more skilled at
it than me for my first attempt.
But there's my first attempt.
My stack and the two that Dana made
are grouped together
into one outer mould.
This will allow molten metal to be
poured in and fill the gaps,
taking the shape of the coins.
With the moulds made, it's time to
head outside to Dana's furnace.
Dana, how does this differ from a
Roman set-up?
- So in the Roman, they would have had
a clay furnace,
probably lower down to the ground.
- We're using a cheap coloured silver
pewter.
Once it's melted, Dana pours it into
the moulds
and then they're allowed to cool.
- I'm going to just dip it in to
soften the clay a little bit.
- Now it's time to break open the
moulds and see if we've managed
to counterfeit some coins.
- Oh, that one didn't work.
- No, that one didn't work.
It is experimental archaeology,
though.
- It is.
- It is an experiment to see whether
or not it's achievable.
Luckily, our next attempt is a little
more fruitful.
Oh, I can see silver.
Oh, there's one.
Hang on. Hey, look!
- Yay!
- Look, look, look, look, look, look,
look, look at that!
We faked a Roman coin.
Look at that. That's amazing.
We've got one or two good fakes,
but it does show just how hard it is,
you know, it's not like everyone can
do it.
- I'm not going to make my living as a
Roman coin forger at the moment.
- No!
Faking Roman coins - it can be done.
Dana's been kind enough to show me how
it could have been done.
I had a modicum of success this
morning.
Now, I'm not going to be a Roman coin
faker. But the process
that Dana has worked out, from the
archaeological site
at Castleford and actually all across
the Roman world,
people are faking Roman coins.
- Hadrian's Wall once marked the
northern frontier
of the Roman Empire in Britain.
It was built in the second century to
separate Britannia
from the people of the North, who
resisted Roman rule.
People who the Romans referred to as
the Picts or painted ones.
There are some periods of British
history which seem dark.
We have very little in the way of
written documentation.
And that's when archaeological clues
become really important
for understanding those past societies
and cultures.
And at our next dig, archaeologists
discovered an incredibly rare
artefact, giving us a tantalising
glimpse into the past.
We're travelling to Scotland to the
parish of Kilmadock,
just north of Stirling.
Here lies the ruins of an abandoned
church
and a walled kirkyard or churchyard.
A local voluntary group called the
Rooks,
or Rescuers of Old Kilmadock look
after the site.
Back in 2019, during some routine
maintenance,
the volunteers made a mind-blowing
discovery.
A carved stone dating back to the
early medieval period.
During the first millennium CE, the
region we now know as Scotland
was divided into several different
Pictish kingdoms.
While there are some historical
sources for the later centuries,
many of our best clues about Pictish
culture emerge from archaeology.
After it was discovered and without
sufficient funds
to investigate it further,
this unique stone was reburied to
preserve it in situ.
After five years of fundraising,
Stirling County archaeologist
Murray Cook is finally leading an
excavation to recover the stone
for further analysis.
- Finding a new Pictish symbol stone
is the sort of thing
that happens once in your career, if
you're lucky,
and I honestly still can't believe
that we're about to lift it.
- To date, over 300 Pictish stones
have been discovered in Scotland.
These stones, covered in distinctive
carvings, offer precious clues
about Pictish culture and religious
beliefs.
- This is a slab with an inscribed
cross on it,
dating to the seventh century, the
eighth century perhaps.
It should be free-standing.
It has fallen down at some point in
the past.
It's then been reused as a monument to
cover a grave.
- But what makes this stone so
intriguing is that it is the most
south-westerly ever discovered.
And it lies in what were contested
borderlands.
- This is Pictish art in a place
where Pictish art has never been found
before.
Is it Pictish conquerors?
Is it something stolen from Picts?
Is it a diplomatic gift?
- Murray hopes that deciphering the
symbols carved into the stone
could help answer these questions.
- The knotwork here forms the cross.
So we have one arm here.
We have one arm here, one arm running
that way,
coming back round.
And presumably the base of the cross
went down that way.
Within this work we have animal heads,
possible birds, possible beasts.
There's another animal down here, and
we would have expected
another animal on that side.
This is all likely to be painted, so
we would probably have red
and a gold, a blue, multicoloured, an
assault on the senses.
- But it's not just iconography that's
carved into this stone.
Unlike most Pictish stones, this also
has an inscription
cut along its side using characters
from an early medieval alphabet,
called Ogham, that originated in
Ireland.
- On this side here, there is the
Ogham inscription.
So this is a form of Irish language
associated with Christianity.
So two different forms of artistic
expression.
So, Pictish material here,
Irish material here.
And it's very clear now there are
missing stones.
There's this bit here which is
missing.
It's not there.
It's not fallen off.
Um, it's somewhere else.
- Archaeologist Kelly Kilpatrick is
searching for the missing pieces
of the stone.
- What we're looking for in this
trench is fragments
that have potentially come from the
Pictish cross slab.
That could be part of something.
It looks a bit like antlers or
something.
The whole point of this excavation is
finding the pieces
of this Pictish puzzle.
They tell us about what the Picts who
made that cross slab
were trying to convey.
It tells us more about their culture.
It tells us more about their art
history.
It's not like, you know, you don't
find these things every day.
- Murray has called in a specialist
team of conservators,
led by Graciela Ainsworth, to lift
this slab of ancient cross.
But on first inspection, Graciela has
some concerns about the cracks.
- I would say that with all these
roots,
that it could open up even more.
- My stomach is churning butterflies.
- So this could open up.
I was just thinking. So that could
open up.
- I'm just grateful that I'm not
lifting it.
- We're excavating underneath.
So then the actual stone could start
moving,
seeing as we're excavating its
support.
So then by putting wood, that'll just
aid the support again
of the earth that we've just taken
out.
- It's literally about to happen.
It's amazing. I can't wait.
- Basically this is, aeroplane wings
are made of this.
So it's very, very lightweight.
But it's also very strong, just to try
and keep the stone
as much as possible from moving too
much as we lift it.
- I mean, this is serious engineering
equipment.
This hopefully ensures that it doesn't
come apart in the lifting.
Go around to the front so Graciela can
see you.
- Despite the weather, a large crowd
from the local community
have turned out to see this ancient
carving winched out of the ground.
- I can see a light through now.
So there's the round of applause for
everyone
as the stone is lifted and out in one
piece.
- It went smoothly.
I can breathe now.
I am breathing and I'm looking around.
I was in a bubble for a moment with
the stone, but the fractures
haven't opened up at all.
I honestly expected them to.
So this piece of stone is just
brilliant.
Can't be more happy
that we've done this for the
community, for sure.
- The stone will now undergo analysis,
and a first step involves a high
resolution 3D scan.
Murray and Kelly have come to the tent
to show me the results.
- So this is a 3D scan by our
colleagues in Glasgow University.
- Oh, wow!
- That's the face.
You can see the cross within that.
- It's so ornate, isn't it, that
beautiful knotwork?
- Well, this here is a Pictish animal.
So, a boar, a wolf.
- The fragments that we have found
suggest that it's probably a scene
of mythological animals.
- And are these familiar from other
Pictish stones?
- Yes, but the use of Pictish symbols
survives from the pre-Christian
period into the Christian period.
Sixth century, seventh century.
That's when Christianity is really
becoming the dominant
religion in Pictland, and the artwork
adapts
to incorporate Christian iconography.
- So do you think there's something
syncretic going on here?
In other words, different beliefs
being brought together?
- Yeah.
- You've got clear Christian
symbolism.
You've got what looks like it might be
pre-Christian symbolism
being brought together with it.
And then you've actually got an
inscription.
- Yes, you just see it.
- Along the side here and we can see
the Ogham inscription there,
a series of lines.
- Something written in Irish writing?
- It might be a Pictish personal name,
but they're using letters
that originated in an Irish script to
write it.
- Just how rare an object is this?
- It's extremely rare.
You don't find Pictish cross slabs
every day,
and one that has an inscription on it,
that is extremely rare.
- Well, it's unique in any number of
ways.
Unique in its location.
Unique in its design.
So this is the most south westerly
Pictish stone in Scotland.
So an incredible kind of location,
hybrid identities, power moving
backwards
and forwards across frontiers.
So basically they're
- Part of an expanding Pictish
kingdom?
- Yeah, it's about the Picts going,
"Here is some of our art, our
political control."
- Yeah, we're seeing these incredible
connections, aren't we,
between, you know, we've got Pictish
symbolism,
we've got a Christian cross with a
beautiful interlaced knotwork,
we've got Irish writing,
and it's all coming together in this
one cemetery.
- It's amazing.
- Yeah, I know, it was just a real
honour of a lifetime
to just be there when that came out of
the ground.
- # As I search for the solace
# The hills might give me
# Heavy the tread of the dead on the
way
# The path in the rain
# In the sun won't gleam in the ground
# Is made with rain and decay. #
Evidence of wealth and power in
medieval Britain is still there
to see in our landscape today.
But archaeology helps us to see the
wider population too,
to glimpse the lives of ordinary
people.
We can now use a huge range of
scientific techniques to unlock
even more evidence from archaeological
remains
and one that I'm particularly excited
about is ancient DNA.
We're now in the business of reading
entire ancient genomes
and the biggest ancient DNA project
that has ever been carried out
in Britain is just starting to
generate results.
Next, we're headed to Cheshire, to the
hamlet of Poulton
five miles south of Chester.
This site, in the north-west of
England,
originally discovered over 60 years
ago,
contains the remains of a 13th century
chapel and a cemetery.
We first visited the site back in
- You can see here that we have an
exposed cranium.
- Archaeologist Kevin Cootes has been
running fieldwork here
for students for over a decade.
- Poulton, especially the graveyard,
but all over the site,
is quite abundant in all remains that
we get here.
When you get human remains, we get a
lot of it.
When you get animal bones, we get
loads of it,
which is really rare for the region.
- So far, nearly 1,000 incredibly
well-preserved skeletons
dating to between the 13th and 16th
centuries
have been excavated from this rural
cemetery,
making it one of the largest excavated
burial sites in Britain
dating from the medieval period.
After decades of excavation here at
Poulton,
archaeologists are now able to deploy
cutting edge
ancient DNA techniques to reveal
secrets
that have been buried here for
centuries.
Today, geneticist Tom Booth and Pontus
Skoglund
from the Francis Crick Institute
are collecting samples from the
skeletons.
- We are running an ancient DNA
project to study health, disease
and history, together with
archaeologists from
all across the country at places like
Poulton.
- We're in the process of sampling
dozens of skeletons from this site,
so we've already sampled quite a few.
We're continuing to sample more to
look at the genetics
of the people who were buried here at
Poulton.
There's also a chance that, as well as
picking up the human
DNA from the skeletons, we can also
pick up DNA
from any diseases that were infecting
them when they died.
- We want to learn about what people
at the site might have died from,
how they might have lived.
- The human remains are cleaned in
preparation for DNA sampling.
To have the best chance of
successfully extracting ancient DNA,
Tom is searching for one of the
smallest bones in the human body.
- So what I've got here is a bit of
temporal bone.
This is the bone that goes on the side
of your head here
and surrounds your ear.
You have three little ear bones in
each ear
called the auditory ossicles.
Those ear bones are particularly rich
sources of human DNA.
It's really difficult because once
your soft tissue decomposes,
they're just floating around inside
your ear canal.
There we are.
That is an incus,
so that's one of the ear bones.
It looks very fragile, but actually
it's very strong
and it's that hardness and that
density that protects the DNA inside
from microorganisms, from chemicals
that might degrade the DNA,
so there's a really good chance that
we're going to get good human DNA
from here, a better chance than having
sampled
any other part of the body.
- Once Tom and Pontus have collected
the samples from Poulton,
they take them back to the Crick
Institute in London,
where pioneering techniques are being
used
to extract and sequence ancient DNA.
- DNA in itself is very fragile.
When it's in the human body, it's
sturdy.
It has that structure that makes it
survive well,
but after death it will immediately
start to degrade.
- Frankie Tait is one of the
geneticists working
on sequencing the DNA from the human
remains at Poulton.
- So we have this ossicle from
Poulton.
We just want to give them a clean to
try and remove any contamination
from the soil or from modern DNA, as
well.
The process of extracting the DNA and
preparing it to be sequenced
is not specific to human DNA,
so any and all DNA that is residing
within that sample
is going to be extracted.
It's really interesting because you
can see the things
like pathogen DNA.
- Pathogens are microorganisms that
cause disease.
If there's pathogen DNA present in
bones, this suggests the presence
of a disease and could even be a clue
as to the cause of death.
Although the bones in and around the
ear are a good source of human DNA,
pathogen DNA is more likely to be
found in teeth.
- We'll be able to look for any
pathogens, if they were present,
and that is because there are blood
vessels that flow
through your teeth, so any systemic
pathogens would be found there.
What I'm going to do is drill through
the first layer,
which is called the cementum.
Then we're going to get in and
actually extract some dentine
from the internal material.
This is because it should, hopefully,
be a cleaner source.
It shouldn't have been exposed to any
contamination from the soil
or any external factors.
- Once the sample has been cleaned and
weighed,
an enzyme solution is added to break
open the cells
and release the strands of DNA.
The fragments of DNA are then
replicated
and attached to marker strands of DNA
so they can be identified.
The samples are then ready to be
decoded with the help of this
state-of-the-art DNA sequencing
machine.
If pathogen DNA is present and
readable,
this could even suggest why these
people died.
- It's just really exciting because it
can help us answer these questions
that we never really thought we would
be able to answer.
- And there's a mystery from Poulton
that the archaeologists
have been wondering about ever since
They discovered a double burial
containing two young children.
As so often, there was no visible sign
in the bones
of what may have been the cause of
death.
This double grave was placed on top of
an earlier burial containing
the remains of an adult male.
Samples from all three skeletons were
also taken by the team
at the Francis Crick Institute for
ancient DNA analysis.
I've invited Kevin and Pontus to the
tent
because it seems that, with this new
ancient DNA technology,
they're finally able to solve the
mystery at Poulton.
So tell me about these graves, then.
You've got multiple individuals in one
grave.
- Yes, we have a double burial. Two
children.
You can see that the children have
been clearly placed
in the same grave together, but this
double burial here
is actually cutting an earlier burial
of an adult.
- Yeah.
So you must have had questions right
from the beginning, then.
Once you've got double burials,
multiple burials in a graveyard,
presumably you're thinking, "Why have
you got people who've died
"at exactly the same time?"
- Yes. I want to know how they died
and are they related.
- So, Kevin, this is one of the
individuals,
one of those two children.
What can you tell me about this
skeleton?
- These children died between 1420 to
This skeleton has very little to tell
us
apart from the wear on the teeth, so
we can't tell what they died of.
- So this is very much, you know, an
immature skeleton, a young child.
I can't tell if they were male or
female because, you know,
the features that I would look for
don't emerge until puberty,
but you can, Pontus.
- Yeah, with genetics, we can usually
tell the biological sex
of 99% or something of the individuals
we study.
This individual was a male child - an
X and a Y chromosome
both found in the DNA.
- And what about the other child that
was buried right next to this one?
- The same for that one, also a male,
and they were relatives.
They were first degree relatives.
They were brothers buried together.
- That's incredible. I mean, to be
able to say,
"Yes, actually, these are two young
boys and two brothers",
it's quite extraordinary.
- Even more so to me, the fact that we
can see what probably killed them.
From one of them we have detected DNA
from the bacterium that causes
the plague - Yersinia pestis.
- Right, yeah.
- And as Kevin's chronology has
pointed out,
they died in the decades following the
Black Death.
- We know that that happened with the
Black Death,
that it obviously surges in the 14th
century,
but then it just keeps going, doesn't
it?
- It was a pandemic.
We have these numbers that it might
have killed
half the population of Europe at the
time.
- Imagine living through that,
where you've got half the population
being killed.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- It was fascinating also, we look at
the DNA results in our team,
but then to be able to put it together
with the information
from the site, the fact that they were
buried together
just makes it even more
heart-wrenching.
- Somebody lost two children in a day,
which must have been heartbreaking.
- Yeah.
- It gives you the human picture.
- And what about this individual,
then?
So this was the truncated grave that
had been cut
into by later burials.
This looks like an older individual.
- Yes, this is a male 40 to 44 years
old.
This gentleman died between AD 1290
and 1390.
He had wear and tear on his body from
a very physical life,
but we had no idea why he died, so we
couldn't tell without genetics.
- So, Pontus, how did this individual
die?
- Yeah, we have a pretty good idea
because in the DNA
we found the DNA of a bacterium, a
relative of Lyme disease today,
but, in fact, it's more lethal
bacterium, lethal infection
if you get it today than Lyme disease.
It's called Borrelia recurrentis and
it's spread by body lice.
It's not around in places like Britain
any more.
Today it's only found in places with
very poor sanitary conditions.
- So we're presuming that those kind
of conditions were pertaining
here in the Middle Ages in this
particular community.
- Yeah, it tells you something about
the conditions at the time.
- I started out my career looking at
human bones,
being particularly fascinated by
evidence of disease
and looking for observable evidence of
disease in skeletons,
but I can't see any evidence of
infectious diseases here.
It was invisible until ancient DNA
comes along.
- It just takes the interpretation to
the next level.
However good an archaeologist and
forensic anthropologists are,
we could never uncover this depth of
information.
- Yeah, we've been able to answer some
of the questions Kevin had.
- The level of this technology now and
the way that we can
have these genetic diagnoses and
actually answer questions
that archaeologists have been asking
for decades, if not centuries,
and suddenly we have the answers.
- Yes, exactly.
- It is completely mind-blowing.
Next time on Digging for Britain
In Wales, archaeologists looking for a
long lost monastery
make a breakthrough.
- It's only a suggestion at the
moment, but it's
- Quite tantalising.
- It's very tantalising.
- West of Oxford, a Roman villa throws
up a big surprise
Oh, my goodness.
..and beautiful small finds.
I've never seen one like that.
And on Anglesey, detectorists make an
amazing Iron Age discovery
on an airfield.
- Wow!
- Look at that.
- Unbelievably brilliant.
- # Come and search For we would
search
# And looking for a scarred land
# And dig for those whose stories lie
# With buried pasts 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. #