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00:06This land we call home has a rich and varied history stretching back thousands of years.
00:15But hidden below the surface are some amazing treasures just waiting to be found.
00:22Oh my gosh, that's insane! That's really cool!
00:25So each year across the country, archaeologists dig underground and dive underwater.
00:35Searching for fresh discoveries.
00:38The most amazing thing in British archaeology.
00:41Uncovering traces of ancient lives.
00:44Somebody's played in joy, I'm sure.
00:46And finding fascinating objects.
00:49Such exquisite detail.
00:53This year I'll be meeting the archaeologists and looking at some of their most incredible finds.
00:59I mean that is stunning!
01:02While Dr Tori Herridge is travelling the length of the country to some spectacular locations.
01:09Where I'll be dropping in on some of this year's most fascinating digs.
01:15Oh my gosh, can you see that?
01:17It's just brilliant.
01:19Oh my goodness.
01:21Every dig provides a new piece in the puzzle of Britain's forgotten past.
01:27This is the epic and unfolding story of our islands.
01:34Welcome to Digging for Britain.
01:47In this episode of Digging for Britain.
01:50In Slimbridge, Tori discovers an opulent Roman bathhouse.
01:56I'm sitting in a marble bath.
01:58I've just walked across a heated mosaic floor.
02:01A place of luxury and power.
02:03Its rich finds revealing a world of privilege on the edge of empire.
02:08It does not look like it's 2,000 odd years old.
02:12No.
02:12In Cambridgeshire, archaeologists make an unexpected discovery.
02:16A large pit full of human remains.
02:20And I get a closer look at one extraordinary skeleton.
02:26I wonder who he was.
02:30And in Wales, we journey back over 300 million years.
02:35This stuff was already fossilised by the time dinosaurs were walking around.
02:39To uncover a lost prehistoric world that helped spark the industrial revolution.
02:45It's never ever ever going to get old.
03:14To uncover a substantial scope of AI- Awareness
03:17Across the country, waterways form natural boundaries, as well as providing an important
03:23means of transport.
03:27The Severn Estuary has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world, and this extreme
03:32variation has shaped the landscape here for millennia.
03:40Our first dig takes us to the floodplain of the River Severn, to Slimbridge, 15 miles
03:48south of Gloucester.
03:53Today the wetlands around Slimbridge feel somewhat remote and isolated.
03:58But excavations here over the last six years are shaping our understanding of what this
04:04landscape looked like and how it was used 2,000 years ago, in the Roman period.
04:16A team from Archaeoscan are investigating a site which seems to have been used from the
04:21Iron Age into the Roman period, and it covers a vast area.
04:28Tori Herridge has gone to meet archaeologist Tony Roberts to find out what he's discovered
04:34and why he thinks it's so important.
04:40Tony, this is an excellent spot to survey the land.
04:44It's flat country all around, but some hills in the distance.
04:47And then the reason why we're here, this incredibly expansive site.
04:51Absolutely.
04:52What we're looking at here is a quarter of the large Roman compound.
04:56It measures, we think, 80 metres by 40 metres, and we think there are buildings around that
05:00as well.
05:01So it's a really large landscape that's emerging.
05:03You say it's a landscape story.
05:04I see this and go, that's actually just a pretty impressive Roman site, but it's the
05:08landscape that is key here.
05:09Absolutely.
05:10We believe that what we're uncovering here is a prehistoric landscape that's focused
05:14on the River Severn, trading on the Severn, perhaps living off the Severn.
05:17And then sometime in that first century, just after the Romans have arrived, they then occupied
05:22that same landscape.
05:23For what reason?
05:24We can speculate as we go on.
05:302,000 years ago, the Severn came further inland to the edge of the site, giving direct access
05:39to one of Britain's great waterways, a route south to the sea and north into the heart of
05:46Britain.
05:49This would have been a prime location for establishing new Roman routes into Britain.
05:57Tony and his team may only be excavating a small portion of the site, but they have already
06:02uncovered an impressively grand bathhouse, hinting at the wealth and status of those who
06:12lived here.
06:12In the underfloor area, around the hot pool, we would have had the stoke room where the
06:18hot air would have been generated by the open fire.
06:20That hot air would have been pumped through to this area here.
06:23All this would have been in the heated space and the mosaics would have sat on the floor
06:27this high.
06:28So you would have walked across this lovely mosaic floor into an absolutely glorious warm
06:33bath.
06:34Can I step down into it?
06:34Yeah.
06:35This is probably the foundations of one of the steps into the bath.
06:38Step down like a Roman would have done.
06:39So you can come down and actually sit down and luxuriate in this lovely warm water.
06:45As we look around, we would have seen more paintings or mosaics around us.
06:49This would have been a very luxurious place and we probably would have been sat in a marble
06:53bath as well.
06:54Imagine like a 2,000 years ago and I'm sitting in a marble bath.
06:58I've just walked across a heated mosaic floor.
07:02Absolutely.
07:02Did you say columns?
07:03Yeah.
07:03There would have been some columns down this side.
07:05We think that some of the bases over here would have held some columns of very fancifully
07:09decorated.
07:10And the early period of Roman occupation in Britain, this kind of opulence was an unusual
07:14thing.
07:18The grandeur of the bathhouse implies that the people who inhabited this landscape almost 2,000
07:24years ago were rich, powerful and elite.
07:29And the finds are providing a fascinating window into their world.
07:39I don't want to startle you, Jake, but I've heard you've found something.
07:43Yeah, so we're clearing down this gravel layer and we think we've found a twisted wire bracelet.
07:48So you're just digging away at the edges?
07:49Yeah, just sort of flitting each bit of dirt away and seeing what crumbles away.
07:54There you go.
07:58That's it.
07:59Oh my gosh.
08:00Wow.
08:01Oh look.
08:02Look at that.
08:04That's lovely.
08:06Look at that.
08:08Exquisite little piece of 2,000 years old jewellery dropped in a Roman bathhouse on the side of the seven.
08:18Each item offers new clues about who occupied this incredible site.
08:24Overseeing the finds, Lee James is going to show me some of the most remarkable discoveries from the bathhouse.
08:32Lee, I'm being so drawn to this bling over here.
08:34This is just a small fraction of the artefacts recovered from this area.
08:38This is just so sweet.
08:41That's a gorgeous little bird, right?
08:42Yeah, it's a bird, probably a bird of prey, maybe like a falcon.
08:46You can see the swept back wings.
08:47Yes.
08:48It looks like the feet were sort of onto a hinge.
08:50Oh I see.
08:50So maybe a lift up lid.
08:52Oh yes.
08:54So, so beautifully crafted.
08:56I can see the little beak and the eye.
08:59Yeah.
09:00Look at that leaf.
09:02Possibly from a statue.
09:03Oh right.
09:05That sort of laurel crown or something like that.
09:07Yeah, that's correct, yeah.
09:07So again, you've got that picture of this bathhouse.
09:09So the people are coming in richly decorated with some serious Roman bling and you've got
09:14these very ornate vessels, statues.
09:18We're talking social elite here and we've got some really standout items.
09:23This one here is a writing stylus.
09:27Oh look.
09:28It does not look like it's 2,000 odd years old.
09:31No.
09:31It's just brilliant.
09:33Bronze, but it's quality.
09:35Obviously writing onto a wax tablet, pointy end is the writing and then the flat end is
09:40your eraser to rub the wax back out again.
09:42It's got a really fine point at the end of it, hasn't it?
09:45But a real standout find in the collection so far is this beautiful Greek scalpel.
09:51Oh look.
09:51It's completely bronze, so the cutting edge is still bronze.
09:55It's not steel and it's not iron, which does make it very unusual.
10:01The bathhouse finds are just one piece of the puzzle.
10:05Coins are helping to narrow down the timeline of the site.
10:11This one is a Domitian coin and we can actually date that one exactly to 86 AD.
10:18A Trajan denarius, silver, 103.
10:22Everyone's heard of this one as Hadrian.
10:24He's around from 117 AD.
10:27And a beautiful silver denarii of Empress Faustina.
10:31That's around 171.
10:33OK, so you've got everything from like 80 AD to 111 AD.
10:37So a hundred odd years or so of time here.
10:39Exactly right.
10:41You get quite a few grand Roman villas in the UK.
10:44They're still special, all of them, but is there anything unique about this place?
10:48This is an early site.
10:50We're not up in the Cotswolds and we've got some grand sort of 4th century villa going on.
10:55Yeah, do you think these people were Romans that came in?
10:57Yeah.
10:58Yeah, is that your feeling?
10:58With this sort of high level status material, they're coming into the site for sure.
11:04While the Cotswolds are famous for their numerous remains of opulent Roman villas, most reached their heyday in the 4th
11:13century.
11:15The finds here point to something unusual for the area, evidence of high status activity at least a century earlier.
11:27This early compound hints at a new foothold of power and influence right on the edge of Rome's world.
11:54Archaeology helps reveal how the landscape of Britain has changed over time.
12:00As well as revealing details of everyday life and patterns of peace and conflict.
12:20Warfare has changed a lot over the centuries as people find new and interesting ways of committing acts of violence.
12:28We can track that looking at the evolution of weaponry, but something that's been far less studied is the animals
12:35that were involved.
12:36Professor Naomi Sykes has been looking at a new study investigating the evolution of the war horse.
12:49As a zoo archaeologist, I'm fascinated by this new research.
12:53It sheds light on a pivotal moment in Britain's history, the year 1066.
13:04At the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon world was conquered by a new kind of army.
13:11The Normans brought with them a revolutionary way of fighting.
13:16Stitched into the fabric of our history, the Bayer Tapestry shows Norman war horses charging into battle.
13:24But what made them so effective in the battle itself?
13:33I've come to the University of Exeter to examine the evidence with the project lead, Professor Oliver Crichton.
13:40Oli, you know everything about medieval horses. What were they used for?
13:45Well, horses are used for a great variety of different purposes in Anglo-Saxon England.
13:49They're used for transport, they're used for pulling carts, they're used to an extent in agriculture.
13:53In the Norman period, famously, horses are used increasingly as a weapon of war.
13:58Anglo-Saxon warriors may have used horses to ride to battle, but they didn't habitually fight on horseback,
14:05which is a key feature of Norman warfare.
14:07And it's depicted in the Bayer Tapestry?
14:09Absolutely, this iconic depiction of the Bayer Tapestry.
14:121066, the most famous days in English history, we see Normans fighting on horseback,
14:18and we see the Anglo-Saxons fighting dismounted.
14:21So this must have been incredibly overwhelming for the Anglo-Saxon army.
14:26Yes, it's in many ways symbolised by the image down here,
14:30the defeated Anglo-Saxon warrior beneath the hooves of a marauding Norman war horse.
14:34It is just like the perfect symbol of what the war horses bring to this battle.
14:41Being on horseback clearly gave the Norman army a huge advantage.
14:47But what made horses such effective weapons of war?
14:54Bioarchaeologist Dr. Carly Armin has been analysing thousands of bones to find out.
15:01Carly, we've got some horse bones here. Where are they from?
15:03Well, this is a modern horse from our reference collection.
15:06But these bones here are from an archaeological site that spans the conquest period.
15:10And so just by taking measurements of this bone, we can actually estimate how tall the horse stood.
15:15And we found from our study of thousands of horse bones that actually, on average,
15:19the medieval horse was much smaller than the horses we would expect to see today.
15:24In fact, most of them are between 12 to 13 hands high, which is about just below your shoulder.
15:28Yeah.
15:29So we're not really talking so much about war horses, but more kind of like war ponies?
15:34Absolutely. And if you think about using a horse in battle, you need to be able to get on your
15:38horse.
15:38And not just at the start of the battle where somebody is maybe around to help you.
15:41But in the heat of the battle, if you were to fall off, you would certainly want to be able
15:45to get back on.
15:45And so having a horse that sort of smaller size wouldn't necessarily have been a disadvantage.
15:50So what made those war horses then particularly special if size isn't everything?
15:54Yeah, so one of the things that we're really interested in is how the horse moved.
15:58So we've been focusing on the joint of the rear leg, which is called the hock joint.
16:03The horse's hock, though higher up the leg, works much like a human ankle.
16:09A powerful hinge that drives each stride forward and absorbs the shock of every landing.
16:16We were thinking about how can we understand the way that this joint might respond to horses that are doing
16:22different types of activities.
16:23And if there's enough pressure of a horse that might be used in a battlefield in terms of its repetitive
16:27activity,
16:28that differs from a horse pulling a plow where the bone will start to remodel.
16:33And then we can capture that shape change and understand about what these horses were doing when they were alive.
16:41Using a technique called geometric morphometrics, Carly captures hundreds of photos of a particular bone in the hock joint.
16:49To build precise 3D replicas, revealing its exact shape in extraordinary detail.
16:57By comparing the shape and size of each sample, she can analyze subtle differences that show how Norman warhorses were
17:05built for battle.
17:09Here is the final product.
17:11Each one of these little dots is one of our horses in our data set.
17:14And then along these two axes, we're getting the two most important types of shape change,
17:18where one of them is thinning or thickening and the other one is lengthening or shortening.
17:21And so the Norman horses appear up here, near these red dots, because they weren't that much shorter or longer,
17:27but they were much fatter.
17:28Whereas our Saxon horses plot with a skinnier and possibly slightly longer shape to them.
17:33So what does that shape difference mean in terms of the characteristics of the horses and how they were moving?
17:38So horses with this wider but shorter ankle bone shape are much more adapted for short, fast, powerful movement.
17:47So maybe something like you would see on a Norman battlefield, where a horse needs to be able to go
17:51fast but also slow down to change a lot of directions.
17:54OK, so what we're seeing then is that the Norman horses, they're shorter, they're fatter, which is giving those horses
18:01more maneuverability and more power.
18:03Yeah, dynamic motion that the horses needed to do to be effective on a battlefield that the Saxon horses before
18:09that just didn't need.
18:15Geometric morphometrics has proved that small, agile horses played a critical role in shaping the course of history.
18:24They helped the Normans conquer England.
18:27Without those powerful ponies, 1066 might not have been such a significant date.
18:49Oh, the pace of my place and my lifted foot, the breath in my lungs to my lips, my tongue
18:58spoke back to the trees, to the ease of my heartbeat.
19:02Down with the rain, down again, and I trod with an aim for the one to walk before me.
19:15And joy for the one to walk beside me.
19:29Archaeology provides us with a different way of viewing the past, adding to what we already know from written history.
19:39But sometimes archaeologists turn up completely unexpected evidence, opening up new questions, a mystery to be solved.
19:50Half a century ago, human remains were found just outside an Iron Age hillfort in Cambridgeshire, suggesting those individuals had
20:00come to a violent end.
20:02Now, archaeologists have returned to the scene, armed with the old notebooks and with geophysical survey.
20:09And when they started digging, they made a gruesome discovery.
20:17Our next dig takes us to Wandlebury in the Gog Magog Hills, three miles south of Cambridge.
20:30A mystery emerged here in 1976, when a storm tore through the landscape, uprooted a tree and revealed bones buried
20:41beneath.
20:43At the time, it was thought they were connected to the Iron Age hillfort nearby.
20:49But new dating by a team from Cambridge University tells a different story.
20:55The bones don't date to the Iron Age after all.
21:02Instead, they're the remains of people who died a thousand years later, in the early medieval period.
21:15The archaeologists were keen to investigate further.
21:20As they returned to the site, even more human remains are emerging from the ground.
21:27Now, archaeologist Oscar Aldred and bone specialist Trish Byers are trying to understand why these burials are here.
21:40You're starting to see the top of a skull emerge here.
21:44A hand, fairly articulated, coming out.
21:47And then you've got the elbow here that has some serious trauma to it.
21:52Probably a pretty strong blow, probably exposed out to the skin as a fracture.
21:57And then we've got another skull or cranium emerging.
22:01And another skull.
22:03We should be able to get a sense of how many people were here once we have everyone in the
22:09lab.
22:11We thought we had quite a simple story.
22:14Two bodies, possibly a third in a ditch.
22:16And now we seem to have a much more complicated story.
22:19We've got a large pit full of human remains.
22:23This is unexpected.
22:25At this point, it looks likely that these bodies were all buried at the same time.
22:30So, who were these people?
22:33And why were they left here?
22:35What we've got now is other individuals.
22:38This is your femur, which is the top, and then you've got your tibia and your fibula down here, which
22:44are the lower leg bones.
22:45What's interesting here is this evidence of a growth plate indicates that this was a young adult.
22:50So, in terms of sex, do you reckon about that?
22:53Off the cuff, you can kind of note that the brow ridge is actually quite thick and robust, which would
22:58be classically male traits.
23:01Is there any speculation on the treatment of the individual?
23:04There's no care going into this. It's get rid of the decomposing corpse.
23:10I would say this was done pretty quickly, and then another person on top, and another person on top, and
23:15another person on top.
23:19These were young men who seem to have met a violent end, their bodies thrown into a pit.
23:27Trish looks for further clues in their skeletons.
23:33They are incredibly dense for long bones, which means that these people were doing quite a lot of activity, quite
23:40a lot of load-bearing.
23:41If they weren't young males, 17 to 24, that would probably make sense if they were doing a lot of
23:47fighting.
23:50As the team continued to dig, more remains emerged from the ground.
23:55It's a rare opportunity for students to help unravel this mystery.
24:02I've been working mainly with the trowel and with my paintbrush, and I've managed to uncover three schools over here.
24:12The individuals we're studying are a very similar age, if not the exact same age as me, and it really
24:18brings back a lot of humanity to what we're studying, thinking about how they may have lived, how they may
24:25have died.
24:27The team meticulously record every detail.
24:34Obviously, we're dealing with a very traumatic event, and we need to be very controlled about how we excavate and
24:42lift.
24:42It's quite a hard process now. We've done the easy part, and now it's the hard, hard work.
24:51The team will now carefully lift the bones and send them to the lab, where further analysis will help to
24:58shed light on evidence of disease and injury in these skeletons, and perhaps even help us to understand how they
25:06died.
25:15Oscar and osteologist Benjamin Neal have brought along one of the most intriguing skeletons to the tent.
25:28So this is just one of these individuals then, Oscar and Ben, from this quite extraordinary sight.
25:34And this is a beautifully preserved skeleton of, well, my first impression, it's a very tall person.
25:40He is a very tall person, he's about six foot five.
25:43Really?
25:43But what's really remarkable about this chap is the hole in his head.
25:48That is not a weapon injury, that is a classic case of trepanning.
25:53It's a deliberately made hole in the head, it's not an act of violence.
25:56No, it's not.
25:57He hasn't been assaulted, he's been subjected to what is basically surgery.
26:02Yes.
26:02Is there any way that we can get any closer to understanding why somebody might have done this?
26:08This hole in the head is probably connected to why this individual is so tall.
26:14OK, because he is unusually tall.
26:16Stand out tall.
26:17Yeah, yeah.
26:17For the period.
26:19One of the primary thoughts is that this individual had a tumour at the base of their brain.
26:23So you've got the pituitary gland in there, which produces a lot of hormones, including growth hormones.
26:29So when they're developing, when they're young, because the ends of the bones haven't fused properly, the shafts just keep
26:37on growing.
26:39But obviously, they are starting to fuse now.
26:42So there's a potential then, that this is an individual who had an excess of growth hormone.
26:47Yeah.
26:47And that might be related to a pituitary tumour.
26:50And the pituitary tumour then caused increased pressure inside the skull, and that he experienced that as headaches.
26:57And this is what this is trying to relieve.
27:00To relieve, yeah.
27:00Yeah, so it's treating the symptom.
27:02Yeah.
27:02Rather than removing the tumour.
27:05Obviously, we start looking at the pathology in his skeleton now.
27:09And one question that we might ask is, has this trepanning caused his death?
27:14It hasn't, has it?
27:15Because actually, this has healed over.
27:17Yeah.
27:17So this was done quite some time before death.
27:20Yeah.
27:21When does he date to?
27:22So 8th, 9th century CE.
27:25OK.
27:25So he was talking Anglo-Saxon.
27:27Are we starting to have any Vikings attacking England at that point?
27:32Towards the late 9th century.
27:34In the area where we are, there's potentially a Viking camp in historical records.
27:39So then we probably have to look at the wider cemetery, don't we, Oscar?
27:41To try and understand a bit more about who he was and why he was there.
27:46We've lifted this individual that we've got laid out on the table.
27:49Oh, my goodness.
27:50That's our tall man.
27:51Yes.
27:51So we can see the back of his skull there.
27:54Yeah.
27:54So he's face down.
27:55Yeah.
27:55And then we've got bones of somebody else in here as well.
27:59Yeah.
27:59There's up to 10 individuals within the pit based on the number of skulls.
28:03So we're talking piles of heads, piles of legs, all stacked together.
28:09Quite macabre.
28:10Yeah.
28:10You can see here this individual is laid out flat.
28:14But you can see the head is a little bit wonky.
28:16And then when you get closer into the skull, you can see there's a really well-defined chop mark
28:21just on the lower jaw here.
28:23Yeah.
28:23So this individual has been decapitated.
28:26This individual has been decapitated.
28:27But then you've got this jumble of bones above it.
28:29I think what's weird and what we need to kind of think harder about is the way that the body
28:34parts were collected and then deposited.
28:36It'll be really interesting as that analysis proceeds to see if there's any other evidence of violence.
28:42Any old, healed weapon injuries.
28:45Yeah.
28:45Because you immediately start to think, are you looking at soldiers?
28:48Yeah.
28:49Who are prisoners of war.
28:52And they've been executed.
28:53Yeah.
28:54So coming back to our man here, we know he survived a trepanation.
28:59We've got an idea about why he might have had a trepanation to begin with.
29:03And then we're wondering if he is local or if he might have come across the North Sea.
29:09Yeah.
29:10Exactly.
29:10And you're going to find out.
29:11I hope.
29:12Will you come back and tell me?
29:13Absolutely.
29:14I wonder who he was.
29:16Is that a human being?
29:17The government of the United States.
29:17Is that a human being?
29:23It's a human being?
29:28It's a human being.
29:30It's a human being.
29:31Is that a human being?
29:33It's a human being.
29:34And also who he might have heard, too.
29:38Is that a human being?
29:38And also who he might have heard of.
29:44So what do you do?
29:45staying in central Britain and heading to the hamlet of Walthorpe-by-Colsterworth,
29:5135 miles south of Lincoln.
29:59It was here where a young Isaac Newton first began to question the world around him.
30:07But this dig isn't about Newton's discoveries.
30:10It's about his beginnings and his mother, Hannah.
30:15The woman whose choices shaped one of history's greatest minds.
30:22It's a story that takes us back to the early modern period.
30:30Isaac Newton's father was a sheep farmer, but he died before Isaac was born.
30:37When Isaac was three, his mother remarried and moved a mile away,
30:42leaving him to be raised by his grandparents at Walthorpe.
30:48A decade later, widowed again, Hannah returned to manage the Newton estate.
30:55She repaired the manor and built a new house beside it for herself and her younger children.
31:02That house has long since vanished.
31:06But now a team from York Archaeology and the National Trust is digging to uncover its footprint
31:15and traces of the private world that shaped a genius.
31:20Archaeologist Laura Parker leads the dig.
31:24This, in theory, is the internal area of the house.
31:29We have a couple of stones here that seem to be standing quite proud and seem to be quite faced.
31:34It's possible that these could be remains of one of the walls.
31:39Moving over slightly further, some kind of cobbled surface, maybe some kind of path.
31:43You can actually see the edging of it here, external to the house if the wall is around here.
31:51We'll just need to do a little bit more work on it just to see what we can find.
31:58Hannah's house was part of a working farmstead, and when Isaac was 17, it was time for him to run
32:05the estate.
32:06But it proved disastrous, as House and Collections Officer Jenny Johns explains.
32:14Isaac's destiny was to be head of the Newton family, to marry, have children,
32:17and be able to continue the Newton name here as a sheep farm at Woolstot Manor.
32:22But it turns out he left the sheep unattended.
32:25He forgot his horse when he went to Grantham and left it behind on his way home.
32:29Hannah realised that this wasn't going to be his destiny.
32:32He was far too busy making models of windmills and making water clocks
32:36and really trying to discover more about the world around him.
32:39And Hannah didn't stop him.
32:42Because of Hannah, Isaac was given the access to the education that was the foundation that led to him changing
32:48the world.
32:51Hannah was central to Isaac's life.
32:54And as the footprint of her house emerges, the finds offer glimpses into their daily world.
33:02Just here, we've got a lovely little button, definitely at least 18th century, you can tell by the fitting on
33:09the back.
33:14We've had a range of pottery.
33:16This is Staffordshire slipware, dating from around 1690s through to 1750s, so this could easily have been from a bowl
33:25or a plate or something that would have been in Hannah's house.
33:28They've got two different kinds of slip on the pot.
33:30When you glaze over the top and fire it, it comes out with these really lovely yellows and browns.
33:35And then going into domestic objects, we've got this lovely buckle here that still just hinges.
33:42Possibly a shoe buckle rather than a belt buckle, so it gives you an idea of the fashions of the
33:47time.
33:47A very small thimble, likely to be a child's thimble.
33:53Back in Hannah's time, girls would have been practising embroidery.
33:56Hannah's children may have been using something similar to this, maybe even this particular one.
34:04The finds and foundations give us an impression of daily life here.
34:10But to uncover more about Hannah's character, Professor Yasmin Khan is searching the Lincolnshire Archives.
34:24These documents are the will of Hannah Smith and an inventory of all her goods when she died.
34:32On the sixth day of June, 1679.
34:36At the top of this inventory, we can see that it lists all the goods and chattels of Hannah Smith.
34:41All the different rooms in the house.
34:43A cellar, a kitchen, a coal house and a yard.
34:48We also get a sense of the things that are inside the house.
34:52Silver spoons, cupboards, a bed with bedding.
34:56But this isn't just a house, it's also a working farmstead.
35:00Agricultural implements, six horses, 200 sheep.
35:05So really quite prosperous.
35:07I think what's important to remember is this is Hannah's stuff.
35:10These are her things that she has accumulated and earned.
35:14But there's something here unexpected, which is items due unto her, bills, bonds and other debts.
35:20And there's this really large number here, 1,400 pounds.
35:25Now in today's money, that's about a quarter of a million.
35:28What this shows is that she's been money lending.
35:30This is a shrewd lady who understands numbers, understands money, is literate.
35:36And although she's not an aristocrat, she's clearly making the most of her situation and profiting from this farmstead.
35:44The inventory gives us a sense of the material goods and what was in the house.
35:50But the will really gives us insight into who Hannah was as a person.
36:06Unlike aristocrats at the time, always giving everything to the eldest son,
36:11Hannah is ensuring that her unmarried daughter is safe and secure for the future.
36:16When we turn onto the second page, there's something else.
36:37Hannah is going out of her way to show us in the first person she's bought this land.
36:43And we know how she's done it because she's owed all this money.
36:47She's money lending.
36:48So Hannah is very savvy.
36:51She's accumulating wealth.
36:54She's using the money that she's earning to buy land.
36:57And she's able to leave this to her heirs.
37:04The more I explored these documents,
37:06the clearer it becomes that Hannah was an extraordinary 17th century entrepreneur.
37:13Twice widowed, she ran a thriving farmstead, built wealth, and supported her family.
37:21Her son became one of history's greatest scientists,
37:24but the apple clearly didn't fall far from the tree.
37:28Hannah's savvy intelligence and determination laid the foundation for it all.
37:35O'锟斤拷ige
37:38He always谋臒谋n谋 are a pretty much ability to hinwegad to undertake this time.
37:42What is it?
37:42Good morning,
37:54great morning,
37:55everybody I've met you and your men's approach
37:58Have you been invited to our city now?ETLynn
38:03and sort him where I made it before and when he's willing to go to
38:03Gather us up to the heavens above
38:08We can always come back, my love
38:13We can always come back, my love
38:24Archaeology reveals all sorts of different types of evidence
38:28from the architecture that people made
38:31to the artefacts they created
38:33and sometimes, of course, the remains of the people themselves
38:37in the form of human bones
38:38But we do find other bones on archaeological sites
38:42that give us an insight into the relationship of humans
38:46with the wider natural world
38:48the animals that they interacted with
38:51that they ate, that they rode
38:53and that they kept as pets
38:59Our next dig takes us to the foot of the Wittenham Clumps
39:0310 miles south of Oxford
39:09Archaeologists have been excavating here since 2018
39:13and they've recently discovered a Roman farmhouse
39:16built on top of an Iron Age settlement
39:24Layer by layer, the site is revealing how the lives of humans and animals
39:29have been woven together for centuries
39:36Archaeologist Nat Jackson is leading the dig
39:40We've got nearly 10,000 fragments of animal bone from the excavation so far
39:44This is one of the remarkable things about the site
39:47We can see how that relationship is evolving
39:49through the Iron Age and into the Roman period
39:55At least 15 Iron Age roundhouses have been uncovered so far
40:01as well as traces of the livestock that these farmers tended
40:06In front of me, we've got a cow jaw
40:08and then underneath, we've got another bit of horn core
40:12and then just to show you the sheer variety
40:14of all the animals that we have discovered on the site
40:17in the Iron Age
40:18we've got more cow
40:20we've got sheep
40:21sheep
40:22pig
40:23there was also some tiny bones from smaller creatures
40:28and we're also finding a huge amount of dogs on this site
40:35Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated by humans
40:39tens of thousands of years ago
40:42They often turn up on Iron Age sites
40:46Looking at animal remains can help us build a bigger picture
40:49of people's lives in the past
40:53What we've got here is an intact dog skeleton
40:59So meaningful to find something like this
41:01because we all know dogs
41:03We really care about them
41:04and you can really see that the family who buried this 2,000 years ago
41:09also really cared about this dog
41:10It's laid out in such a beautiful way
41:13and now we're the first ones looking at it again
41:15and it's going to teach us so much about the people who were living here 2,000 years ago
41:26As the Iron Age gave way to the Roman period in Britain
41:30society and landscapes changed
41:36But dogs remained a familiar presence
41:39leaving behind tiny clues to their place in people's lives
41:44as find specialist Carina Garland reveals
41:49I wanted to show you this absolutely fantastic ceramic building material
41:54It's Roman
41:55and in this little corner here you can just see a little paw print
41:59When the Romans were making tiles
42:02they would have made them and then they would have left them out to dry
42:04Chances are a cheeky little dog ran across this tile and left its mark
42:10We have had lots of examples of animals on site
42:14I don't think I've ever worked on a site that has this many dogs
42:26Maya Pina Dacia has come to the tent
42:29bringing some of the remains of these Iron Age and Roman dogs
42:34and she has some interesting theories about some of these bones
42:44Maya, this is a bit of a surprise
42:47But it does tell quite a story
42:49So this is an Iron Age dog that we found on our dig
42:53At the time we excavated we were, you know, we kind of got really interested in
42:57why was it buried here? Was this some kind of ritual? Was it a sacrifice?
43:00Did no one want it anymore?
43:02Or was it a much loved working animal that was laid to rest with care and affection?
43:07So what work have you done on it then? What were you able to tell about it?
43:10The first thing we can see is that all of the joint surfaces have fused on
43:13So we know it's an adult
43:14It's an adult
43:14It's a mature dog
43:15And when we actually look at the teeth and see some of the wear pattern on it
43:19You can't be too precise
43:20Yeah, yeah
43:20But it does sort of match up with a dog that's around maybe 10 plus years old
43:24Okay, so a very mature dog then
43:26It's actually quite a mature dog
43:27Yeah
43:28And there's no calculus
43:30Healthy
43:30Healthy dog
43:31Yeah, good diet
43:32Because, you know, one of the problems that we have with our pet dogs today
43:35Is that if they're eating a diet with a lot of cereals in
43:38They do tend to get plaque and calculus building up on their teeth
43:41I have to brush my dog's teeth
43:42To clean them
43:43Yeah
43:43So we know from the shape of the skull and the size of the skeleton and the legs
43:47Sort of roughly what size it was
43:49Something around the size of a modern Labrador
43:51But things start to get really interesting when we take a closer look at some of the bones
43:56Well, my eye is immediately drawn by that
43:58Yeah, you've gone exactly to the right place
44:00So that's the tibia and that looks like it's sustained a fracture
44:04Yes
44:04Which is healed
44:05Quite a nasty one as well
44:06Really serious break
44:07But what you can see is that it's healed
44:10So we know this animal has been cared for
44:12It's been looked after
44:12And it's lived for quite a long time after what looks like quite a serious, serious injury
44:16But that's not the end of its story
44:18We've also got its stomach contents
44:20Okay
44:21So we've got the feet bones of a sheep
44:23Right, okay
44:24And what we can see when we look really closely at it
44:27Is that some of them you can even see the outer bone loss
44:29Which suggests maybe it's been in the stomach
44:30It was found in the stomach area was it?
44:33Yeah
44:34And also a little toad bone
44:35So maybe it's also been scavenging
44:36Oh really?
44:37Catching some of its own food as well to supplement the diet
44:39But it certainly suggests that someone's been feeding it
44:42Or it's been collecting butchered animal waste
44:44And at the back of the throat we found two more
44:47Oh really?
44:49And you're sure that these are not just part of the fill of the pit?
44:54That they were very, very closely associated with the...
44:56Very, very closely inside when we lifted the skull out
44:59Yeah
45:00So potentially the cause of death
45:01Potentially
45:02Choking on the feet of the sheep that it's been eating
45:05Yeah
45:05It's had quite a life
45:07It's lived a long time
45:08It's had some sort of injury
45:09It's been cared for and buried, buried with respect
45:13So this is just one aspect of how humans interacted or related to dogs
45:17In the Iron Age they had medium-sized dogs
45:19They were used to working animals
45:21That doesn't mean to say they didn't care about them
45:22That they weren't part of life in the settlement
45:25And what about these bones?
45:27So these come from a later period
45:30So the same site we've got the Iron Age settlement
45:32But right on top of it we've got the remains of a Roman villa or farmstead
45:37What happens in the Roman period is something really quite interesting
45:41We have again probably medium-sized dog working animal
45:45But then we've got these two much, much smaller dogs
45:48And we don't find small dogs in the Iron Age period really at all
45:54They are something that comes in with the Romans
45:55And from our estimations this one would have stood about 20cm tall
46:02And is currently as far as we know the fifth smallest Roman dog found in Britain
46:06So you're talking about Chihuahua size?
46:08Exactly, the size of a Chihuahua
46:10They started bringing them over because on the continent they started to breed them as pets
46:14We think of having small dogs as something that's a modern phenomenon
46:18But actually it's something that started in Britain with the Romans
46:22It is interesting because so often we are so focused on the humans
46:26And actually the animals are really, really important
46:28They're part of the context, they're part of the ecology of the humans
46:31I think it's quite an interesting story seeing the evolution of how our relationship with dogs and animals has changed
46:37over time
46:59The centre of Britain is richly layered in history
47:04Some of the most imposing landmarks date from recent centuries
47:09From the time of the Industrial Revolution
47:13But the impetus for that transformative period has much more ancient roots
47:24For our next dig, Torrey is off to Brumbo in North Wales
47:30To what was once a booming metal works during the Industrial Revolution
47:43Standing amongst these industrial relics I can almost hear the roar of the furnaces
47:48And feel the energy of this place
47:57These furnaces produced thousands of tons of iron and steel each year
48:02They were the powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution
48:08But the story of how this industry was born goes much deeper
48:15To a world 300 million years old
48:23I'm meeting paleontologist Tim Astrop to discover the ancient origins of coal
48:29The fuel that powered it all
48:32Tim, I've just walked through the most amazing industrial site
48:36Yes, it's in a derelict condition
48:37But you just get a sense of the sheer scale of the activity that was going on here
48:41The story here is pretty amazing
48:43This is the only place in the world where you can see the fossils that produced the coal
48:47That fired the industry, that built the community within such a small area
48:51What are you doing here? What's going on?
48:53We're excavating an in-situ fossilised forest
48:56It's about 300 million years old
48:5840 million years before dinosaurs
49:00So this stuff was already fossilised by the time dinosaurs were walking around
49:06Carboniferous was a remarkable period in Earth's history when, under just the right conditions
49:11Ancient plants were compressed and transformed into coal
49:19But not all the plants here became coal
49:21Some were fossilised, probably as a result of an ancient flood
49:31Now, these fossils offer a rare glimpse of what this extraordinary landscape once looked like
49:39Look at this!
49:40Yeah
49:41This is awesome!
49:42It is
49:43You don't need to be an expert
49:44No
49:44To realise that this is a massive fossil tree
49:46It really stands out
49:47This is a giant lycopod
49:49One of the most easily recognisable trees in the Carboniferous period
49:52Big broccoli type top leaves coming off of the bark
49:55It was a very, very strange alien looking tree
49:58Is there anything like this on Earth today?
50:01There is
50:01They survive today as diminutive little club mosses
50:05But during the Carboniferous they were one of the first groups of plants to have a go at being a
50:09really big tree
50:10How tall would it have been?
50:11Some of the estimates for these guys get to about 100, 120 foot
50:14What?
50:15Like that is like way, way, way, way up there
50:19And when you talk about it being a fossil forest, it actually was a forest
50:23But a forest like none that we would be familiar with today
50:26No, it would be very strange
50:27And what about these nodules? What's that?
50:30This whole area is completely jam-packed full of something called siderite concretions
50:35Which are ironstone balls that 50, 60% of the time contain a nice beautiful fossil inside
50:40I was going to say, is there something inside them?
50:42There is, yeah
50:44These hard ironstone concretions formed when iron-rich water cemented ancient swamp mud around plant or animal remains
50:55Hundreds have been found on site
50:58By cracking them open, we can see what the plants inside once looked like
51:04Hey!
51:05Tom Hughes is on hand to show me how it's done
51:09OK, so what's the technique?
51:11We want to smash them down that orientation
51:14Because the plant, if there's one in there, will be lying flat along that plane
51:19OK, so tap, tap, tap and then whack
51:21Yeah, so you tap, then whack, see how the rock reacts as you go
51:24Tap, then whack
51:25It is harder than it looks
51:33That was a good split
51:36Oh my goodness
51:38OK
51:40OK
51:41Oh look
51:43Nice
51:44It looks like a little tiny, tiny leaf
51:46Is that a leaf?
51:47That is a long, single leaf
51:49So that's called a cyperites
51:50And it's the leaves from the giant plumbus trees
51:54Branches will be covered in millions of these little leaves
51:58And you can see the vein running through the centre of it
52:01Oh my god, that's so cool
52:04A sheer number of fossils paints a vivid picture of a lost landscape
52:12But among them, one plant stands out
52:15Remarkably similar to the fern-like horse tails we see today
52:21These ancient plants once thrived in swampy forests
52:26Their tall, jointed stems rising above the prehistoric undergrowth
52:33The horse tails are probably the most common plant that we have here
52:37All across this surface
52:39We've mapped 83 so far
52:41There's just so many
52:42Like one, two, three, four
52:45Yeah
52:45Five
52:46These guys were probably 15, 20 metres tall
52:49And these probably represent a single thicket that was living all at the same time
52:54That's a proper thicket
52:57Some of the horse tails have been carefully removed
53:01So the rock encasing them can be separated from the fossilised plant beneath
53:06They're taking off the sediment, all the rock bits that were attached to it underneath
53:10And then we're exposing the plant itself
53:12You can really see it
53:13And it's broken into pieces
53:16Yeah
53:17Is that just the way the layers in the preserving mud have broken it
53:21Or is this a feature of the actual plant itself?
53:22Good question
53:23So these are actually part of the plant
53:26These are the nodal sections, right?
53:28Yeah, you've got some actual modern day ones
53:30It's our inspiration
53:30And this is growing on the site just a few metres away
53:33You see those same stripes?
53:35Yes, so you've got some ribbing up and down the stem
53:37And then at each section these are the nodes
53:39And at each node you have the leaves or the branches coming out
53:43So that's what you have here?
53:44Basically exactly the same
53:45Just a lot bigger
53:47Way bigger
53:51The large fossils build a picture of what this strange forest would have looked like
53:56While it's the smaller fossils that reveal the most intricate details
54:02We also have some really beautiful seed ferns
54:07Some of them were trees, some of them were just scrambling ferns
54:09This one is what we call a leonescent plant
54:12This was actually climbing trees
54:13So it was using some of the large standing lycopods and horsetails to wind its way up
54:21Unfurl at the top of the canopy and almost parasitise the top of the canopy with giant fronds
54:25It's absolutely beautiful
54:26What this site can tell us is how those organisms interact with each other
54:31This one's really cool, this is only found in Brumbo
54:34It's a true fern and it's a species called Illyria fosteri
54:38It's named after Andrew Foster who discovered the site
54:41Oh my gosh
54:43It's cute isn't it?
54:44It's really cute, it's beautiful
54:45I love finding these things
54:46How many of these do you have? Are they rare?
54:48We've probably found around 10,000 since we started
54:51And this building we think only covers a fifth of the productive area that we could be excavating
54:59Each fossil is a glimpse into this ancient world
55:02But not all the forests were preserved like the one we've seen
55:09Some were compressed and transformed into coal
55:12The fuel that powered Britain's industrial revolution
55:17When you said coal seam I wasn't quite expecting it to be like this visible at the surface
55:23Yeah, the coal seam that you see here is the result of these forests living and dying over thousands and
55:29thousands of years
55:30Everything in here has been cooked out and it's just the carbon that remains from the plants
55:34And this is just one of 12 to 13 seams in this coal field
55:36And there's coal fields all over the planet
55:38And when you think about it that's millions of years worth of carbon sequestration
55:43Being pumped back into the atmosphere in two, three hundred years
55:46It's big of an eye really
55:51Here at Brumbo, the connection between its ancient forest and the industrial world it fuelled is tangible
56:01300 million year old plants transformed into the energy that built a nation
56:21You were completely in your element, Tori, with this one
56:25You had fossils
56:26It was absolutely amazing
56:29It's so unusual to see a site like that open and active
56:36The entire industrial revolution was built upon 300 million year old preservation of tropical forests
56:45And you see it so clearly at Brumbo, they've got the coal deposits there as well as the fossil forest
56:51itself
56:51And when you look at it and you realise that that is just one tiny portion of millions and millions
56:57and millions of years of rainforest growth compressed
57:00And that was burnt in an instant
57:04And it's all that sunlight energy that was chapped 300 million years ago, released again at that moment that the
57:10coal is burnt
57:11Getting that context, you know, and understanding that I think is really, it's really powerful, it's really tangible
57:17Something which you could only get in places where you put the whole story together
57:22Not just the history, not just the archaeology, but the entire deep time setting for why things happen where and
57:32when they do
57:32And in terms of engagement and learning and education, I think we're seeing at that site, which is very much
57:38about paleontology
57:39The same thing as we see with archaeology, it's the power of the physical
57:43You're not just reading it in a book, you're not looking at it on a screen, you're actually confronted with
57:49that physical reality
57:50It's really, really, really special
57:56Next time on Digging for Britain, an ancient fort surprises the archaeologists
58:02What seems obvious often isn't, and there's truth, is lying in the soil
58:06Two huge Roman swords are discovered by chance
58:09What's the chances of me, on my second time detecting, to find such a wonderful item?
58:15And a search for the fabled Tin Isles
58:18Oh my gosh, that is a Bronze Age fingerprint
58:22Reveals the crucial role Cornwall played in the Bronze Age
58:27It's destroyed the thing completely
58:29To come and search for we who search and look in for a scholar
58:37I dig for those whose stories live in very past
58:44Future's one
58:46And dig for us as we have done
58:50To lay the dead out in the sun
58:54To lay us dead out in the sun
58:58To lay us dead out in the sun
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