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00:00found oh my gosh so each year across the country archaeologists dig underground
00:09and dive underwater searching for fresh discoveries the most amazing thing in
00:18British archaeology uncovering traces of ancient lives somebody's played enjoy
00:24I'm sure and finding fascinating objects such exquisite detail this year I'll be meeting
00:33the archaeologists and looking at some of their most incredible finds oh I mean that is stunning
00:39well dr. Tori Herridge is traveling the length of the country to some spectacular locations
00:46where I'll be dropping in on some of this year's most fascinating digs
00:54oh my gosh can you see that it's just brilliant oh my goodness every dig provides a new piece in
01:01the puzzle of Britain's forgotten past this is the epic and unfolding story of our islands
01:12welcome to digging for Britain
01:24in this episode of digging for Britain in Slimbridge Tori discovers an opulent Roman bathhouse I'm sitting
01:35in a marble bar I've just walked across a heated mosaic floor a place of luxury and power its rich
01:42finds revealing a world of privilege on the edge of Empire it does not look like it's in the 2000
01:49years old in cambridgeshire archaeologists make an unexpected discovery a large pit full of human
01:57remains and I get a closer look at one extraordinary skeleton I wonder here he was and in Wales we journey
02:10back over 300 million years this stuff was already fossilized by the time dinosaurs were walking around
02:16to uncover a lost prehistoric world that helped spark the Industrial Revolution it's never ever ever gonna get old
02:46across the country waterways form natural boundaries as well as providing an important means of transport
03:02the seven estuary has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world and this extreme variation has shaped the
03:12landscape here for millennia our first dig takes us to the floodplain of the River Severn to Slimbridge
03:2315 miles south of Gloucester today the wetlands around Slimbridge feel somewhat remote and isolated but excavations
03:38here over the last six years are shaping our understanding of what this landscape looked like and how it was
03:44used two thousand years ago in the Roman period a team from Archeoscan are investigating a site which seems to
03:58have been used from the Iron Age into the Roman period and it covers a vast area Tory heritage has gone to
04:08meet archaeologist Tony Roberts to find out what he's discovered and why he thinks it's so important
04:14Tony this is an excellent spot to survey the land it's flat country all around but some hills in the
04:24distance and then the reason why we're here it's incredibly expansive site absolutely what we're looking
04:31at here is a quarter of the large Roman compound it measures we think 80 meters by 40 meters and we
04:37think there are buildings around that as well so it's a really large landscape that's emerging you
04:41say it's a landscape story when I see this again that's actually just a pretty impressive Roman site but
04:46it's the landscape that is key here absolutely we believe that what we're uncovering here is a
04:50prehistoric landscape that's focused on the River Severn trading on the seven perhaps living off the
04:55seven and then sometime in that first century just after the Romans have arrived they then occupied that
05:01same landscape for what reason we can speculate as we go on two thousand years ago the seven came
05:11further inland to the edge of the site giving direct access to one of Britain's great waterways a route south to
05:22the sea and north into the heart of Britain
05:28this would have been a prime location for establishing new Roman routes into Britain
05:35tony and his team may only be excavating a small portion of the site but they have already uncovered an
05:41impressively grand bathhouse hinting at the wealth and status of those who lived here
05:48in the underfloor area around the hot pool we would have had the stoke room where the hot air would
05:57have been generated by the open fire that hot air would have been pumped through to this area here all
06:02this would do in the heated space and the mosaics would have sat on the floor this high so you would
06:07walk across this lovely mosaic floor into an absolutely glorious warm bath can I step down
06:12into it this is probably the foundations of one of the steps into the bath so a step down like a Roman
06:17would have done so you can come down and actually sits down and luxuriate in this lovely warm water as
06:23we look around we would have seen wall paintings or mosaics around us this would have been a very luxurious
06:29place and we probably would have been sat in a marble bath as well imagine like a 2,000 years ago
06:34and I'm sitting in a marble bath I've just walked across a heated mosaic floor absolutely
06:40did you say columns yeah there would have been some columns down this side we think that some of the
06:44bases over here would have held some columns of very fancifully decorated and the early period of
06:49Roman occupation in Britain this kind of opulence was an unusual thing
06:53the grandeur of the bathhouse implies that the people who inhabited this landscape almost 2,000
07:02years ago were rich powerful and elite and the fines are providing a fascinating window into their world
07:18I don't want to startle you Jake but I've heard you found something yeah so we're clearing down this
07:22gravel layer and we think we found a twisted wire bracelet so you sort of just digging away at
07:27the edges yeah just sort of flitting each bit away and seeing what crumbles away there you go
07:37oh my gosh wow oh look look at that that's lovely look at that exquisite little piece of 2,000
07:48years old jewelry dropped in a roman bathhouse on the side of the seven
07:56each item offers new clues about who occupy this incredible site
08:02overseeing the finds lee james is going to show me some of the most remarkable discoveries from the
08:08bathhouse lee i'm being like so drawn to this bling over here this is just a small fraction of the
08:14artifacts recovered from this area this is just so sweet yeah it's a gorgeous little bird right yeah
08:21it's a bird probably a bird of prey maybe like a falcon you can see the swept back wings yes it looks
08:26like the feet were sort of onto a hinge so maybe a lift up lid oh yes so so beautifully crafted i can see the
08:35little beak and the eye yeah look at that leaf possibly from a statue oh right that's a laurel crown or
08:44something yeah that's correct so again you saw that picture that you know this bathhouse so the people
08:48are coming in richly decorated with some serious roman bling and you've got these very ornate vessels
08:55statues we're talking social elite here and we've got some really standout items this one here
09:02is a writing stylus oh look it does not look like it's 2 000 odd years old it's just brilliant
09:11bronze but it's quality obviously writing onto a wax tablet pointy end is the writing and then the
09:18flat end is your eraser to rub the wax back it's got a really fine point at the end of it hasn't it
09:23but a real standout find in the collection so far is this beautiful greek scalpel oh look it's completely
09:31bronze so the cutting edge is still bronze it's not steel and it's not iron which does make it very
09:37unusual the bathhouse finds are just one piece of the puzzle coins are helping to narrow down the
09:46timeline of the site this one is a demetian coin and we can actually date that one exactly to 86
09:55a d a trajan denarius silver 103 everyone's heard of this one is hadrian he's around from 117 a.d and
10:06a beautiful silver denarii of empress faustina that's around 171 okay so you've got everything
10:12from like 80 a.d to one yeah so 100 odd years or so of time here exactly right
10:18you get quite a few grand roman villas in the uk they're still special all of them but is there
10:24anything unique about this place this is an early site when we're not up in the cotswolds and we've
10:30got some grand sort of fourth century villa going on yeah do you think these people were romans that
10:35came in yeah yeah is that your feeling with this sort of high level status material they're coming into
10:40site for sure while the cotswolds are famous for their numerous remains of opulent roman villas most
10:49reach their heyday in the fourth century the finds here point to something unusual for the area evidence
10:58of high status activity at least a century earlier
11:02this early compound hints at a new foothold of power and influence right on the edge of rome's world
11:23archaeology helps reveal how the landscape of britain has changed over time
11:38as well as revealing details of everyday life and patterns of peace and conflict
11:53the world's world's world war warfare has changed a lot over the centuries as people find new and
12:03interesting ways of committing acts of violence we can track that looking at the evolution of weaponry
12:10but something that's been far less studied is the animals that were involved professor naomi sykes
12:16has been looking at a new study investigating the evolution of the war horse
12:23as a zoo archaeologist i'm fascinated by this new research it sheds light on a pivotal moment in britain's
12:34history the year 1066
12:43at the battle of hastings the anglo-saxon world was conquered by a new kind of army
12:47the normans brought with them a revolutionary way of fighting stitched into the fabric of our history
12:57the bear tapestry shows norman war horses charging into battle
13:02but what made them so effective in the battle itself
13:05i've come to the university of exeter to examine the evidence with the project lead professor oliver
13:17crichton ollie you know everything about medieval horses what were they used for well horses are used
13:24for a great variety of different purposes in in anglo-saxon england they're used for transport these for
13:28pulling carts they're used to an extent in agriculture in the norman period famously horses
13:34are used increasingly as a weapon of war anglo-saxon warriors may have used horses to ride to battle but
13:40they didn't habitually fight on horseback which is a key feature of norman warfare and is depicted in
13:46in the bay of tapestry absolutely this iconic depiction of the bay of tapestry 1066 the most famous
13:52days in english history we see normans fighting on horseback and we see the anglo-saxons fighting
13:58dismounted so this must have been incredibly overwhelming for the anglo-saxon army yes it's
14:06in many ways symbolized by the image down here the defeated anglo-saxon warrior beneath the hooves of
14:11a marauding norman warhorse it is just like the perfect symbol of what the war horses bring to this battle
14:18being on horseback clearly gave the norman army a huge advantage
14:26but what made the horses such effective weapons of war
14:32bioarchaeologist dr carly armin has been analyzing thousands of bones to find out
14:39carly we've got some horse bones here where are they from well this is a modern horse from our
14:43reference collection but these bones here are from an archaeological site that spans the conquest
14:47period and so just by taking measurements of this bone we can actually estimate how tall the horse
14:53stood and we found from our study of thousands of horse bones that actually on average the medieval
14:58horse was much smaller than horses we would expect to see today in fact most of them are between 12 to
15:0413 hands high which is about just below your shoulder yeah we're not really talking so much about
15:10war horses but more kind of like war ponies absolutely and if you think about using a horse in battle
15:15you need to be able to get on your horse and not just at the start of the battle where somebody is
15:19maybe around to help you but in the heat of the battle if you were to fall off you would certainly
15:22want to be able to get back on and so having a horse that sort of smaller size wouldn't necessarily
15:27have been a disadvantage so what made those war horses then particularly special if size isn't
15:32everything yeah so one of the things that we're really interested in is how the horse moved
15:36so we've been focusing on the joint of the rear leg which is called the hawk joint
15:41the horse's hawk though higher up the leg works much like a human ankle
15:48a powerful hinge that drives each stride forward and absorbs the shock of every landing
15:54we were thinking about how can we understand the way that this joint might respond to horses that are
16:00doing different types of activities and if there's enough pressure of a horse that might be used in a
16:04battlefield in terms of its repetitive activity that differs from a horse pulling a plow where the
16:10bone will start to remodel and then we can capture that shape change and understand about what these
16:14horses were doing when they were alive using a technique called geometric morphometrics carly captures
16:23hundreds of photos of a particular bone in the hawk joint to build precise 3d replicas revealing its exact
16:31shape in extraordinary detail by comparing the shape and size of each sample she can analyze
16:40subtle differences that show how norman war horses were built for battle
16:47here is the final product each one of these little dots is one of our horses in our data set
16:52and then along these two axes we're getting the two most important types of shape change where one of them
16:57is thinning or thickening and the other one is lengthening or shortening and so the norman horses
17:01appear up here near these red dots because they weren't that much shorter or longer but they were
17:06much fatter whereas our saxon horses plot with a skinnier and possibly slightly longer shape to them
17:11so what does that shape difference mean in terms of the characteristics of the horses and how they were
17:16moving so horses with this wider but shorter ankle bone shape are much more adapted for short fast powerful
17:25movement so maybe something like you would see on norman battlefield where a horse needs to be able to
17:29go fast but also slow down to change a lot of directions okay so what we're seeing then is
17:34that the norman horses they're shorter they're fatter which is giving those horses more maneuverability
17:40and more power yeah dynamic motion that the horses needed to do to be effective on a battlefield
17:46that the saxon horses before that just didn't need
17:54geometric morphometrics has proved that small agile horses played a critical role in shaping the course
18:00of history they helped the normans conquer england without those powerful ponies 1066 might not have been
18:10such a significant date
18:28oh the pace of my place and my lifted foot the breath in my lungs to my lips my tongue spoke back to the
18:38trees to the trees to the ears of my heart being down with the rain down again and i trod with
18:45an aim for the one to walk before me and joy for the ones who walk beside me
19:08archaeology provides us with a different way of viewing the past adding to what we already know
19:15from written history but sometimes archaeologists turn up completely unexpected evidence
19:24opening up new questions a mystery to be solved half a century ago human remains were found just
19:33outside an iron age hill fort in cambridgeshire suggesting those individuals had come to a violent
19:39end now archaeologists have returned to the scene armed with the old notebooks and with geophysical survey
19:48and when they started digging they made a gruesome discovery
19:51our next dig takes us to wandlebury in the gog magog hills three miles south of cambridge
20:09a mystery emerged here in 1976 when a storm tore through the landscape uprooted a tree and revealed bones
20:19buried beneath at the time it was thought they were connected to the iron age hill fort nearby
20:28but new dating by a team from cambridge university tells a different story the bones don't date to the iron
20:37age after all
20:41instead they're the remains of people who died a thousand years later
20:46in the early medieval period
20:53the archaeologists were keen to investigate further
20:58as they return to the site even more human remains are emerging from the ground
21:06now archaeologist oscar aldrid
21:08and bone specialist trish byers are trying to understand why these burials are here
21:18you're starting to see the top of a skull emerge here
21:22a hand fairly articulated coming out and then you've got the elbow here that has some serious trauma to it
21:30probably a pretty strong blow probably exposed out to the skin as a fracture
21:36and then we've got another skull or cranium emerging and another skull
21:42we should be able to get a sense of how many people were here once we have everyone in the lab
21:47we thought we had quite a simple story two bodies possibly a third in a ditch and now we seem to have
21:56a much more complicated story that we've got a large pit full of human remains this is unexpected
22:04at this point it looks likely that these bodies were all buried at the same time
22:08so who were these people and why were they left here what we've got now is another individuals this
22:17is your femur which is the top and then you've got your tibia and your fibula down here which are
22:22the lower leg bones what's interesting here is this evidence of a growth plate indicates that this was a
22:27young adult so in terms of sex do you reckon about that off the cuff you can kind of note that the brow
22:34ridge is actually quite thick and robust which would be classically male traits is there any
22:40speculation on the treatment of the individual there's no care going into this it's get rid of
22:46the decomposing corpse i would say this was done pretty quickly and then another person on top and
22:52another person on top and another person on top and another person on top these were young men
22:59who seem to have met a violent end their bodies thrown into a pit
23:06trish looks for further clues in their skeletons
23:12they are incredibly dense for long bones which means that these people were doing
23:17quite a lot of activity quite a lot of load bearing if they weren't young males 17 to 24 that would
23:23probably make sense if they were doing a lot of fighting as the team continue to dig more remains
23:31emerge from the ground it's a rare opportunity for students to help unravel this mystery
23:40i've been working mainly with the trowel and with my paintbrush and i've managed to uncover
23:47three schools over here the individuals we're studying a very similar age if not the exact same
23:54age as me and it really brings back a lot of humanity to what we're studying thinking about
24:01how they may have lived how they may have died
24:06the team meticulously record every detail
24:09obviously we're dealing with a very traumatic event and we need to be very controlled about how
24:19we excavate and lift it's quite a hard process now we've done the easy part and now it's now it's the
24:25hard hard work
24:30the team will now carefully lift the bones and send them to the lab where further analysis will help to
24:36shed light on evidence of disease and injury in these skeletons and perhaps even help us to understand
24:44how they died
24:54oscar and osteologist benjamin neil have brought along one of the most intriguing skeletons to the tent
25:07so this is just one of these individuals then oscar and ben from this quite extraordinary site and this
25:13is a beautifully preserved skeleton of well my first impression it's a very tall person he is a very tall
25:20person he's about six foot five really but what's really remarkable about this chap is the hole in his
25:26head that is not a weapon injury that is a classic case of trepanning it's a deliberately made hole in the
25:33head it's not an act of violence no it's not he hasn't been assaulted he's been subjected to what is
25:39basically surgery yes is there any way that we can get any closer to understanding why somebody might
25:46have done this this hole in the head is probably connected to why this individual is so tall okay
25:53because he is unusually tall stand out tall yeah for the period one of the primary thoughts is that this
25:59individual had a tumor at the base of their brain so you've got the pituitary gland in there which
26:04produces a lot of hormones including growth hormones so when they're developing when they're young because
26:11the ends of the bones haven't fused properly the shafts just keep on growing but obviously they are
26:18starting to fuse now so there's a potential then that this is an individual who had an excess of
26:24growth hormone yeah and that might be related to a pituitary tumor and the pituitary tumor then
26:31caused increased pressure inside the skull and that he experienced that as headaches and this is what
26:36this is trying to relieve to relieve yes so it's treating the symptom yeah rather than removing the
26:42tumor obviously we start looking at the pathology in his skeleton now and one question that we might ask
26:49is has this trepanning caused his death it hasn't has it because actually this has healed over yeah
26:55so this was done quite some time before death yeah when does he date to so 8th 9th century ce okay so
27:04we're talking anglo-saxon are we starting to have any vikings attacking england at that point yeah yeah
27:10towards the late 9th century in the area where we are there's potentially a viking uh camp in historical
27:16records so then we probably have to look at the wider cemetery don't we yeah to try and understand a
27:21bit more about yeah who he was and why he was there yeah we've lifted this individual that we've
27:26got laid out on the table oh my goodness that's our tall man yes so we can see the back of his skull
27:31there so he's face down yeah and then we've got bones of somebody else in here as well there's up to
27:3710 individuals within the pit based on the number of skulls so we're talking piles of heads piles of
27:45legs all stacked together quite macabre yeah you can see here this individual is laid out flat
27:52and but you can see the head is a little bit wonky and then when you get closer into the skull
27:57you can see there's a really well-defined chop mark just on the lower jaw here so this individual
28:03has been declared this individual's been decapitated but then you've got this jumble of bones above it
28:07i think what's weird and what we need to kind of think harder about is the way that the body parts
28:12were collected and then deposited it'll be really interesting as that analysis proceeds to see if
28:18there's any other evidence of violence any old heels weapon injuries yeah because you immediately
28:24start to think are you looking at soldiers yeah who are prisoners of war and they've been executed yeah
28:32so coming back to our man here we know he survived a trepanation we've got an idea about why he might have
28:39had a trepanation to begin with and then we're wondering if he is local or if he might have come
28:46across the north sea yeah exactly and you're going to find out i hope will you come back and tell me
28:51absolutely absolutely i wonder who he was
29:05next we're staying in central britain and heading to the hamlet of wolsthorpe by colsterworth 35 miles south of lincoln
29:35isaac newton it was here where a young isaac newton first began to question the world around him
29:46but this dig isn't about newton's discoveries it's about his beginnings
29:51and his mother hannah the woman whose choices shaped one of history's greatest minds
29:57isaac newton's isaac newton's father was a sheep farmer but he died before isaac was born
30:15when isaac was three his mother remarried and moved a mile away leaving him to be raised by his
30:22grandparents at wolsthorpe a decade later widowed again hannah returned to manage the newton estate
30:34she repaired the manor and built a new house beside it for herself and her younger children
30:41that house has long since vanished
30:43but now a team from york archaeology and the national trust is digging to uncover its footprint
30:54and traces of the private world that shaped a genius archaeologist laura parker leads the dig
31:03this in theory is the internal area of the house we have a couple of stones here that seem to be
31:09standing quite proud and seem to be quite faced it's possible that these could be remains of one of the
31:16walls moving over slightly further some kind of cobbled surface maybe some kind of path you can actually
31:23see the edging of it here external to the house if the wall is around here we'll just need to do a
31:30little bit more work on it just to see what we can find
31:32hannah's house was part of a working farmstead and when isaac was 17 it was time for him to run the
31:43estate but it proved disastrous as house and collections officer jenny johns explains
31:52isaac's destiny was to be ahead of the newton family to marry have children and be able to continue
31:57the newton name here as a sheep farm at wilson manor but it turns out he left the sheep unattended he
32:03forgot his horse when he went to grantham and left it behind on his way home hannah realized that this
32:09wasn't going to be his destiny he was far too busy making models of windmills and making water clocks
32:15and really trying to discover more about the world around him and hannah didn't stop him because of hannah
32:21isaac was given the access to the education that was the foundation that led to him changing the world
32:30hannah was central to isaac's life and as the footprint of her house emerges the fines offer
32:37glimpses into their daily world just here we've got a lovely little button definitely
32:45at least 18th century you can tell by the fitting on the back
32:51we've had a range of pottery this is staffordshire slipware dating from around 1690s through to 1750s
33:00so this could easily have been from a bowl or a plate or something that would have been in
33:05hannah's house they've got two different kinds of slip on the pot when you glaze over the top and fire
33:11it it comes out with these really lovely yellows and browns and then going into domestic objects we've
33:17got this lovely buckle here that still just hinges uh possibly a shoe buckle rather than a belt buckle
33:23so it gives you an idea of the fashions of the time a very small thimble likely to be a child's
33:30thimble back in hannah's time girls would have been practicing embroidery hannah's children may have been
33:37using something similar to this maybe even this particular one
33:40the fines and foundations give us an impression of daily life here but to uncover more about hannah's
33:52character professor yasmin khan is searching the lincolnshire archives
33:56these documents are the will of hannah smith and an inventory of all her goods when she died
34:10on the sixth day of june 1679 at the top of this inventory we can see that it lists all the goods
34:18and chattels of hannah smith all the different rooms in the house a cellar a kitchen a coal house
34:25and a yard we also get a sense of the things that are inside the house silver spoons cupboards
34:33a bed with bedding but this isn't just a house it's also a working farmstead agricultural implements
34:40six horses 200 sheep so really quite prosperous i think what's important to remember is this is hannah's
34:48stuff these are her things that she has accumulated and earned but there's something here unexpected which
34:54is items due unto her bills bonds and other debts and there's this really large number here 1400
35:02pounds now in today's money that's about quarter of a million what this shows is that she's been
35:08money lending this is a shrewd lady who understands numbers understands money is literate and although
35:16she's not an aristocrat she's clearly making the most of her situation and profiting from this farmstead
35:22the inventory gives us a sense of the material goods and what was in the house but the will
35:30really gives us insight into who hannah was as a person i give unto my daughter hannah smith all my
35:39household goods provided that she not be married before the time of my decease unlike aristocrats at the
35:46time always giving everything to the eldest son hannah is ensuring that her unmarried daughter is safe and
35:52secure for the future when we turn onto the second page there's something else i give unto my son isaac
36:02newton the fields of buckminster in the county of lincoln which i purchased off thomas fountain
36:09go down a little bit further and it says more fields of buckminster which i purchased off henry hill
36:16hannah's going out of her way to show us in the first person she's bought this land and we know how
36:22she's done it because she's owed all this money she's money lending so hannah is very savvy she's accumulating
36:31wealth she's using the money that she's earning to buy land and she's able to leave this to her heirs
36:39the more i explored these documents the clearer it becomes that hannah was an extraordinary 17th
36:48century entrepreneur
36:52twice widowed she ran a thriving farmstead built wealth and supported her family
37:00her son became one of history's greatest scientists but the apple clearly didn't fall
37:04far from the tree hannah's savvy intelligence and determination laid the foundation for it all
37:21of the tree hannah's theory and that hannah's theory and killed her let us know
37:31and to stick with her i mean we will see we've been about to come to us we've been about to try and
37:34and to take our own way to come to me we've been about to come to the heavens we've been about to come to us
37:39Let's gather us up to the heavens above
37:46We can always come back, my love
37:51We can always come back, my love
37:58Archaeology reveals all sorts of different types of evidence
38:06From the architecture that people made to the artefacts they created
38:12And sometimes of course the remains of the people themselves in the form of human bones
38:16But we do find other bones on archaeological sites
38:20That give us an insight into the relationship of humans with the wider natural world
38:26The animals that they interacted with
38:29That they ate, that they rode and that they kept as pets
38:36Our next dig takes us to the foot of the Wittenham Clumps
38:41Ten miles south of Oxford
38:44Archaeologists have been excavating here since 2018
38:50And they've recently discovered a Roman farmhouse
38:54Built on top of an Iron Age settlement
38:59Layer by layer the site is revealing how the lives of humans and animals
39:08Have been woven together for centuries
39:10Archaeologist Nat Jackson is leading the dig
39:17We've got nearly 10,000 fragments of animal bone from the excavation so far
39:23This is one of the remarkable things about the site
39:25We can see how that relationship is evolving through the Iron Age and into the Roman period
39:31At least 15 Iron Age roundhouses have been uncovered so far
39:38As well as traces of the livestock that these farmers tended
39:43In front of me we've got a cow jaw
39:47And then underneath we've got another bit of horn core
39:50And then just to show you the sheer variety of all the animals that we have discovered on the site
39:55In the Iron Age
39:57We've got more cow
39:58We've got sheep
40:00Pig
40:01There was also some tiny bones from smaller creatures
40:06We're also finding a huge amount of dogs on this site
40:11Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated by humans tens of thousands of years ago
40:19They often turn up on Iron Age sites
40:23Looking at animal remains can help us build a bigger picture of people's lives in the past
40:30What we've got here is an intact dog skeleton
40:36So meaningful to find something like this
40:40Because we all know dogs
40:41We really care about them
40:43And you can really see that the family who buried this 2,000 years ago
40:47Also really cared about this dog
40:48It's laid out in such a beautiful way
40:51And now we're the first ones looking at it again
40:54And it's going to teach us so much about the people who were living here 2,000 years ago
40:57As the Iron Age gave way to the Roman period in Britain
41:08Society and landscapes changed
41:12But dogs remained a familiar presence
41:17Leaving behind tiny clues to their place in people's lives
41:22As find specialist Carina Garland reveals
41:26I wanted to show you this absolutely fantastic ceramic building material
41:32It's Roman
41:33And in this little corner here you can just see a little paw print
41:37When the Romans were making tiles
41:40They would have made them and then they would have left them out to dry
41:43Chances are a cheeky little dog ran across this tile and left its mark
41:48We have had lots of examples of animals on site
41:53I don't think I've ever worked on a site that has this many dogs
41:56Maya Pina Dacia has come to the tent
42:07Bringing some of the remains of these Iron Age and Roman dogs
42:11And she has some interesting theories about some of these bones
42:16Maya, this is a bit of a surprise
42:25But it does tell quite a story
42:27So this is an Iron Age dog that we found on our dig
42:31And at the time we excavated we were, you know, we kind of got really interested in
42:35Why was it buried here? Was this some kind of ritual? Was it a sacrifice? Did no one want it anymore?
42:40Or was it a much loved working animal that was laid to rest with care and affection?
42:46So what work have you done on it then? What are you able to tell about it?
42:48The first thing we can see is that all of the joint surfaces have fused on
42:51So we know it's an adult
42:52It's a mature dog
42:53And when we actually look at the teeth and see some of the wear pattern on it
42:57So you can't be too precise
42:58But it does sort of match up with a dog that's around maybe 10 plus years old
43:03Okay, so a very mature dog
43:04It's actually quite a mature dog
43:05Yeah
43:06And there's no calculus
43:08Healthy, healthy dog
43:10Yeah, good diet
43:11Because, you know, one of the problems that we have with our pet dogs today
43:14Is that if they're eating a diet with a lot of cereals in
43:16They do tend to get plaque and calculus building up on their teeth
43:20I have to brush my dog's teeth
43:21To clean them
43:21Yeah
43:21So we know, you know, from the shape of the skull and the size of the skeleton and the legs
43:25Sort of roughly what size it was
43:27Something around the size of a modern Labrador
43:30But things start to get really interesting when we take a closer look at some of the bones
43:35Well, my eye is immediately drawn by that
43:36Yeah, you've gone exactly to the right place
43:39So that's the tibia
43:40And that looks like it's sustained a fracture
43:42Yeah
43:42Which is healed
43:43Quite a nasty one as well
43:44Really serious break
43:46But what you can see is that it's healed
43:48So we know this animal has been cared for
43:50It's been looked after
43:51And it's lived for quite a long time
43:52After what looks like quite a serious, serious injury
43:55But that's not the end of its story
43:57We've also got its stomach contents
43:59Okay
43:59So we've got the feet bones of a sheep
44:02Right, okay
44:03And what we can see when we look really closely at it
44:05Is that some of them
44:06You can even see the outer bone loss
44:07Which suggests maybe it's been in the stomach
44:09It was found in the stomach area, was it?
44:12Yeah
44:12Yeah
44:12And also a little toad bone
44:13So maybe it's also been scavenging
44:15Oh, really?
44:15Catching some of its own food as well
44:17To supplement the diet
44:18But it certainly suggests
44:19That someone's been feeding it
44:20Or it's been collecting butchered animal waste
44:23And at the back of the throat
44:24We found two more
44:25Oh, really?
44:27And you're sure that these are
44:29Not just part of the fill of the pit
44:32That they were very, very closely associated
44:34With the neck veins
44:35Yeah, they were very, very closely inside
44:36When we lifted the skull out
44:38Yeah
44:38So potentially the cause of death
44:40Potentially
44:41Choking on the feet of the sheep
44:42That it's been eating
44:43Yeah
44:44It's had quite a life
44:45It's lived a long time
44:46It's had some sort of injury
44:47It's been cared for
44:49And buried
44:50Buried with respect
44:51So this is just one aspect
44:53Of how humans interacted
44:55Or related to dogs
44:56In the Iron Age
44:57They had medium-sized dogs
44:58They were usually working animals
44:59Yeah
44:59That doesn't mean to say
45:00They didn't care about them
45:01That they weren't part of life
45:03In the settlement
45:04And what about these bones?
45:06So these come from a later period
45:08So the same site
45:09We've got the Iron Age settlement
45:11But right on top of it
45:12We've got the remains
45:12Of a Roman villa or farmstead
45:16What happens in the Roman period
45:17Is something really quite interesting
45:19We have again
45:20Probably medium-sized dog
45:22Working animal
45:23But then we've got these two
45:24Much, much smaller dogs
45:27And we don't find small dogs
45:29In the Iron Age period
45:31Really at all
45:32They are something that comes in
45:33With the Romans
45:34And from our estimations
45:36This one would have stood
45:37About 20 centimetres tall
45:39And is currently
45:41As far as we know
45:42The fifth smallest
45:43Roman dog found in Britain
45:44So you're talking about
45:45Chihuahua size
45:46Exactly
45:46The size of a Chihuahua
45:48They started bringing them over
45:49Because on the continent
45:51They started to breed them as pets
45:52We think of having small dogs
45:54As something that's a modern phenomenon
45:56But actually it's something
45:57That started in Britain
45:59With the Romans
46:00It is interesting
46:01Because so often
46:02We are so focused on the humans
46:04And actually
46:05The animals are really, really important
46:07They're part of the context
46:08They're part of the ecology of the humans
46:09I think it's quite an interesting story
46:11Seeing the evolution
46:12Of how our relationship
46:13With dogs and animals
46:14Has changed over time
46:17The centre of Britain
46:39Is richly layered in history
46:41Some of the most imposing landmarks
46:45Date from recent centuries
46:47From the time of the Industrial Revolution
46:50But the impetus for that transformative period
46:55Has much more ancient roots
46:57For our next dig
47:04Torrey is off to Brumbo
47:06In North Wales
47:07To what was once a booming metalworks
47:11During the Industrial Revolution
47:14Standing amongst these industrial relics
47:24I can almost hear the roar of the furnaces
47:26And feel the energy of this place
47:29These furnaces produced thousands of tons of iron and steel each year
47:41They were the powerhouses
47:42They were the powerhouses
47:42Of the Industrial Revolution
47:44But the story of how this industry was born
47:49Goes much deeper
47:51To a world 300 million years old
47:57I'm meeting paleontologist Tim Astrop
48:04To discover the ancient origins of coal
48:07The fuel that powered it all
48:10Tim, I've just walked through
48:12The most amazing industrial site
48:14Yes, it's in a derelict condition
48:15But you just get a sense of the sheer scale
48:18Of the activity that was going on here
48:19The story here is pretty amazing
48:22This is the only place in the world
48:23Where you can see the fossils
48:24That produced the coal
48:25That fired the industry
48:26That built the community
48:28Within such a small area
48:29What are you doing here?
48:31What's going on?
48:31We're excavating an in-situ fossilised forest
48:35It's about 300 million years old
48:3640 million years before dinosaurs
48:38So this stuff was already fossilised
48:40By the time dinosaurs were walking around
48:42Carboniferous was a remarkable period
48:46In Earth's history
48:47When, under just the right conditions
48:50Ancient plants were compressed
48:52And transformed into coal
48:54But not all the plants here became coal
49:00Some were fossilised
49:01Probably as a result of an ancient flood
49:04Now, these fossils offer a rare glimpse
49:12Of what this extraordinary landscape
49:14Once looked like
49:15Look at this
49:18Yeah
49:19This is awesome
49:20You don't need to be an expert
49:22No
49:22To realise that this is a massive fossil tree
49:25It really stands out
49:26This is a giant lycopod
49:27One of the most easily recognisable trees
49:29Of the Carboniferous period
49:30Big broccoli-type top leaves
49:33Coming off of the bark
49:34It was a very, very strange
49:35Alien-looking tree
49:36Is there anything like this on Earth today?
49:39There is
49:39They survive today as diminutive little club mosses
49:43But during the Carboniferous
49:44They were one of the first groups of plants
49:46To have a go at being a really big tree
49:48How tall would it have been?
49:49Some of the estimates for these guys
49:51Get to about 100, 120 foot
49:52What?
49:53Like, that is, like, way, way, way
49:56Yeah
49:56Way up there
49:57And when you talk about it being a fossil forest
50:00It actually was a forest
50:02But a forest like none
50:03That we'll be familiar with today
50:05No, it'd be very strange
50:06And what about these nodules?
50:07What's that?
50:08This whole area is completely jam-packed
50:11Full of something called siderite concretions
50:13Which are ironstone balls
50:15That 50, 60% of the time
50:17Contain a nice, beautiful fossil inside
50:19I was going to say
50:19Is there something inside them?
50:20There is, yeah
50:21These hard ironstone concretions
50:26Formed when iron-rich water
50:28Cemented ancient swamp mud
50:30Around plant or animal remains
50:32Hundreds have been found on site
50:35By cracking them open
50:37We can see what the plants inside
50:40Once looked like
50:41Hey
50:42Tom Hughes is on hand
50:45To show me how it's done
50:46OK, so what's the technique?
50:50We want to smash them
50:51Down that orientation
50:52Because the plant
50:53If there's one in there
50:55Will be lying flat
50:56Along that plane
50:57OK, so tap, tap, tap
50:59And then whack
50:59Yeah, so you tap, then whack
51:01See how the rock reacts as you go
51:02Tap, then whack
51:04It is harder than it looks
51:12That was a good split
51:14Oh, my goodness
51:16OK
51:17OK
51:19Oh, look
51:20Nice
51:22It looks like a little
51:23Tiny, tiny leaf
51:24Is that a leaf?
51:25That is a long
51:26Single leaf
51:27So that's called a cyperitis
51:29And it's the leaves
51:30From the giant
51:31Clubboss trees
51:32Branches will be covered
51:34In millions of these little leaves
51:35And you can see the vein
51:37Running through the centre of it
51:38Oh, my God
51:40That's so cool
51:41The sheer number of fossils
51:46Paints a vivid picture
51:47Of a lost landscape
51:49But among them
51:51One plant
51:52Stands out
51:54Remarkably similar
51:56To the fern-like horse tails
51:57We see today
51:58These ancient plants
52:02Once thrived
52:03In swampy forests
52:04Their tall
52:06Jointed stems
52:07Rising above
52:08The prehistoric undergrowth
52:10The horse tails
52:13Are probably
52:13The most common plant
52:15That we have here
52:15All across this surface
52:17We've mapped
52:1883 so far
52:20There's so many
52:21Like one, two, three
52:22Four
52:23Yeah
52:23Five
52:24But that's it
52:25These guys were probably
52:2615, 20 metres tall
52:28And these probably represent
52:29A single thicket
52:30That was living
52:31All at the same time
52:32That's a proper thicket
52:34Some of the horse tails
52:37Have been carefully removed
52:39So the rock encasing them
52:41Can be separated
52:42From the fossilised plant beneath
52:44They're taking off
52:46The sediment
52:46All the rock bits
52:47That were attached to it
52:48Underneath
52:48And then we're exposing
52:49The plant itself
52:51You can really see it
52:52And it's broken into pieces
52:54Yeah
52:55Is that just the way
52:56The layers in the
52:58Preserving mud
52:59Have broken it
52:59Or is this a feature
53:00Of the actual plant itself
53:01Good question
53:01So these are actually
53:03Part of the plant
53:04These are the nodal sections
53:06Right
53:06Yeah
53:06You've got some actual
53:07Modern day
53:08It's our inspiration
53:09And this is growing on the site
53:10Just a few metres away
53:11You see those same stripes
53:13Yes
53:13So you've got some ribbing
53:14Up and down the stem
53:15And then at each section
53:16These are the nodes
53:17And at each node
53:18You have the leaves
53:19Or the branches
53:20Coming out
53:21So that's what you have here
53:22Basically exactly the same
53:24Just a lot bigger
53:25Way bigger
53:26The large fossils
53:31Build a picture
53:32Of what this strange forest
53:34Would have looked like
53:35While it's the smaller fossils
53:37That reveal
53:38The most intricate details
53:40We also have
53:42Some really beautiful
53:44Seed ferns
53:45Some of them were trees
53:46Some of them were just
53:47Scrambling ferns
53:48This one is what we call
53:49A leonescent plant
53:50This was actually
53:51Climbing trees
53:52So it was using
53:53Some of the large
53:54Standing lycopods
53:56And horsetails
53:57To wind its way up
53:58Unfurl at the top
54:00Of the canopy
54:00And almost parasitise
54:01The top of the canopy
54:02With giant fronds
54:03It's absolutely beautiful
54:05What this site can tell us
54:06Is how those organisms
54:07Interact with each other
54:08This one's really cool
54:10This is only found in Brumbo
54:12It's a true fern
54:14And it's a species
54:15Called Illyria fosteri
54:17And it's named after
54:18Andrew Foster
54:18Who discovered the site
54:19Oh my gosh
54:21It's cute isn't it
54:22It's really cute
54:23I love finding these things
54:24How many of these do you have
54:25Are they rare
54:26We've probably found
54:27Around 10,000
54:28Since we started
54:29And this building
54:30We think only covers
54:31A fifth of the productive area
54:33That we could be excavating
54:34Each fossil
54:38Is a glimpse
54:39Into this ancient world
54:40But not all the forests
54:43Were preserved
54:44Like the one we've seen
54:45Some were compressed
54:48And transformed into coal
54:50The fuel that powered
54:52Britain's industrial revolution
54:54When you said coal seam
54:57I wasn't quite expecting it to be
54:59Like this visible
55:00At the surface
55:01Yeah
55:02The coal seam that you see here
55:04Is the result of
55:04These forests
55:05Living and dying
55:06Over thousands and thousands
55:08Of years
55:08Everything in here
55:09Has been cooked out
55:10And it's just the carbon
55:11That remains from the plants
55:12And this is just one of
55:1312 to 13 seams
55:14In this coal field
55:15And there's coal fields
55:16All over the planet
55:17And when you think about it
55:18That's millions of years
55:20Worth of carbon sequestration
55:21Being pumped back
55:22Into the atmosphere
55:23In two, three hundred years
55:25Think of an eye really
55:26Here at Brumbo
55:31The connection
55:32Between its ancient forest
55:34And the industrial world
55:35It fuelled
55:36Is tangible
55:37300 million year old plants
55:42Transformed
55:43Into the energy
55:45That built a nation
55:46You were completely
56:00In your element
56:01Tori
56:02With this one
56:03You had fossils
56:04It was absolutely amazing
56:08Yeah
56:08It's so unusual
56:10To see a site like that
56:12Open
56:12And active
56:15Entire industrial revolution
56:17Was built upon
56:18300 million year old
56:21Preservation of tropical forests
56:23And you see it so clearly
56:25At Brumbo
56:26They've got the coal deposits
56:27There as well
56:28As the fossil forest itself
56:29And when you look at it
56:30And you realise
56:31That that is
56:32Just one tiny portion
56:33Of millions and millions
56:35And millions of years
56:37Of rainforest growth
56:38Compressed
56:39And that was
56:41Burnt in an instant
56:42And it's all that
56:43Sunlight energy
56:44That was chapped
56:45300 million years ago
56:46Released again
56:47At that moment
56:48That the coal is burnt
56:49Getting that context
56:50And understanding that
56:51I think it is really
56:53It's really powerful
56:54It's really tangible
56:55Something which
56:56You could only get
56:58In places where you put
56:59The whole story together
57:01Not just the history
57:02Not just the archaeology
57:04But the entire deep time
57:06Setting
57:06For why things happen
57:09Where and when they do
57:11And in terms of engagement
57:12And learning and education
57:14I think we're seeing
57:15At that site
57:16Which is very much
57:17About paleontology
57:18The same thing
57:18As we see with archaeology
57:19It's the power
57:20Of the physical
57:21You're not just reading it
57:23In a book
57:24You're not looking at it
57:25On a screen
57:25You're actually confronted
57:27With that physical reality
57:28It's really
57:30Really really special
57:31Next time on
57:36Digging for Britain
57:36An ancient fort
57:38Surprises the archaeologists
57:40What seems obvious
57:42Often isn't
57:42And there's truth
57:43Is lying in the soil
57:44Two huge Roman swords
57:46Are discovered by chance
57:48What's the chances of me
57:49On my second time
57:50Detecting to find
57:52Such a wonderful item
57:53And a search
57:54For the fabled tin isles
57:56Oh my gosh
57:58That is a bronze age fingerprint
57:59Reveals the crucial role
58:02Cornwall played
58:03In the bronze age
58:04It's destroyed the thing completely
58:08More human history
58:13On BBC4 now
58:14As Tribe joins
58:16Reindeer herders
58:16In Siberia
58:17Or head out of this world
58:19With Brian Cox
58:20Seven days on Mars
58:22As part of the
58:22Exploring the Cosmos series
58:24On iPlayer
58:24Meanwhile Laura Koonsberg
58:26Asks whether Reform UK
58:28Is ready to be
58:28A party of government
58:30Next on BBC2
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