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Digging for Britain - Season 13 - Episode 05: Medieval Murder and Roman Pets
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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.
02:48To overcomeائous mosaic stars.
02:53For almost everything that is,
02:53To be able to get old,
02:54To be able to grow and work.
02:54To be able to grow after a while.
02:56To be able to grow.
03:00To be able to grow and work.
03:04To be able to grow your dreams.
03:04To be able to grow a garden.
03:07To be able to grow and grow this kind of building.
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.
04:23And 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, and then the reason why we're
04:49here is 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.
05:03So it's a landscape story.
05:04When I see this and go, that's actually just a pretty impressive Roman site, but it's
05:07the landscape that is key here.
05:09Absolutely.
05:10We believe that what we're uncovering here is a prehistoric landscape that's focused on
05:14the River Severn, trading on the Severn, perhaps living off the Severn.
05:18And 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.
05:37Giving direct access to one of Britain's great waterways, a route south to the sea and north
05:45into the heart of Britain.
05:49This would have been a prime location for establishing new Roman routes into Britain.
05:56Tony 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 lived
06:09here.
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.
06:24All this would have been in the heated space, and the mosaics would have sat on the floor this
06:28height.
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?
06:34Yep.
06:35This is probably the foundations of one of the steps into the bath.
06:38So it would have stepped 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 wall paintings or mosaics around us.
06:49This would have been a very luxurious place.
06:52And we probably would have been sat in a marble bath as well.
06:55Imagine like 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, there 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 fancy
07:08floors and really decorated.
07:10And the early period of Roman occupation in Britain, this kind of opulence was an unusual
07:14thing.
07:17The grandeur of the bath house implies that the people who inhabited this landscape almost
07:232,000 years 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 found something.
07:42Yeah, so we're clearing down this gravel layer and we think we've found a twisted wire bracelet.
07:48So you're sort of 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.
07:58Oh 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 bath house.
08:12On 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
08:29from the bath house.
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.
08:40Yeah.
08:41It'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.
08:53Oh, 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.
09:04Oh, right.
09:05That sort of laurel crown or something like that.
09:07Yeah, that's correct, yeah.
09:07So again, you saw that picture of this bath house, so the people are coming in richly decorated
09:12with some serious Roman bling, and you've got these 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 writing, and then the flat end is your
09:40razor to rub the wax back out again.
09:43It'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.
09:52It'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 bath house 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 A.D.
10:18A Trajan denarius, silver, 103.
10:22Everyone's heard of this one as Hadrian.
10:24He's around from 117 A.D.
10:27And a beautiful silver denarii of Empress Faustina.
10:31That's around 171.
10:33OK, so you've got everything from, like, 80 A.D. to 171 A.D.
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 fourth-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,
11:10most reached their heyday in the fourth century.
11:15The finds here point to something unusual for the area,
11:19evidence 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,
12:32but something that's been far less studied is the animals that were involved.
12:37Professor Naomi Sykes has been looking at a new study investigating the evolution of the warhorse.
12:49As a zoo archaeologist, I'm fascinated by this new research.
12:53It sheds light on a pivotal moment in Britain's history.
12:57The 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 warhorses 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.
13:44What 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.
13:54In 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,
14:02but they didn't habitually fight on horseback, which 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, 1066, the most famous days in English history.
14:15We see Normans fighting on horseback and we see the Anglo-Saxons fighting dismounted.
14:21So this must have been incredibly overwhelming for the Anglo-Saxon army.
14:27Yes, it's in many ways symbolised by the image down here of a defeated Anglo-Saxon warrior
14:32beneath the hooves of a marauding Norman warhorse.
14:35It 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.
15:00Carly, 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,
15:20the medieval horse was much smaller than 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.
15:49So 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 morphometric,
16:44Carly captures hundreds of photos of a particular bone in the hock joint to build precise 3D replicas,
16:52revealing its exact shape in extraordinary detail.
16:57By comparing the shape and size of each sample,
17:01she can analyze subtle differences that show how Norman war horses were built 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,
17:25because they weren't that much shorter or longer, but they were much fatter.
17:28Whereas our Saxon horses plot with a skinnier and possibly slightly longer shape to them.
17:32So 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,
17:49where a horse needs to be able to go fast 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,
17:59which is giving those horses more manoeuvrability 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.
18:16Geometric 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 hill fort in Cambridgeshire,
19:57suggesting those individuals had come 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 hill fort nearby.
20:49But new dating by a team from Cambridge University tells a different story.
20:56The 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 return 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 and 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? And why were they left here?
22:35What we've got now is another individual.
22:38This is your femur, which is the top.
22:40And then you've got your tibia and your fibula down here, which are 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,
22:58which would be classically male trait.
23:01Is there any speculation on the treatment of the individual?
23:05There's no care going into this.
23:06It's get rid of the decomposing corpse.
23:10I would say this was done pretty quickly.
23:12Yeah.
23:12And then another person on top, and another person on top, and another person on top.
23:19And they're not going into the wrong body.
23:19These were young men who seem to have met a violent end, their bodies thrown into a pit.
23:28Trish looks for further clues in their skeletons
23:33They are incredibly dense for long bones
23:36which means that these people were doing quite a lot of activity
23:40quite a lot of load bearing
23:41If they weren't young males, 17 to 24
23:45that would probably make sense if they were doing a lot of fighting
23:50As the team continued to dig
23:52more 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
24:06and I've managed to uncover three schools over here
24:12The individuals we're studying are a very similar age
24:15if not the exact same age as me
24:17and it really brings back a lot of humanity to what we're studying
24:21thinking about how they may have lived
24:24how they may have died
24:27The team meticulously record every detail
24:34Obviously we're dealing with a very traumatic event
24:37and we need to be very controlled about how we excavate and lift
24:42It's quite a hard process now
24:45We've done the easy part
24:46and now it's the hard, hard work
24:51The team will now carefully lift the bones
24:54and send them to the lab
24:56where further analysis will help to shed light
24:59on evidence of disease and injury in these skeletons
25:02and perhaps even help us to understand how they died
25:15Oscar and osteologist Benjamin Neal
25:18have brought along one of the most intriguing skeletons to the tent
25:28So this is just one of these individuals then
25:31Oscar and Ben from this quite extraordinary sight
25:34and this is a beautifully preserved skeleton
25:37of, well, my first impression
25:39it's a very tall person
25:40He is a very tall person
25:42He's about six foot five
25:42Really?
25:43But what's really remarkable about this chap
25:46is the hole in his head
25:47That is not a weapon injury
25:49That is a classic case of trepanning
25:52It's a deliberately made hole in the head
25:55It's not an act of violence
25:56No, it's not
25:57He hasn't been assaulted
25:58He's been subjected to what is basically surgery
26:01Yes
26:02Is there any way that we can get any closer
26:04to understanding why somebody might have done this?
26:09This hole in the head is probably connected
26:11to why this individual is so tall
26:14OK, because he is unusually tall
26:16Stand out tall
26:17Yeah, yeah
26:18For the period
26:18One of the primary thoughts
26:20is that this individual had a tumour
26:22at the base of their brain
26:23So you've got the pituitary gland in there
26:26which produces a lot of hormones
26:28including growth hormones
26:29So when they're developing
26:31when they're young
26:32because the ends of the bones
26:34haven't fused properly
26:36the shafts just keep on growing
26:38But obviously they are starting to fuse now
26:41So there's a potential then
26:44that this is an individual
26:45who had an excess of growth hormone
26:47Yeah
26:47And that might be related to a pituitary tumour
26:50and the pituitary tumour
26:52then caused increased pressure
26:54inside the skull
26:55and that he experienced that as headaches
26:57and this is what this is trying to relieve
27:00To relieve, yeah
27:00So it's treating the symptom
27:02Yeah
27:02Rather than removing the tumour
27:04Obviously we start looking at the pathology
27:07in his skeleton now
27:08and one question that we might ask is
27:11has this trepanning caused his death?
27:14It hasn't, has it?
27:15Because actually this has healed over
27:16Yeah
27:17So this was done quite some time before death
27:20Yeah
27:20When does he date to?
27:22So 8th, 9th century CE
27:25Okay
27:25So he was talking in Anglo-Saxon
27:27Are we starting to have any Vikings attacking England at that point?
27:31Yeah
27:31Towards the late 9th century
27:33In the area where we are
27:34there's potentially a Viking camp
27:37in historical records
27:38So then we probably have to look at the wider cemetery
27:41don't we Oscar?
27:43Yeah
27:43Who he was
27:44and why he was there
27:46Yeah
27:46We've lifted this individual
27:48that we've got laid out on the table
27:49Oh my goodness
27:50That's our tall man
27:50Yes
27:51So we can see the back of his skull there
27:53Yeah
27:54So he's face down
27:55Yeah
27:55And then we've got bones of somebody else in here as well
27:58There's up to 10 individuals within the pit
28:01based on the number of skulls
28:03So we're talking piles of heads
28:06piles of legs
28:07all stacked together
28:09Quite macabre
28:10Yeah
28:10You can see here this individual
28:12is 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
28:19you can see there's a really well-defined trot mark
28:22just on the lower jaw here
28:23So this individual has been decapitated
28:25Yeah, this individual has been decapitated
28:27But then you've got this jumble of bones above it
28:29I think what's weird
28:30and what we need to kind of think harder about
28:32is the way that the body parts were collected
28:34and then deposited
28:36It'll be really interesting
28:38as that analysis proceeds
28:39to see if there's any other evidence
28:41of violence
28:42and the old heals weapon injuries
28:44Yeah
28:45Because you immediately start to think
28:47are you looking at soldiers
28:48Yeah
28:49Who are prisoners of war
28:51Yeah
28:52And they've been executed
28:53Yeah
28:53So coming back to our man here
28:56we know he survived a trepanation
28:58We've got an idea about why he might have had a trepanation
29:02to begin with
29:03and then we're wondering
29:05if he is local
29:07or if he might have come across the North Sea
29:09Yeah, exactly
29:10And you're going to find out
29:11I hope
29:12Will you come back and tell me?
29:13Yes, absolutely
29:14I wonder who he was
29:43Next we're staying
29:45in central Britain
29:46and heading to the hamlet of Walthorpe by Colsterworth
29:5135 miles south of Lincoln
29:59It was here where a young Isaac Newton
30:02first began to question the world around him
30:07But this dig isn't about Newton's discoveries
30:10It's about his beginnings
30:12and his mother, Hannah
30:14the woman whose choices shaped one of history's greatest minds
30:22It's a story that takes us back
30:24to the early modern period
30:29Isaac Newton's father was a sheep farmer
30:32but he died before Isaac was born
30:37When Isaac was three
30:38his mother remarried
30:40and moved a mile away
30:41leaving him to be raised by his grandparents
30:44at Walthorpe
30:48A decade later
30:50widowed again
30:51Hannah returned
30:52to manage the Newton estate
30:55She repaired the manor
30:57and built a new house beside it
30:59for herself and her younger children
31:02That house
31:03has long since vanished
31:06But now a team from York Archaeology
31:09and the National Trust
31:10is digging to uncover its footprint
31:15and traces of the private world
31:17that shaped a genius
31:20Archaeologist Laura Parker
31:22leads the dig
31:24This, in theory, is the internal area of the house
31:29We have a couple of stones here
31:30that seem to be standing quite proud
31:32and seem to be quite faced
31:34It's possible that these could be remains
31:37of one of the walls
31:38Moving over slightly further
31:40some kind of cobbled surface
31:42maybe some kind of path
31:44You can actually see the edging of it here
31:47external to the house
31:48if the wall is around here
31:50We'll just need to do a little bit more work on it
31:52just to see what we can find
31:58Hannah's house was part of a working farmstead
32:01and when Isaac was 17
32:02it was time for him to run the estate
32:06But it proved disastrous
32:08as House and Collections Officer
32:10Jenny Johns explains
32:14Isaac's destiny
32:15was to be head of the Newton family
32:16to marry, have children
32:17and be able to continue the Newton name here
32:20as a sheep farm at Woolstock Manor
32:22but it turns out he left the sheep unattended
32:25He forgot his horse when he went to Grantham
32:27and 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
32:35and making water clocks
32:37and 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
32:45that was the foundation that led to him changing the world
32:51Hannah was central to Isaac's life
32:54and as the footprint of her house emerges
32:57the finds offer glimpses into their daily world
33:02Just here, we've got a lovely little button
33:05definitely at least 18th century
33:08you can tell by the fitting on the back
33:14We've had a range of pottery
33:16This is Staffordshire slipware
33:19dating from around 1690s through to 1750s
33:22so this could easily have been from a bowl or a plate
33:25or something that would have been in Hannah's house
33:27They've got two different kinds of slip on the pot
33:30When you glaze over the top and fire it
33:32it comes out with these really lovely yellows and browns
33:35and then going into domestic objects
33:38we've got this lovely buckle here
33:40that still just hinges
33:42possibly a shoe buckle rather than a belt buckle
33:45so it gives you an idea of the fashions of the time
33:47A very small thimble
33:50likely to be a child's thimble
33:52Back in Hannah's time
33:54girls would have been practising embroidery
33:56Hannah's children may have been using something similar to this
34:00maybe 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
34:14Professor Yasmin Khan is searching the Lincolnshire archives
34:24These documents are the will of Hannah Smith
34:28and an inventory of all her goods when she died
34:32on the sixth day of June 1679
34:35At the top of this inventory
34:37we can see that it lists all the goods and chattels of Hannah Smith
34:41all the different rooms in the house
34:43a cellar
34:44a kitchen
34:45a coal house
34:47and a yard
34:48We also get a sense of the things that are inside the house
34:51silver spoons
34:53cupboards
34:54a bed with bedding
34:56But this isn't just a house
34:58it's also a working farmstead
35:00agricultural implements
35:02six horses
35:03200 sheep
35:05so really quite prosperous
35:06I think what's important to remember is this is Hannah's stuff
35:10these are her things
35:11that she has accumulated and earned
35:13But there's something here unexpected
35:15which is items due unto her
35:18bills, bonds and other debts
35:20and there's this really large number here
35:22fourteen hundred 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
35:34understands money, is literate
35:36and although she's not an aristocrat
35:38she's clearly making the most of her situation
35:41and profiting from this farmstead
35:43The inventory gives us a sense of the material goods
35:48and what was in the house
35:49but the will
35:51really
35:52gives us insight into who Hannah was
35:55as a person
35:56I give unto my daughter
35:58Hannah Smith
35:59all my household goods
36:01provided that she not be married before the time of my decease
36:05Unlike aristocrats at the time
36:08always giving everything to the eldest son
36:10Hannah is ensuring that her unmarried daughter is safe and secure for the future
36:16When we turn onto the second page
36:18there's something else
36:21I give unto my son Isaac Newton
36:24the fields of Buckminster in the county of Lincoln
36:28which I purchased off Thomas Fountain
36:30Go down a little bit further and it says
36:33more fields of Buckminster
36:34which I purchased off Henry Hill
36:37Hannah's going out of her way
36:39to show us in the first person
36:41she's bought this land
36:43and we know how she's done it
36:44because she's owed all this money
36:46she's money lending
36:48so Hannah is very savvy
36:51she's accumulating wealth
36:53she's using the money that she's earning to buy land
36:56and she's able to leave this to her heirs
37:04The more I explored these documents
37:06the clearer it becomes
37:08that Hannah was an extraordinary 17th century entrepreneur
37:13Twice widowed
37:14she ran a thriving farmstead
37:16built wealth
37:17and 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
37:27Hannah's savvy intelligence and determination
37:31laid the foundation for it all
38:03so I've got her to try to buy it
38:03she's a portfolio
38:03one of the the เด
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
41:12and 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
41:35But 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
41:57you can just see a little paw print
41:59When the Romans were making tiles
42:02they would have made them
42:03and then they would have left them out to dry
42:04chances are a cheeky little dog ran across this tile
42:09and 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
42:46this 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
42:55you know we kind of got really interested in
42:57why was it buried here
42:58was this some kind of ritual
42:59was it a sacrifice
43:00did no one want it anymore
43:01or was it a much loved working animal
43:04that was laid to rest with care and affection
43:07so what work have you done on it then?
43:09what are 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
43:17you can see some of the wear pattern on it
43:19you can't be too precise
43:20but it does sort of match up with a dog
43:22that's around maybe 10 plus years old
43:24okay so a very mature dog
43:26it's actually quite a mature dog
43:27yeah
43:28and there's no calculus
43:30healthy
43:30healthy dog
43:31yeah
43:32good 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
43:43to 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
44:01and that looks like it's sustained a fracture
44:04yes
44:04which is healed
44:05white and 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
44:20ok
44:21so we've got the feet bones of a sheep
44:23right
44:24ok
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
44:33yeah
44:33and 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
44:45and 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 neck veins
44:57they were very very closely inside when we lifted the skull out there
45:00yeah
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
45:10and buried
45:11buried with respect
45:13so
45:13this 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
45:25what about these bones?
45:27so these come from a later period
45:30so the same site
45:31we'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
45:44but 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
45:58this one would have stood about 20 centimetres 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
46:11because 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
46:30they're part of the ecology of the humans
46:31I think it's quite an interesting story
46:33seeing the evolution of how our relationship with dogs and animals
46:36has changed over time
46:44just a lonely radio
46:46just to make a shift show and tell
46:49playing out the lives that must be found
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 Tori 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
47:46I can almost hear the roar of the furnaces and feel the energy of this place
47:57these furnaces produce 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
48:48that 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
49:09under 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
49:23probably as a result of an ancient flood
49:30now these fossils offer a rare glimpse of what this extraordinary landscape once looked like
49:39look at this
49:40yeah
49:41this is awesome
49:42you don't need to be an expert
49:44to realise that this is a massive fossil tree
49:47it 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
50:06they were one of the first groups of plants to have a go at being a really 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?
50:14like that is like way, way, way
50:17way up there
50:19and when you talk about it being a fossil forest
50:21it 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?
50:29what'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
51:08ok, 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 plate
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
51:30it is harder than it looks
51:34that was a good split
51:36oh my goodness
51:38ok
51:40ok
51:41oh look
51:42nice
51:43it looks like a little tiny, tiny leaf
51:46is that a leaf?
51:47that is a long, single leaf
51:49that is a long, single leaf
51:49so that's called a Cyperites
51:50and it's the leaves from the giant plum moss 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
52:07paints 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 so many, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
52:46yeah
52:46these guys were probably 15, 20 metres tall
52:49and these probably represent a single thicket that was living
52:52all at the same time
52:54that's a proper thicket
52:57some of the horse tails have been carefully removed
53:00so the rock encasing them can be separated from the fossilised plant beneath
53:06they're taking off the sediment
53:08all 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
53:16is that just the way the layers in the preserving mud have broken it
53:21or is this a feature of the actual plant itself?
53:23good 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 devils
53:30it's our inspiration
53:30this is growing on the site just a few metres away
53:33you see those same stripes?
53:35that's it, 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
54:03we 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 exploring
54:58each 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
55:42being pumped back into the atmosphere in two, three hundred years
55:46think of an eye really
55:52here at Brumbo the connection between its ancient forest and the industrial world it fuelled is tangible
55:59three hundred million year old plants transformed into the energy that built a nation
56:20you were completely in your elements, 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
56:40three hundred million year old preservation of tropical forests
56:45and you see it so clearly at Brumbo
56:47they've got the coal deposits there as well as the fossil forest itself
56:51and when you look at it and you realise that that is just one tiny portion
56:55of millions and millions and 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
57:08released again at that moment that the coal is burnt
57:11getting that context and understanding that I think is really powerful
57:16it'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
57:25but the entire deep time setting for why things happen where and when they do
57:32and in terms of engagement and learning and education
57:36I think we're seeing at that site, which is very much about paleontology
57:39the same thing as we see with archaeology
57:41it's the power of the physical
57:43you're not just reading it in a book
57:45you're not looking at it on a screen
57:47you're actually confronted with that physical reality
57:50it's really, really, really special
57:56next time on Digging for Britain
57:58an ancient fort surprises the archaeologists
58:02what seems obvious often isn't
58:04and 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
58:12to find such a wonderful item?
58:14and a search for the fabled Tin Isles
58:18oh my gosh
58:20that is a Bronze Age fingerprint
58:21reveals 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
58:33and look in for a scholar
58:37I dig for those who store it
58:41live in very past
58:44future's one
58:45and 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 but
58:59to lay us in the sun
58:59to lay you down
58:59so you can't see it
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