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00:02Right across Britain, archaeologists are unearthing the relics of ancient lives.
00:08But so much of modern archaeology is what happens after excavation.
00:15Today, forensic analysis and cutting-edge science, as well as brand new finds,
00:21are overturning what we once thought about entire eras of our ancient history.
00:27I'm Julian Richards, and over the years, I've been lucky enough to have taken part in some of our most
00:33important digs.
00:34You've not? A lead coffin?
00:40Now, I'm going back to some of my favourites, to discover the very latest stories of our most ancient ancestors.
01:03The Anglo-Saxons, invading warriors who came to Britain in the wake of the Roman Empire,
01:12bringing in a whole new era in our history.
01:18As an archaeologist, this era, the early part of the Dark Ages, really excites me.
01:24Because unlike the time of the Romans that came before, and the later Anglo-Saxon period,
01:28we know so little about Britain in the 5th century AD.
01:32Just who were these early Anglo-Saxon people?
01:35And more importantly, what happened when they started to arrive from their lands over the seas in the east,
01:41and landed here, on our shores?
01:47More than a decade ago, I took part in two remarkable excavations
01:51that have opened windows into this mysterious world.
01:56One was the grave of a powerful man, buried alongside his horse and weapons.
02:04The incredibly well-preserved remains of an early Anglo-Saxon warrior.
02:10Now, over a decade later, brand new scientific analysis is revealing exactly who he was,
02:17when he lived, and where he came from.
02:20It was such a stunning discovery, and so exciting for us, once in a lifetime, really.
02:28The other dig was very different.
02:30A whole cemetery of men and women.
02:34Burials with evidence for the lives and beliefs of the people who settled the east of England
02:40from the 5th century AD.
02:44And today, even wider studies of populations like these,
02:48together with DNA science, are revealing the scale of the Anglo-Saxon invasions
02:54for the very first time.
02:57The Frisians were not just similar to the English,
03:00but in genetic or statistical terms, we couldn't tell them apart.
03:05These two digs show just how much in archaeology actually happens after the excavations are over.
03:12So now, I'm returning to see how the story of the Anglo-Saxon invasions has moved on,
03:17and how the very latest studies have shed new light on the Dark Ages.
03:21The mysterious era from which our first English kingdoms,
03:25and the very language that we speak today would start to emerge.
03:35I've come to East Anglia in search of one particular group of 5th century invaders.
03:43We refer to these people who arrived after the Romans left in 410 AD as Anglo-Saxons.
03:49But in fact, this wasn't one homogenous group of people,
03:53but rather lots of different groups of people from tribes across the whole of the mainland of Northwest Europe,
03:58and in particular, from parts of Germany.
04:01And these different groups came to different parts of Britain.
04:08Saxon people came to the Thames estuary and to the south,
04:13while the Angles settled in the eastern part of Britain.
04:18And it's from the Angles that we get the name East Anglia,
04:22and Angleland, or England.
04:28And it was here, in East Anglia, 16 years ago,
04:32that a team of Suffolk archaeologists made an amazing discovery.
04:38I remember when I first got the call to invite me down to the excavation.
04:41It sounded simply too good to be true.
04:44One of those rare discoveries that every archaeologist dreams of.
04:54Let me take you back 16 years, to 1997.
04:59A military air base, RAF Lakenheath.
05:04Here, archaeologists had uncovered the grave of a man,
05:07laid to rest with all the possessions he'd need for the afterlife.
05:12The man's on this side, and he's buried in a coffin,
05:16with his spear up at the top corner, his shield,
05:20which is the big lump of metal on his chest,
05:22that's his shield box.
05:23And it would have been a wooden shield, a circular wooden shield,
05:26and the wood's all rotted away.
05:28Down this side, you can just see, is his sword,
05:30an iron sword blade in there.
05:32That's a warrior, isn't it?
05:34That is.
05:34Somebody who's got a sword, a spear, a shield, and a horse.
05:39Yeah, that's right. That's it, yeah.
05:43The burial was dated to the early Anglo-Saxon period,
05:47around the middle of the 6th century AD.
05:51Nothing quite like it had ever been found in Britain.
05:56It's incredibly exciting.
05:58You couldn't hope for anything better than this, could you?
05:59No, this is absolutely brilliant.
06:01It's the best thing we could have had.
06:05What made the find even more exciting
06:07was the incredible preservation of the bones,
06:11including our warrior's 1,500-year-old skull.
06:24From his remains, experts in facial reconstruction
06:28were able to reveal how he might have appeared in life.
06:4516 years after the dig,
06:47the warrior's remains are held at the Suffolk Archaeological Unit
06:51in Bury St Edmunds.
06:58I never thought that I'd actually see him again,
07:01but being here now makes me realise
07:03that perhaps if I'd met this person in real life,
07:06I might have been just a little bit intimidated
07:08by such a powerful figure.
07:11This is the leg bone of a very tall man,
07:15and these marks here show that he had very, very strong muscles.
07:19So maybe this was the reason that this man was chosen to be a warrior,
07:24because of his strength, because of his build.
07:27Or, alternatively, he might have been born into a privileged class
07:30where access to more and better food
07:32could have resulted in him growing taller and stronger.
07:38Our warrior stood around 5 foot 10 inches.
07:42Tall for the time.
07:44And his bones suggested he was still young when he died.
07:48around 30 years old.
07:52When he was discovered, we thought he'd lived around 550 AD.
08:00But now, new scientific research has revealed he was alive much earlier.
08:07Over the last few years,
08:09new and very high-precision radiocarbon testing
08:12has been carried out on our man's bones,
08:14and has given us a far more accurate date for him.
08:17It's also shown that he's far more interesting and important,
08:20because he's much earlier than we expected.
08:23He was born in around 470 AD.
08:27Now, that does make him special,
08:29because few burials date from these first few decades of the Dark Ages,
08:33because, after all, it's only a couple of generations after the end of the Roman period.
08:37So, if the Anglo-Saxons were warrior invaders,
08:41then he could have been right there at the time.
08:47Back in 1997,
08:50archaeologists also found all the trappings of a seasoned fighter.
08:57His spear and his shield.
09:00And, close by his side, even in death, his massive sword.
09:08A team of specialists from the British Museum was called in,
09:11to help lift these rare and fragile finds.
09:22And, as the items were cleaned, their full splendour was revealed.
09:28From the silver-plated rivets that held the shield together,
09:31to its centrepiece scratched and scarred with use.
09:36Most impressive of all, the huge iron sword.
09:41Although badly preserved,
09:43X-rays revealed an incredible level of craftsmanship.
09:47This patterned blade was the creation of a highly skilled swordsmith,
09:53fabricated from nearly 80 individual strips of metal.
10:01Hector Cole, a traditional iron worker,
10:04took on the challenge of recreating our warrior's sword.
10:10God, it's hard work, isn't it?
10:11Oh, yes.
10:12This is where a good striker's worth his weight in gold.
10:15And you can see the way that the metal's moving,
10:18that it's quite plastic and it's a lovely feeling under the hammer, isn't it?
10:22I didn't realise it would move quite so much.
10:24This is wrought iron. You can't get anything better.
10:33Strips of iron were forged together and twisted into bars to give our sword strength.
10:37And also a unique pattern.
10:49The main body of the sword was iron, but the Anglo-Saxons used steel to provide a sharp cutting edge.
10:59This was an object that could only have been carried by a wealthy and powerful warrior leader.
11:06The work that's gone into making this sword is, to me, one of the most amazing processes that I've ever
11:10seen.
11:11There are no less than 79 different strips of metal woven into this one blade.
11:16And I can hardly wait to see what it looks like when it's all cleaned up and polished.
11:25God, I didn't think it would come up that quickly.
11:27Mmm.
11:29It's gorgeous, isn't it? All sort of sinuous and swirling.
11:33It's a lovely pattern, that.
11:34You're pleased with it, aren't you?
11:35I'm very pleased with it, isn't it? It's a beautiful pattern, this, yes.
11:46Oh, that's a...
11:47It's a hefty blade.
11:49It's a weighty blade, isn't it?
11:50If you'd built that down on someone, the momentum behind it would do.
11:55But holding it, just holding it out like that.
11:58Yes, yes.
11:59You'd have to have a strong sword on, wouldn't you?
12:01Yes.
12:07A sword in a burial is a status symbol.
12:10It's a sign that you're somebody powerful and important.
12:13But this man had something else, because next to him, in the grave, was this.
12:19An entire horse.
12:21And seeing it laid out here, one thing it reminds me of is just how enormous that grave had to
12:26be
12:26to accommodate not only a full-grown man with all his weapons, but this entire animal laid out beside him.
12:33Now, you'll see that there's something missing here.
12:37That's because the head is so fragile that it can't come out of its box here.
12:42This, though, is what really gave a clue about how important this person was, how important the horse was.
12:51Because on these fragile bones, you can see little green stains here.
12:58These, Mark, were the bronze fittings of an elaborate bridle once sat.
13:06Back in 1997, we found the finely crafted decorations still clinging to the horse's skull.
13:16This enabled experts to piece together for the first time the precise appearance of an Anglo-Saxon bridle.
13:24So where do those wonderful things go?
13:26Well, this one actually fits on a separate strap.
13:32Loose. It dangles. It's just a decorative dangler.
13:35And it's got this extraordinary face on it.
13:40Then we have this, again, very, very beautiful gilt bronze with three panels.
13:48And at the center, you can see the double cross.
13:50They're sort of placed obliquely on the fitting.
13:53And then to either side, there are gilded fields with a little animal on it.
13:58And this actually simply sits in the middle, just here.
14:03On the horse's brow, we have another gilt bronze fitting.
14:11With the big dent in it, isn't it?
14:12This is the bent one.
14:13And if you actually look at it very, very closely, you can actually see what looks like a glancing blow
14:17on the gilding.
14:21The dent was evidence of a severe blow to the head.
14:25Or horse burials of this sort of a period.
14:27An injury that was even more apparent on the skull.
14:31Now we can get a good look at this massive, depressed fracture here.
14:34So is that actually what killed the horse, then?
14:38I doubt that would have been immediately lethal, even though it's done quite a lot of damage.
14:42It's actually a little too far forward.
14:44If you really wanted to kill a horse with a blunt instrument injury to the front of the head,
14:48you'd want to aim for the brain.
14:50It's probably just caused a little brain damage, but not a lot.
14:53I think the probability has to be, given that that would only really have stunned it,
14:58that something else was done then to finish it off.
15:00And the most obvious thing is opening up an artery and allowing loss of blood actually to kill the animal.
15:06Nasty but effective.
15:12From the moment our Lake and Heath warrior was discovered back in 1997, we knew he was an important find.
15:20But our new analysis has made his story even more significant.
15:25He was somebody who was physically powerful, but also wielded social power as well.
15:31He was an elite leader.
15:33But he died aged 30, in the prime of his life.
15:37Now, new radiocarbon dating has shown that he lived much earlier than we expected, in the 5th century AD.
15:44And that raises a very interesting question.
15:48Because if he's that early, and if he was born overseas, somewhere over there to the east,
15:54then he might have been one of the very first invaders.
15:57Part of the initial wave of warrior opportunists who came and seized power and land in this part of the
16:03country
16:03in the wake of the retreating Roman Empire.
16:09Now, we've commissioned scientists to carry out the very first isotope analysis of the warrior's remains.
16:16To discover where he came from.
16:22It's a technique that simply wasn't established when he was excavated 16 years ago.
16:28Different areas of the world have different chemical signals in their oxygen in the water.
16:34And when your teeth are being made by your body, it records that chemical signal of the water in the
16:42place where you're growing up.
16:44By comparing the results to data from various regions, it's possible to discover if the warrior grew up locally in
16:52Eastern Britain or overseas.
16:55So, our results strongly suggest that he is local in birth.
16:59He could be a second generation, so his parents could be born in the homelands and have moved over.
17:05Going on the results we've got, I would put money on the fact that he's not from the Germanic homelands,
17:12that he was born in the east of England.
17:16So, it turns out that our warrior, early as he is, wasn't an invader from across the sea.
17:25So, what's going on?
17:29Well, the analysis can't tell us everything about our warrior's genetic inheritance.
17:33For example, if he was the locally born son of an invader from the east, then his isotopes would still
17:40mark him out as being British.
17:42Even though to all the locals he'd be very much an Anglo-Saxon.
17:45But in some ways, this makes things even more interesting, because what it suggests is that by 470 AD, these
17:54people are well established here in Eastern England.
17:56They've been here for at least a generation, right off the back of the Roman withdrawal.
18:05But we're not yet done with the warrior's story.
18:09There are more clues about the life of this elite Anglo-Saxon man, and the society that he lived in.
18:17Because our warrior wasn't found alone.
18:20What we were unearthing 16 years ago was an entire cemetery, with burials spreading off in all directions from his
18:27grave, 160 in total.
18:29And what these excavations have started to do is to paint a wider picture of the community that he lived
18:36in.
18:40Back in 1997, surrounding the burial of our warrior, we found lots of smaller graves containing children.
18:52We've got a cluster of child graves all around the horse burial.
18:58We've got an infant in here.
19:00These bones were badly decayed, and only fragments remained in the soil.
19:06We've got the teeth up here, with a bit of skull there, and an arm bone running down here, and
19:11the ribs coming across.
19:13You can just see in here. And then we've got a bit of the upper leg.
19:16What I found extraordinary was that some of these children's graves contained full-sized weapons.
19:22But isn't that a spear?
19:24It is a spear, and that's a knife as well.
19:27This is the third child grave that we've had with weapons.
19:31I think this is the smallest, and it's a bit bizarre, really. I don't know what it means.
19:36That child can't be more than, what, three, four, maybe?
19:40Yeah.
19:41It seems so incongruous to have a little grave and these great big grown-up weapons in it.
19:49Now, 16 years on, I'm returning to the excavation site at Lakenheath.
19:55I'm intrigued to know what the latest research can tell us about those unusual child buries,
20:01and the other graves that surrounded our warrior.
20:10The cemetery was discovered near this sports pitch on the military base.
20:17Archaeologist Joe Carruth has been analysing the finds for more than a decade.
20:23If you have a look at this, now this is the site plan, and you can see this is the
20:27horse and rider burial here.
20:29With the ditch around it.
20:30With the ditch around it, that's right.
20:31And I've coloured this for you, and the men are blue, and the women are red, and the children are
20:37green.
20:38Right.
20:38Well, do you remember, when we were on site, we were looking at this one,
20:42and this was a child with a spear, a big spear.
20:44Oh, a really tiny child.
20:45That's right, and we sort of, we guessed at how old it was.
20:48Well, in fact, we've had, all the bone analysis has now been done,
20:52and in fact, this is a baby, this is someone six to nine months old.
20:55What? That young?
20:56That young.
20:58It is interesting that we've got five children with spears across this site.
21:04But of those three of them are between 11 and 12 years old, which is really the sort of age
21:09where we might be looking at those children sort of stepping into adulthood.
21:13So it's not really that surprising that they might start to have a weapon set at that point, perhaps training
21:19to be, you know, warriors of the future.
21:22When they were unearthed, we wondered if there was any link between the warrior and these children.
21:29And now, recent forensic analysis has revealed an unusual common feature.
21:36If you have a look at his skull, which I've got here, and he has got a particular genetic anomaly
21:48on his skull.
21:49And if you have a look, if you have a look there, can you see where the sutures come together?
21:55There's an extra little bit of bone.
21:57Right, and what, that little bit there?
21:59That little bit there, yeah.
22:01He's got this.
22:02But we can also see it on this child, and this child, and this woman here.
22:08And interestingly, we've also got it on this male here, this male here, this male here, and this female here.
22:17So that does at least suggest the possibility that there are some family groupings in here, and that some of
22:23the people buried around him may well be relatives.
22:30And there's something else about him that I think you'll be interested to see.
22:33Now, if you have a look here, can you see there's no male burials within quite a considerable area around
22:39him.
22:39It may mean that because he's a particularly powerful man, he doesn't need protection himself.
22:47Possibly even that having other warriors near him would be seen as a threat, effectively approaching on his territory, if
22:53you like.
22:5616 years ago, we unearthed 160 graves surrounding our warrior.
23:02But now, thanks to further excavation work by Joe's team, we know that this burial ground was even bigger.
23:09Three cemeteries and more than 400 graves.
23:14The burials span two centuries, and our new date for the warrior suggests that he's probably the earliest.
23:23Given all of this new evidence, where do you think this puts the position of our warrior in the bigger
23:28picture?
23:29We are now looking seriously at the possibility that this is a founding burial for this cemetery, possibly for all
23:36three cemeteries.
23:37And that this man, he's the first, and these are his people following on from him.
23:48Today, we know so much more about the lake in Heath Warrior than we could ever have imagined 16 years
23:55ago.
23:57We know that he lived much earlier than we thought, that he wasn't actually an invader himself, but was born
24:03here.
24:04And yet, he does seem to be the founding father for a whole dynasty of descendants.
24:09And we're not yet finished with the Lake and Heath discoveries, either, because analysis of what was found with the
24:15burials is telling us more and more about this extended family, this emerging society.
24:33The 428 graves from Lake and Heath have yielded up treasures, thousands of them.
24:40And now, after nearly a decade of conservation and study, they're opening up the world of the warrior's people.
24:50Men and women living in Suffolk between the 5th and the 7th centuries.
24:58Beads are the single most common class of artefacts. We've got nearly a thousand different glass beads.
25:05A thousand? Yes, yeah, you know, the same number of amber beads as well.
25:08There's a real difference. I mean, that's, you know, black and yellow that's incredibly striking, isn't it?
25:13Yes. And then you've got blue there. That's right.
25:15And that one, which is a type that we actually find all over Western Europe.
25:20And they've been commented on as being like sort of Wedgwood Forcelain, really.
25:24Yes, what, the blue and white.
25:25Exactly, you know, the appearance that they give.
25:31Some of the women's brooches reveal a particularly dazzling display of craftsmanship and wealth.
25:38God, that's incredible, isn't it? And the workmanship on that. And the gilding.
25:43I mean, that would have looked absolutely astonishing when it was new, wouldn't it?
25:46Yes, absolutely. You can see the gilding. You can even see that very, very fine punch marking that's along there.
25:53And what we've also got on this are these areas here in the corners and on the rounded footplate lobes,
26:01which were covered with silver sheet.
26:03So you'd get the interplay between the gold and the silver.
26:06Interestingly, the process of gilding itself requires a supply of mercury so that you can do it.
26:11So, you know, there are resources going into the production of these that are more than immediately meets the eye.
26:22Now, what intrigues me about this is some of those little bits of decoration there look like some of the
26:29bits of decoration on the bridle.
26:31Yes.
26:32From our warrior's horse.
26:41There is actually a connection between this particular brooch and what came out on the horse's bridle in that this
26:50is the woman's grave that is closest to where the man and the horse were buried.
26:56And in fact, in terms of date, we would say they're pretty much contemporary.
27:01It's perfectly possible that this could be the wife of the man who was buried with his horse.
27:07That is amazing if there really is that connection.
27:11But it's humbler jewellery that reveals some really striking differences between groups of burials from different areas of the cemeteries.
27:24Here we find that there's a very much higher proportion of women there than in the other places who are
27:35fastening their dresses by wearing a pair of these very simple but very effective brooches.
27:43It's a simple ring with an iron pin on it.
27:45Now, conversely, if we come to the largest burial ground that we've got, the women there are fastening their dresses
27:56by wearing a pair of brooches like this.
28:00John, what's this telling us about Anglo-Saxon society?
28:03Certainly what it says to me is that this was a people for whom the expression of their identity in
28:12appearance in what they had, not only around them but on show, really did matter for them.
28:18It was making a statement.
28:20They almost seemed to pull two ways at once.
28:23There's so much about this that talks to me about a common Anglo-Saxon, well, to be honest, I would
28:29say in this case Anglian identity.
28:31But even within that, without challenging your Anglian identity or your incipient English identity, you can also have an identity
28:42of this particular local group as opposed to that particular local group.
28:47Why do you think that this micro-level sort of small identity is so important to these people?
28:53This was a society in which, rather like a military group, you depend on everybody doing their job and fulfilling
29:02their roles.
29:03Now, these were roles that, yes, were very stereotyped.
29:06They were imposed by tradition.
29:08They didn't leave space for a great deal of individuality.
29:14The individuality, if you like, we're seeing between these small groups, not within those small groups.
29:251,500 years ago, a new wealthy elite with a common Anglo-Saxon culture began to emerge in Southern and
29:32Eastern Britain.
29:36But this was more complex than a mass invasion, bringing fully formed lifestyles and beliefs.
29:44The early Anglo-Saxons, just like today's second or third generation British immigrants, were probably riding multiple cultural identities.
29:53They brought from their homelands the traditions of their ancestors, but they would have been trying to work out not
29:58only who they were, but who they wanted to be.
30:01And our Lake and Heath warrior, as one of these early generations, would have been instrumental in trying to forge
30:07an identity for those who followed.
30:11But we still have to address that big question.
30:15Just how many Anglo-Saxons did come over from mainland Europe in the first place?
30:24Scientists and archaeologists are just beginning to tackle this thawly question.
30:28Was it invasion, or was it migration?
30:31Massed hordes, or perhaps just a few intrepid settlers?
30:36Now, individual finds or graves actually aren't that much use, because all they do is paint a snapshot of one
30:43person.
30:44What you need is to cast the net a lot wider, and that's what archaeologists and scientists have been doing
30:49more recently.
30:49Together, they've been looking at large Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, and also carrying out cutting-edge studies involving modern populations and
30:58DNA.
31:02But it still all begins with archaeology. You just need a lot more of it.
31:06Large cemeteries, ideally of people from the same community, who were buried together at about the same time in that
31:12very early period.
31:19And that's where another early Anglo-Saxon site that I helped dig more than a decade ago would help to
31:25play a part.
31:29Because two years after our warrior excavation, I was called back to East Anglia.
31:37The site was at a small village called Orl Walton, just 40 miles west of Lakenheath.
31:45It was 1999, and early Anglo-Saxon remains had been discovered on a building site.
31:58As soon as I arrived, I was put to work.
32:02But my first skeleton wasn't exactly in perfect condition.
32:07Well, the skull is just where it should be.
32:10But the unfortunate thing is that somebody has dug a trench right the way across the top of the grave,
32:15and taken away about half the skull.
32:18Fortunately, not everything in the grave had been destroyed.
32:21You have to dig something like this so carefully,
32:24because look at the size of these beads that I've just found.
32:27They're absolutely tiny.
32:29There's a mixture of glass, bronze, and possibly even some amber.
32:36As I continued to dig, more treasures appeared,
32:40including a bronze brooch and even silver rings.
32:44Well, I've just finished excavating this grave,
32:46and it contains an amazing selection of finds.
32:48There's some beads, what looks like part of a decorative belt,
32:52and down by the knees, an extraordinary collection of iron, bronze,
32:55and what looks like ivory.
33:00Nearby, some of the other diggers were making even more exciting finds.
33:07You've got a nice selection of stuff in here.
33:10Yeah, there's those two brooches there.
33:12Yeah.
33:14There's that copper ring down there, and the ivory ring.
33:18That's just like the one that I had from the grave over there,
33:21only that one's in better condition.
33:24Mind you, this is all in better condition, including the skull.
33:28It's quite crushed, but it looks like it's all there.
33:31The cheekbones, and there's the nose bones,
33:32and the mandibles going down there.
33:39After 1,500 years in the dark earth,
33:42the skull was incredibly fragile.
33:57It's all there, but skulls aren't really supposed to be that shape.
34:06So, I think this is going to be a very interesting reconstruction job for somebody.
34:15At Manchester University, a forensic team got to work on the skull.
34:20Mmm. Lots of bits.
34:23Lots of bits.
34:29Half a mandible.
34:34A bit of the orbit on that side.
34:38And that side.
34:39At least we've got both arches.
34:41That's good, yeah.
34:44We'd found the remains of a woman of about 30 years old.
34:47Yeah, looks like we've lost the top.
34:49Just needs to...
34:50And although badly crushed,
34:52her skull still offered the possibility of reconstructing her features.
34:59She's got quite a...
35:01Quite a powerful face, actually.
35:03Quite masculine proportions.
35:05You know, everything about it is quite large.
35:08There is some slight asymmetry in the face, which...
35:11You look at it in that, you can see that one eye is slightly higher than the other.
35:15But as the face is actually building that, you don't notice that quite as much.
35:20On the skull, there was actually a frontal suture that was actually slightly open.
35:24And the nasal spine was also quite splayed.
35:29And which is indicative of a biffid nose.
35:32Which is like a nose which has a cleft or a line down the middle of it.
35:37And again, this will be echoed in the chin.
35:39She's going to have a cleft in her chin as well.
35:42So, you know, altogether she's going to have quite a memorable face, I think.
35:47At last, we came face to face with Ol Walton Woman.
35:53An early Anglo-Saxon who lived around 500 AD.
36:05Meanwhile, her jewellery was carefully cleaned.
36:09Revealing exquisite design and craftsmanship.
36:15These rings and brooches could be linked to mainland Europe.
36:19And beyond.
36:23When we first found these rings, my initial reaction was, you know, is it ivory?
36:28Can you tell me what it is?
36:30Right.
36:30What we've got here is actually a sliver.
36:32And if I put this under the microscope, you can see the corrugations running across it here.
36:39And the striations running off those corrugations.
36:42If we turn to this photograph over here, you can see exactly the same structures.
36:46And this is elephant ivory.
36:48So this stuff's come all the way from Africa, which is quite a distance to Peterborough, isn't it?
36:54It certainly is.
36:55Though I think it would probably have come perhaps through a series of traders.
36:59It doesn't necessarily come directly.
37:01And it would probably have come as a piece of raw material, as a lump of material,
37:04to be worked up in the areas where it was going to,
37:08into the characteristic items that were required in the sort of luxury end of the market.
37:13All Walton women's amber beads were also analysed to find out where they came from.
37:19Amber can be found all over the world.
37:22The richest source of amber in Europe is from the Baltic region,
37:27from northern Europe, particularly western Jutland,
37:29and along the coast of modern-day Lithuania.
37:32So what did you do to find out whether this was Baltic amber?
37:36Right. Well, I took a very small piece of the already fragmented bead
37:41and slotted into the sample chamber of the infrared spectrometer.
37:44And from the spectrum, we should be able to generate a fingerprint
37:48that we can use to identify the amber to a precise geographical source.
37:55And this region of the infrared spectrum is known as the Baltic shoulder
37:59and distinguishes Baltic amber from all of the other amber sources.
38:08The Dark Ages often get a rather bad press.
38:13The idea that, once the Romans left, that much of Britain simply went to rack and ruin.
38:20But the stunning jewellery from All Walton tells a very different story,
38:24of a wealthy society in touch with the latest in design
38:28and with far-flung trading connections.
38:34I'm coming back to All Walton for the first time in 14 years.
38:39Because ever since the excavation, this site has intrigued me.
38:48It's not just that one woman that makes this place so fascinating,
38:52but the whole population of early Anglo-Saxons who were buried here
38:57between the 5th and the 6th centuries.
39:03Since the dig, though, this place has changed a lot.
39:07Back then, it was a building site, and now it's a fully-fledged business park.
39:14That must be over there.
39:17So that hedge line was there.
39:23That's right.
39:24I had the excavation plan, but was struggling to get my bearings.
39:28About 20... 20 metres.
39:31One, two, three...
39:36Actually, it's quite a challenge to find a single burial
39:39in a business park car park,
39:42but I think, with the aid of this plan,
39:44I think I'm in the right spot.
39:46Because I remember there was a hedge over there,
39:48and that's where I excavated the first woman's burial,
39:51that was actually quite badly damaged.
39:53But then there was a whole cluster around here,
39:55and just about here,
39:58this is where we found that quite well-preserved woman's burial,
40:02with all of those wonderful objects.
40:05All together, we found 34 skeletons,
40:08mostly in just this one area,
40:11and another 30 graves across the whole site,
40:14an entire community of early Anglo-Saxons.
40:20But while some were burials,
40:22within this same cemetery,
40:23we also found evidence of a very different form of funeral practice.
40:29Over here, we had something very different,
40:31but actually quite surprising.
40:33Because in that corner of the site,
40:35it was mostly burials.
40:37Here, it was almost entirely cremations.
40:40And not just small pottery urns containing burnt human bones,
40:44but the remains of a pyre site where the cremation took place.
40:48Now, this complicates things a bit,
40:50because either society is undergoing a radical shift in the way it views death and the afterlife,
40:56or at the same time, you've got two separate groups of people,
41:01each choosing to bury their dead in a very different way.
41:10With most of the skeletons removed, attention turned to a new area of the site,
41:15where cremation urns had been found.
41:18Buried very closely together, and all dated to the 5th and early 6th century AD.
41:28We all had our own urn to dig.
41:32And I hoped that the contents of mine would offer clues about the identity of these people.
41:37But first, I had to get it out of the ground.
41:43Our first urn's turning out to be absolutely wonderful.
41:46It's much bigger than I thought.
41:47It seems to be complete, and there's lovely decoration running all the way down the side of it.
41:52The thing that bothers me, though, is that there's some rather ominous cracks just started to appear,
41:57and I do wonder whether the whole thing's going to come out in one piece.
42:02Before trying to lift it, we gave it a little bit of extra support.
42:09Of course, what I'm not sure about is how much more there is underneath there,
42:14because I can't get down any deeper.
42:16So, what do we do? Just try and see if we can rock it and loosen it.
42:22Oh dear, hang on. I've got to...
42:26Hang on.
42:27Have you?
42:27Yeah.
42:29What, do you think? The base has come off?
42:30If we rock it that way, then at least we should be able to see whether it's actually gone or
42:35not.
42:37Ah, there's the very base of it.
42:41The very base of it.
42:44I think that's the best we can hope for.
42:46So what do we do? We'll just lift this up and put this straight onto the...
42:49Yes.
42:52Luckily, the urn's contents were so tightly packed
42:55that nothing fell out through the gaping hole in its base.
43:00Now, that's the reason that we couldn't get the pot out of the ground.
43:02This little lip at the bottom was firmly stuck in the soil,
43:05but at least it's out now and that's the whole pot.
43:10For us, though, it wasn't the urn that was as important...
43:16...as the burnt remains that it contained.
43:20The common misconception with cremated bone is that what you get are tiny, tiny fragments.
43:25You don't. If you look here, you can actually see there are recognisable pieces of bone.
43:29And what I do is I go through and I pick out the bits that are going to tell me
43:32something about the age of the individual,
43:34something about the sex of the individual, and, of course, how many individuals there are.
43:37For instance, this is a fairly distinctive piece.
43:41This is what your ear looks like on the inside.
43:44And because it's of a very distinctive appearance, even if you get a very small piece of it, a very
43:49tiny piece,
43:50you can still tell what you've got and usually which side it's from.
43:53And there are no other pieces here that suggest as any other petrous temporals, which is what this is called.
43:58So you've just got one person in the pot? Yes.
44:01How can you tell it's a male, though, from all these tiny fragments?
44:04In this instance, what I've gone on is basically the size and robusticity, how heavily built the skeleton was.
44:12For instance, if you were to look at this bone here, this is actually the back part of the femur,
44:18where you have quite a big muscle attachment coming in, and that is quite a strong attachment down the back
44:23of that femur.
44:25Apart from this one person, did you find anything else in the urn?
44:27There were also some grave goods. As you can see, there's a set of shears, part of a razor blade,
44:35and an unidentified piece of metal work.
44:39It's the sort of thing which commonly gets referred to as a toilet set.
44:49It's all too easy to think of Anglo-Saxon men as alpha males, aggressive warriors buried with swords.
44:57But at Old Walton, we get a very different picture of Saxon masculinity.
45:02Because here, the men are choosing to be buried with grooming sets, and with these, combs, which were found in
45:10almost every single one of the urns that were discovered.
45:14Cremation burials of men from North Germany also contain grooming sets and combs.
45:20So there does seem to be a direct cultural connection between Old Walton and the Anglo-Saxon homelands.
45:29In their own way, the burnt remains were every bit as telling as our powerful warrior's sword.
45:40Our two digs have revealed very different pictures of the early Anglo-Saxons, the people who lived in East Anglia
45:46during this mysterious time that we call the Dark Ages.
45:50The first, a warrior, buried alongside his horse and weapons.
45:56Someone who seems to have been the founder of an entire community.
46:02The other, a cemetery where the women were buried with fabulous and exotic jewelry.
46:07But where the cremated men took combs and grooming sets to the next world.
46:15Together, they paint a fascinating picture of a new wealthy elite, emerging shortly after the Romans had left.
46:22A people who shared an Anglo-Saxon culture, but who identified very strongly with their own local groups.
46:30At Lakenheath, surrounding our warrior, different groups of Anglo-Saxons marked themselves out from one another through dress and appearance.
46:41At Old Walton, two separate groups suggested even deeper differences, with seemingly contrasting customs and beliefs.
46:49With these groups jostling for recognition and power in this new land, we see modern England in the making.
46:55And just two centuries later, these fierce local identities will give rise to our first English kingdoms.
47:02But there's another question in all of this.
47:04What about the locals? What about the people who were living here when the Anglo-Saxons arrived?
47:09How do they fit into this picture?
47:12It's a question that goes right to the heart of the debate.
47:17Just what was the size and impact of the Anglo-Saxon invasion?
47:30The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons is always seen as a watershed moment.
47:35A mass invasion that left England with a new people and a new way of life and culture.
47:43Sites like Lakenheath and Old Walton seem to confirm the presence of a dominant new people.
47:50It's as if the ancient Britons had simply disappeared from the land.
47:55In early Anglo-Saxon England, what we don't get is very much evidence for what you could call Celtic culture
48:02in the south-east of the country.
48:04And that's very odd, because this is a culture that persists strongly throughout the whole of the Roman period,
48:09and yet just seems to disappear completely as soon as the Saxons arrive.
48:16And yet population estimates suggest that there were around 2 million Britons living here after the Romans left.
48:25So, just what happened to them all?
48:29Once, the view was of local people either being killed or driven to the fringes of Britain by bands of
48:35marauding warriors.
48:37But the big problem with this theory is the total lack of conflict.
48:40For all the big swords in burials, there aren't cut marks on bones that show battles have taken place,
48:47and there aren't any layers of ash that show where farmsteads have been burnt down.
48:51In fact, the big problem is the almost complete lack of any evidence for widespread destruction.
48:58But now, scientists have found new evidence that could help reveal what happened to the local Britons.
49:06Like the analysis of our warrior, but applied to hundreds of burials,
49:11new isotope studies can today reveal who was moving where, when and in what numbers.
49:19Dr Sam Lucey has been looking for patterns to build up a picture of population changes in 5th century Britain.
49:29One site we've got is all the way up here in East Yorkshire, the site at West Heslerton.
49:36The overwhelming majority of the population appeared to be local to Britain, certainly, even if not local to East Yorkshire.
49:44There were a few individuals, three or four, who looked as if they could have come from cold oxygen climates,
49:51like continental north-west Europe or Scandinavia.
49:54The next site that we've got some results from is at Berensfield, which is down here in the Upper Thames
50:03Valley.
50:04There, virtually everybody looked as if they were local to that area.
50:08The final site that we've got good results from is right down here on the south coast at Eastbourne.
50:14There appeared to be two population groups within the cemetery at Eastbourne, one of which did look as if it
50:21was from outside of that local area,
50:24potentially again from slightly colder oxygen climates.
50:27So, if you're looking at these patterns as a whole, you've got local, local, potential immigrants, and then potentially a
50:39few immigrants.
50:40So, I think, if anything, this has to make people rethink the extent and significance of potential migration that we've
50:50got in this period.
50:52Sam Lucy's findings suggest that only tens of thousands of Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain in the fifth century,
50:59compared to a local population of around two million.
51:06New science is taking us a step closer to understanding the Anglo-Saxon invasion.
51:11A lower number of people, but people who nevertheless had a massive cultural impact.
51:18The isotope work of the last decade is absolutely fascinating,
51:22because what it's shown us is that we do have locals living within and alongside these new Anglo-Saxon communities,
51:29but they're just very difficult to single out, because they've adopted all of the new Germanic dress and fashions.
51:35But in some ways, what's even more interesting is that we're now starting to get a handle on the size
51:41of the Anglo-Saxon invasion.
51:43Because if you deliberately target this early period, the fifth and sixth centuries,
51:48a time when we think there are lots of Anglo-Saxons coming into this country,
51:52then we should find lots of evidence for immigrants.
51:54And we don't.
51:56So what that means is that this migration is much smaller than we've always thought.
52:06But there's startling new evidence that suggests that as well as bringing cultural change,
52:12these new people also had a massive genetic impact.
52:16And this time, the evidence doesn't come from ancient bones, but from living, breathing people.
52:23From all of us.
52:26Since the digs, more than a decade ago, a new scientific tool has been growing in influence.
52:33And that's DNA.
52:38You can't look at an individual and pinpoint an Anglo-Saxon gene.
52:42But by studying a whole population, it is possible to detect statistical similarities or differences.
52:50Hello, Mark.
52:51How do you?
52:52Nice to see you.
52:53One recent study compared the Y chromosome of men from England, Wales,
52:58and an area of the Netherlands once home to the Anglo-Saxons, called Friesland.
53:07So we chose Friesland because Friesians have their own language, and it's the closest living language, apart from English itself,
53:15to Old English.
53:16And we compared all those Y chromosomes, and what we found was the English towns were very similar to each
53:23other.
53:23And the Welsh towns were really quite different.
53:26But the Friesians were not just similar to the English, but in genetic or statistical terms, we couldn't tell them
53:32apart.
53:33Really?
53:34Studying modern DNA, the English samples look totally different to the neighbouring Welsh,
53:40but almost identical to the Friesland samples, where the Anglo-Saxons came from.
53:47So what's going on?
53:50If it is the Anglo-Saxon migration, how big would that migration have to be...
53:55To have this effect?
53:57To have this effect, right.
53:58And what's the answer?
53:59The answer, remarkably, is somewhere between 50 and 100% replacement.
54:05So, we're looking at a contribution of these Anglo-Saxon migrants of between 50 and 100% to the ancestry
54:15of Englishmen.
54:17That's a lot more than I would have expected.
54:20Right.
54:21An awful lot more.
54:22Right.
54:23The results seem to contradict isotope studies, which suggest a comparatively small number of Anglo-Saxon invaders.
54:30But there could be an explanation, and it's all down to power and wealth.
54:35If a smaller number of Anglo-Saxon migrants came over, and if they have a higher status, that probably means
54:41they're wealthier.
54:42And if they're wealthier, that means their children are more likely to survive to adulthood.
54:47So, if they kept apart, and they didn't interbreed too much, then we can show by computer simulations that in
54:55about 10 generations, even a small migration can lead to over 50% contribution to the ancestry.
55:01So, what you're saying, then, is that a smaller number of, to use a word, an elite, that came over,
55:09if they were really successful, then their influence could gradually expand.
55:15Including their genetic interest.
55:16So, we don't necessarily need to have this massive migration.
55:21We could have a smaller migration of more successful people, basically.
55:26Correct.
55:27Right, correct.
55:29Surprisingly, DNA studies of modern populations are opening up windows into the ancient past.
55:37And, together with new isotope studies of 5th and 6th century populations, as well as a wealth of traditional archaeology,
55:45we're finally building a clearer picture of the early Anglo-Saxons.
55:59I visited two amazing excavations, at Lakenheath and Old Walton, that, to me, really opened up the mysterious world of
56:06the first Anglo-Saxons.
56:07And now, new science and archaeology have brought us much closer to an understanding about what was going on in
56:14the 5th century, at this time that we call the Dark Ages.
56:18It shed new light on who these people were, and just how many of them might have come across the
56:23seas to settle these new lands of the 5th century.
56:25And one thing is also very clear. Our Lakenheath warrior, whoever he was, left a lasting legacy.
56:40We now know that this emerging Anglo-Saxon England was about far more than just marauding invaders.
56:46But our warrior still fits into this increasingly complicated picture, and in an even more fascinating way.
56:53He may actually have been a fighter, somebody who wielded that mighty sword in anger.
56:59But we now know that his influence spread far beyond his prowess in battle.
57:04His real influence lay in his genes.
57:11The warrior, together with the people we found at Old Walton, reveal a new society emerging from the ashes of
57:18the Roman Empire,
57:20ruled over by a wealthy elite of continental migrants.
57:26They were people in a new land, who followed the customs of their homelands,
57:30but who also, over a few generations, forged a new, local and very distinctive culture.
57:40And despite their small numbers, even their genetic line has come down to us today.
57:50Each new discovery, each scientific advance, has taken us one step closer to understanding who these people were.
57:57These elusive early Anglo-Saxons that laid the foundation for our modern English nation.
58:12Still to come here on BBC Four, our brand new series of great artists in their own words continues with
58:18the radical changes in late 20th century art.
58:21That's here in just a couple of moments.
58:23And then double comedy from 10 with back-to-back parks and recreation.
58:27Stay with us.
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