- 7 weeks ago
The south of England offers rich pickings, including the earliest money made in Britain and a massive haul of Roman treasure that brings to life the fall of the empire in Britain.
罕见的罗马雕像：考古学家在某处年代更早建筑的环形沟渠内，发掘出了三尊保存极佳的真人大小罗马石质半身像（分别描绘了一名成年男性、一名成年女性和一名儿童）。
六边形玻璃壶：考古人员发现了一件罕见且完整的公元1世纪罗马玻璃壶，该壶出土时已破碎，后经精心拼合复原。
诺曼征服前的盎格鲁-撒克逊塔楼：在公元1080年建成的诺曼式教堂下方进行的考古发掘，揭示了一座更早期的萨克逊晚期塔楼的地基，以及包含二次利用罗马屋顶瓦片的墙体结构。
骸骨与墓葬：考古团队对中世纪教堂墓地中的300多具骸骨及跨越数百年的墓葬遗迹进行了细致的发掘与记录。
罕见的罗马雕像：考古学家在某处年代更早建筑的环形沟渠内，发掘出了三尊保存极佳的真人大小罗马石质半身像（分别描绘了一名成年男性、一名成年女性和一名儿童）。
六边形玻璃壶：考古人员发现了一件罕见且完整的公元1世纪罗马玻璃壶，该壶出土时已破碎，后经精心拼合复原。
诺曼征服前的盎格鲁-撒克逊塔楼：在公元1080年建成的诺曼式教堂下方进行的考古发掘，揭示了一座更早期的萨克逊晚期塔楼的地基，以及包含二次利用罗马屋顶瓦片的墙体结构。
骸骨与墓葬：考古团队对中世纪教堂墓地中的300多具骸骨及跨越数百年的墓葬遗迹进行了细致的发掘与记录。
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00:09Everywhere you look, the rich history of the United Kingdom is there to be seen.
00:15But hidden beneath our feet, there's still a wealth of archaeological treasure just waiting to be found.
00:22That's why each year, up and down the country, our archaeologists dig down, searching for fresh discoveries.
00:31Revealing the imprint of ancient civilisations.
00:35So we are looking at a completely unknown Roman town.
00:38That's crazy.
00:39Wow.
00:40And unearthing priceless objects.
00:42It might be a pendant.
00:44Oh yeah, I can see that.
00:45This is something special, isn't it?
00:47Yeah, I've not seen anything like it so far.
00:49Every dig adds new pieces to the ever-growing archaeological jigsaw.
00:54Better come and have a look.
00:55That is the epic story of our islands.
00:59It's been an extraordinary year full of challenges and yet I've been able to visit so many exciting digs up
01:07and down the country.
01:09Oh my goodness.
01:10There have been spine-tingling discoveries to witness.
01:13That is the face of a Trojan.
01:15Yes.
01:15My heart is racing.
01:18And I'm even getting a chance to use a trowel myself.
01:22I'm joined by a trio of expert investigators.
01:26I can actually see the texture of the weave and it's, what, 1,600 years old?
01:32It's amazing that a small DNA sample like this can tell that really quite big story.
01:36As they dig deeper for answers.
01:40Same technique as the Romans used.
01:42Exactly.
01:43Finally, the archaeologists bring their best finds into the studio.
01:47Scratch away.
01:48You can see that this object has had a life of its own.
01:52For up-place analysis.
01:53It's astonishing detail.
01:58Welcome to Digging for Britain.
02:17This time we take a look at the latest archaeological finds from the south of the UK.
02:23Under a Norman church, spectacular evidence of the demise of Roman Britain is uncovered.
02:29It's being kind of almost violently destroyed, I think.
02:32Certainly the cremation urns have been thrown into that ditch with no care.
02:35What do you think?
02:37A Bronze Age settlement has got archaeologists stumped.
02:41I'm convinced we've got a roundhouse here.
02:43It's just a bit confusing at the moment.
02:45And I get my hands on some genuine old money.
02:48So these are among some of the first coins made in Britain.
02:53Wow!
02:59With its coastline facing an often turbulent European continent,
03:03the south of England has been the starting point for several hostile takeovers.
03:10Perhaps the most successful started in 1066.
03:15The sudden arrival of the Normans would kick-start a new epoch in the history of our islands.
03:21Today I'm visiting a parish that stood slap-bang in the way
03:25of William the Conqueror's rolling conquest, Stoke Mandeville.
03:30As they settled, the Normans built new churches all over England,
03:35with communities growing up around them.
03:38But that's not what happened here.
03:41In this gentle valley, just south of Stoke Mandeville,
03:45is this isolated church surrounded by fields.
03:49And nobody knows why it was built here.
03:55Built around 1080, the church of St Mary's was strangely located in this damp, isolated spot,
04:03half a mile from the village.
04:06When, in the 19th century, Stoke Mandeville got a more convenient new church,
04:11the old Norman church soon became neglected, fell into ruin, and was eventually demolished.
04:18Now, the new high-speed rail line, HS2, needs to pass through the ruin of old St Mary's.
04:25So, under cover of this vast tent, a team of archaeologists is excavating thousands of graves
04:31and preserving any historic artefacts.
04:34It's also a fantastic opportunity to solve the centuries-long mystery
04:39of why the church was built here.
04:42Lead archaeologist Rachel Wood hopes to find an answer.
04:46Rachel, so this is it? This is the mysterious church of St Mary's, then?
04:51It is, yes. And what you can actually see is the very bottom of the foundations.
04:55There's something really curious about it, though, isn't there?
04:57That it's just out here in the countryside.
04:59It seems to be some way away from any settlement.
05:04That was definitely one of our questions that we're trying to answer.
05:06Why is there a church essentially in the middle of an unoccupied field?
05:10Right, because I think the most obvious answer would have been
05:13that actually it was part of a medieval village or a medieval town.
05:17Yes, and it would have been serving that settlement.
05:19But our works have proven that that is not the case, so the mystery is continuing.
05:25In the surrounding area, Rachel's team have uncovered evidence of earlier Bronze Age, Iron Age,
05:31and even Roman activity, but what of the centuries that followed?
05:36We don't have any evidence for any Saxon activity in this landscape at all at the minute.
05:41That's really strange.
05:43There's a distinct gap, yeah.
05:45So you've got Iron Age Roman activity, and then you've got a gap of 600 years.
05:50Something like that, yes.
05:50And then suddenly the Normans decide to build this church here.
05:52Yes, so there must have been a reason.
05:55We're hoping to find some evidence of some earlier activity
05:58once we get underneath the church foundations.
06:01So there's a real mystery here to solve then, isn't there?
06:04Absolutely.
06:05Why do you have a church suddenly appearing in this space
06:07in the landscape in the 11th century?
06:12The answer to this mystery could lie somewhere beneath these foundations.
06:19As part of the excavation, the skeletons from the churchyard need to be carefully removed,
06:25and they'll be reinterred.
06:30The team's been recording their fascinating finds from the graves
06:33using our dig diary cameras.
06:37We're an adult male, and at its feet, a china plate,
06:42which is an interesting find.
06:44They're known as salt plates.
06:45Placed it with the individual as a sign of purity,
06:49as a sign of eternal life.
06:52A plate of salt at the feet was intended to offer protection in the afterlife
06:56to ward off the devil.
07:00Underneath the superstitious Victorians
07:02are graves from the flamboyant Georgian era.
07:07Though even the fanciest wooden coffins have often completely rotted away.
07:13That's Ruth Jackson, and you can see just in the side of the grave there
07:17some gold-plated coffin studs.
07:20Oh yes, I can see those standing out there.
07:22So they're still shining and gold, because gold doesn't tarnish.
07:26Yes.
07:26So she must have been quite wealthy to have gold on her coffin.
07:30Yes.
07:31So the Jacksons are one of the prominent families, and she died at the ripe old age of 90.
07:36Wow.
07:36In 1727.
07:38How do you know her name?
07:40So as we removed the original rubble mound covering the church,
07:44her gravestone was actually still in place and intact, and kind of emerged out of the rubble.
07:49We had no idea it was then.
07:51I mean, graves that have been completely forgotten about, and you're uncovering them again and telling these stories.
07:55I really think that's one of the best things we can do for the burial population here at St Mary's,
07:59is to remember them.
08:04Gravestones make the archaeologist's detective work a lot simpler.
08:08Other objects take a little more work to decipher.
08:13This is a bone object.
08:15It's turned, and it was found next to a gentleman's head, roughly the same period as Ruth Jackson, so roughly
08:23the 1700s.
08:24Oh, what on earth is that?
08:26We have a theory.
08:27The theory is you would put a piece of cloth with a dab of your blood on it, and some
08:32honey in it,
08:33and you would put it in your Georgian men's wig.
08:36Oh!
08:37And all of the fleas running around in the wig would be attracted by the blood on the cloth,
08:41and then get stuck in the honey in the pot.
08:44It's a flea catcher, a flea trap.
08:47A flea catcher, yeah.
08:48I've never heard of such a thing, that's just bizarre.
08:52It's very bizarre.
08:53There's some residue inside it, so you might even be able to test that and find out what it is.
08:57Hopefully, yes.
09:00So far, St Mary's is giving up fascinating secrets from the Georgian and Victorian eras,
09:06but the big mystery of why the Normans chose to build their church here, so far from the village, remains.
09:17The deeper the team dig, the closer they may be getting to the answer.
09:23Are you almost down to the bottom of the foundations then?
09:27Absolutely, yep.
09:28We are nearly at the bottom of the stone walls,
09:31and it's as we get beneath those that we're hoping to find out whether or not there was anything else
09:36under the Norman church.
09:38I bet you're itching for the day when you can start to excavate down here.
09:42Absolutely.
09:46Nearby, the team has been storing stonework from the ruin for further analysis and reuse in a new memorial.
09:53But something here catches my eye.
09:59Now, this piece of stone really leapt out at me.
10:03It's a different sort of stone.
10:05So this is not the same stone as most of that Norman church is made of.
10:10Could it be part of an Anglo-Saxon church that predates the Norman church?
10:16Could it be even earlier? Could it be Roman?
10:19And I think as this dig progresses, we might get to the bottom of it.
10:24But it represents the whole mystery of St. Mary's in microcosm.
10:33My drawing is put on hold as while we're on site, there's breaking news from the dig tent.
10:40So there's been all this speculation about whether there's an earlier phase here at St. Mary's.
10:45And I think some really exciting evidence has just emerged.
10:51Archaeologist Shirley Mihailova has made the discovery.
10:55Shirley, what have you found?
10:57What have you found?
10:58I have found a very interesting coin.
11:01It's a long cross silver penny.
11:04Do you know when it dates to?
11:06It potentially dates from 978 to 1016 A.D.
11:14Because it has the head of Ethelred the Second on it.
11:19Ethelred the Second, that's Ethelred the Unready.
11:21Yes.
11:22I mean, this is an Anglo-Saxon king.
11:24Yes.
11:24This must be the first bit of evidence that you've had which definitely predates the Norman period.
11:31Yes.
11:31This is just fantastic.
11:32The late 10th, early 11th century, before the Norman church.
11:37Do you think this coin is associated with this burial?
11:41It does make sense with the location, it being around the pelvic area, so potentially from a pocket.
11:47So I do believe that it was with the individual.
11:50That's amazing.
11:51Thank you very much.
11:52I just can't believe that's just come out of the ground.
11:55Yes.
11:55While I'm here.
11:56I'm so excited.
11:58This coin is a really enticing find for the dig team.
12:02At last, St Mary's Church is hinting at a past that predates any Norman structure.
12:11Having been left on tender hooks about what else the team might find, archaeologists Rachel Wood and Guy Hunt have
12:19come to the Digging for Britain tent to give me an update.
12:23So Rachel and Guy, if we look at the photograph from sight, is that the Norman church foundations?
12:29That's right.
12:29Yeah, so you can see the Norman foundations really clearly there in white.
12:32And you can see a big circular dark ditch coming around, just around here.
12:38Oh yeah.
12:39It's quite dark.
12:40And then the more exciting part is that you can see the foundations of a small structure.
12:46Yeah.
12:46And because it's sealed by the foundations for the Norman church, we know that it predates the Norman period and
12:53it's very exciting because it is actually Saxon.
12:57Guy's beautiful 3D model of the burial site has every grave etched in.
13:02Now he can add the newly discovered pre-Norman ditch and a Saxon building.
13:08We think it's actually the base of a kind of tower.
13:11So we know that in the later part of the Saxon period, there's a tradition for building these towers.
13:16So there are 30 or 40 of these known either from excavation or still surviving in England.
13:21So this is a tower without a church?
13:24That's right.
13:25We think it would have just been a tower.
13:27So you're talking about something that could be used as a watchtower.
13:30It could also be used as a bell tower.
13:32It could be used as a private chapel.
13:34It's a kind of an essential part of this lordly kit, the stuff that you need in order to be
13:38considered as an aristocrat in that late Saxon period.
13:42When the land changes and it becomes owned by the Bishop of Lincoln, they basically demolish the tower, get rid
13:48of it,
13:48and they build their Norman chapel right on top of it like that.
13:52Yeah.
13:53And it's disappeared.
13:54I mean, that mark of Anglo-Saxon power has been eradicated from the landscape as well.
13:58It's a really strong and powerful statement of this kind of transition of power that happens between one set of
14:03aristocrats and another.
14:05Yeah.
14:06So, Rachel, what's underneath the Saxon tower?
14:08Well, we're keeping our fingers crossed for perhaps an even earlier building.
14:13We would love to find evidence for something like a Roman temple,
14:16but whether or not something like that was there in the first place and then has survived the construction of
14:21a tower
14:22and then the Norman church and then 800 years worth of burials is quite a slim chance, really.
14:28You've got a few more weeks left on site. This story's not quite finished yet.
14:31We're nearly there.
14:33Little did we know then, but another, even older layer of archaeology underneath St Mary's was just weeks away from
14:41being discovered.
14:42Luckily, our cameras were there to capture the excitement.
14:46And later in the programme, I get to take a very close look at what could be some of the
14:51most important Roman artefacts ever found in Britain.
14:54Yeah, I think it's definitely, quit now, retire now.
14:58Yeah, retire now, that's it. It's never going to be as good.
15:20When you've got buildings made of stone, they're relatively easy to interpret, especially when they're upstanding like this fantastic Norman
15:27keep.
15:28But for much of prehistory, our ancestors were making and living in buildings which were made of wood, thatch, clay,
15:38turf, materials that either disappear completely from the archaeological record or leave only the faintest of traces.
15:45And then we've got the challenge of working out what materials a house may have been made of in its
15:51entirety and what it would have looked like, as we see in our next story.
15:57We move to that goldmine of archaeological opportunity, the Ministry of Defence's training area on Salisbury Plain.
16:07The Plains' 300-mile square chalk plateau is a wonderful setting for the undisputed heavyweight champion of Britain's prehistoric monuments.
16:19Thought to have originated around 5000 years ago, awe-inspiring Stonehenge is actually just one of many mysterious traces of
16:29ancient cultures that can be seen across this atmospheric landscape.
16:33But a lot here remains out of sight, just a few feet below the surface.
16:42The results from a ground-penetrating radar survey have led MOD archaeologist Richard Osgood to suspect that a Bronze Age
16:51settlement once stood on this patch of exercise ground known as Dunch Hill.
17:00We know on the track that we've got over there, there were four houses found in 1995, dating to the
17:05late Bronze Age.
17:06And I want to see if that settlement that we know about from that track extends further.
17:10With a team of volunteer ex-servicemen, Richard's been looking for evidence of a typical Bronze Age dwelling, the roundhouse.
17:21The team has been recording their search with our Dig Diary cameras.
17:27We've just stripped off the top area with a machine, and the really good things for us are these small
17:33dark splodges cut into the chalk.
17:36We're pretty hopeful they're going to be post holes, and if we're looking for roundhouses from the late Bronze Age,
17:43then this is the sort of thing we're looking for.
17:45These are the remnants of posts that hold up the roof.
17:493,000 years ago, during the Bronze Age, the population of Britain is thought to have numbered in the tens
17:55of thousands.
17:57Many people would have lived in large roundhouses, much like this recreation.
18:03Thick wooden posts form the circular structure that supports the walls and a thatched roof.
18:10At Dunch Hill, as with most roundhouse sites, the materials used to build the walls and the roof have degraded
18:17over time.
18:22All Richard's team have to work with are what appear to be the holes that once held wooden posts.
18:32When they excavate the holes, they soon find something else often used in Bronze Age building foundations.
18:39That is deep with the flint packing all round it.
18:42They're packed with flint, and that would have kept the big timber uprights in place.
18:45So you've got a really nice settlement potential coming out here.
18:51The post holes also offer up more clues to suggest Richard's onto something.
18:57Looks like I've got a nice bit of pot.
19:01Yeah.
19:02There we go.
19:03Wow, that's a nice chunk, isn't it?
19:06These are likely to be fragments of Bronze Age pottery used by the villagers who lived here.
19:12This is quite a nice piece there.
19:16You can see some decoration.
19:18Great. So that's another of the post holes producing ceramics.
19:21But the next discovery is indisputable evidence.
19:26Found the best find of the dig so far, which is this Lake Bronze Age pin.
19:30Oh my goodness. Let's look at that.
19:33That's perfect for the dating of this site, isn't it? Isn't that lovely?
19:38What I love about this is that this is a sort of pin that will hold bits of clothing together,
19:43like a cloak or something like that.
19:44But that directly leads us to the farmers of Dunshill in the Bronze Age.
19:50It's a startling find for Chris, a volunteer army veteran.
19:54How did you feel when you found that?
19:56Oh, I was the happiest man in the world.
19:58Despite the Bronze Age finds, Richard is still struggling to identify the outline of an actual roundhouse.
20:06It's a bit confusing at the moment. It looks a bit like a Swiss cheese. There's holes everywhere.
20:11I'm convinced we've got a roundhouse here. It's just, it's just, just finding that shape.
20:16And at the moment, it's not especially clear.
20:19Because the walls have completely disappeared, what they were actually made of is also puzzling.
20:29Fortunately, work on solving both those mysteries is underway.
20:34To find out more, Stuart Pryor, a specialist in landscape archaeology, is visiting Butser Farm in Hampshire, where they recreate
20:42ancient buildings.
20:44This is actually the sum total of the archaeology.
20:47I've come to meet Butser's experimental building expert, Trevor Creighton.
20:52OK, so Trevor, there was no evidence for walling there, was there?
20:56No, absolutely none at Dunshill, and that's what makes this building so interesting.
21:00What we see here is a plan of the complete excavation.
21:04All we have is this ring of posts.
21:07Trevor's knowledge of other roundhouse structures helps him identify a telltale pattern in the Dunshill post plan.
21:14If we were able to deduce that what we've got here is a series of post holes, arranged around a
21:21fairly irregular circle, but that's our roundhouse.
21:24Ready? Here we go.
21:25Having figured out the layout, Trevor assembled a team of volunteers to recreate the roundhouse at Dunshill.
21:33OK.
21:35From digging the post holes, then driving the posts into the ground,
21:43to mounting the lintels.
21:45Look at that.
21:47That's a top trilithin.
21:48Up to this point the structure was largely based on strong archaeological evidence.
21:53Now, to build the walls.
21:56One of the problems is that we're not sure what this particular roundhouse was built from.
22:02And that's exactly the point of the experiment.
22:04They must have made it from materials that just dissolved.
22:07And we're going to make walls that are made of local materials that are just so ephemeral that they're going
22:13to disappear over three millennia.
22:15So it's truly archaeology by experiment?
22:17It's truly experimental archaeology.
22:21Trevor's version of the Dunshill house has become a laboratory for Bronze Age wall building.
22:30This is the Dunshill house.
22:32This is the attempted reconstruction.
22:35We've put each of these post holes where the original post holes were in the archaeology.
22:40Trevor's team have been experimenting with different types of materials to construct the surrounding walls.
22:46Without physical evidence, it's the best way to work out which method could have been used by the Bronze Age
22:53builders at Dunshill.
22:55Over here, we've got a turf wall.
22:59Okay, that's unusual to have in association with a roundhouse.
23:03Yeah, it is very unusual.
23:05We're using available materials and one of the materials that was available was turf.
23:10This turf here actually comes from the clearance of this roundhouse.
23:14So it's very plausible that that's the sort of material people would use.
23:17I suppose over time this earth wall would have just weathered away.
23:23Yeah, yeah.
23:24That's all you're left with are the post holes in the ground.
23:26Yes.
23:27What we're trying to do is create these suggestions of what might be and test those assumptions.
23:33Another stretcher wall has been built using bog standard topsoil.
23:39Then in the final section, they're using Salisbury Plains most iconic naturally occurring substance.
23:45Chalk.
23:48So you've crushed the chalk, which I can see in the barrow here.
23:53What's the next stage then?
23:54Very simple.
23:55We just take this material, get a handful of it.
24:00It's sort of lumpy and goopy.
24:02It is, isn't it?
24:02And we just put it on our wall.
24:05Just anywhere.
24:07Yeah.
24:07It's not unlike a primitive concrete in that way.
24:10I'm amazed at how solid that is, you know.
24:13It's just a pile of mush, really.
24:16But it's actually turned into a solid wall, which is really impressive.
24:21Like the turf and soil Trevor's experimenting with, the chalk could also disappear over time.
24:29If these walls dissolve and fail, that's an excellent result for us.
24:33Because then all we're left with are the posts.
24:34Yeah, we've got to wait 2,000 years for that.
24:36Well, I hope, I hope.
24:38More than one year would be good.
24:39Yeah.
24:42Only time will yield results from Trevor's Bronze Age building experiment.
24:47Perhaps in the future, this will shed more light on how the roundhouse at Dunge Hill was actually made.
24:55But today, by building up instead of digging down, I've had an insight into an alternative approach to archaeology.
25:03Seeing the different construction methods experimented with has been really interesting today.
25:08And actually a fascinating way to go about undertaking your archaeology by experiment.
25:14Despite the fact that at Dunge Hill there doesn't seem to be much surviving apart from a few post holes,
25:20if this is a Bronze Age house, it could have been quite a remarkable feat of engineering.
25:32We now journey back to Roman Britain and a dig which spans almost four centuries of occupation.
25:40I'm heading for a place that was key to trade and travel across the south, Silchester, ten miles south of
25:47modern day Reading.
25:49Though originally an Iron Age settlement, it's the infrastructure created by the Romans that's now a treasure trove for archaeologists.
26:00This huge wall still encircles the massive 40 hectare site.
26:08Silchester boasts many of the usual features typical of a Roman town, including an amphitheatre and most importantly, of course,
26:18a bathhouse complex.
26:20And it's these buildings that are perhaps the best window into Silchester's past.
26:26It's also one of the longest running archaeological digs in the country.
26:33We visited here before back in 2014 with the team from the University of Reading.
26:40It looks like we found what we were hoping for from this excavation and that is a Nero stamped tile.
26:47That ceramic tile meant these baths dated to the reign of Emperor Nero between 54 and 68 AD, proving that
26:56these were some of the earliest buildings here.
27:00Now the team's opened up a whole new section, revealing fresh layers and finds that could tell a complex story,
27:09one that mirrors the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in Britain.
27:17Mike, how long have you been digging at Silchester?
27:19A long time.
27:21Mike Fulford is the project director.
27:24Have you just opened this this year then?
27:26Yes, yes, just in the last four weeks.
27:30When does most of what we're looking at here date to then?
27:33Second and third century, most of it.
27:36But there's material that's definitely later and there's material that relates to Nero's time.
27:42Bath houses are complicated, but I never really envisaged there was so much going on with this bath house.
27:50Mike's been digging here for more than four decades, but it was antiquarians from the early 1900s who first excavated
27:58the baths.
27:58Those diggers eagerly ripped through centuries of precious archaeology and simply reburied it.
28:05However, they missed more than they found.
28:08So Mike's team has been meticulously working their way through this archaeological backfill and with our dig diary cameras, they
28:17recorded what they found.
28:18I found this hairpin. It's made of bone, which I think is pretty cool.
28:23This looks to me like a little hook.
28:27It's clearly made of bronze or copper alloy.
28:31The antiquarians also missed the biggest story of all, how the expansion and contraction of these baths mirrored the ups
28:40and downs of the Roman Empire during almost four centuries of rule in Britain.
28:45What are you learning this time around that the antiquarians didn't understand?
28:50Above all, they didn't appreciate that there were certainly two successive separate bath houses.
28:57First one completely demolished and now possibly we have evidence of a major extension of the second, which you might
29:05call a third bath house.
29:07We can see a much richer story of how this bath house developed through the whole Roman period.
29:15It's down at the bottom of the dig where the baths transition through time can be best seen.
29:21This is the first Silchester bath house, built during the reign of Emperor Nero.
29:27Mike's team uncovers telltale materials from this first phase.
29:32We've got some green sand, which is the foundations for this, which is also inside that wall over there.
29:38Yeah.
29:39Which is a hallmark sign of the Neronian stuff of the site.
29:46When you look down, you can see first of all the cross wall of the first baths.
29:51When does that date to?
29:53That dates to the 50s, 60s of the first century.
29:56Oh, really early?
29:57Yeah, soon after the conquest.
30:00By this point, Silchester's population had boomed to many thousands.
30:05So the first bath house is knocked down to make way for a larger, grander second bath house.
30:13So it's getting bigger?
30:14It's getting bigger.
30:15So then we have another major change to the baths with a really huge extension.
30:21And they're still not content because they build this apse.
30:27So this is a lovely curved wall.
30:29Isn't it? Yes.
30:29Yeah.
30:30Perhaps contained a cold pool, maybe statues, a really distinctive feature of the baths.
30:38Evidence of luxurious finishes were discovered by Mike's team when they found traces of decorative walls.
30:44It's a little piece of painted plaster.
30:47I suspect it probably came from the inside originally, but I think that's a stripe being painted on.
30:52Fantastic.
30:53You can see that we've got this fantastic open signal and render, which is stuck on the outside of the
30:58app itself.
30:59It looks like it's been re-rendered several times.
31:03This is the bath house at its peak in the third century AD.
31:08So we've got a story of expansion, expansion, getting bigger.
31:12It's partly a response, I think, to maybe changing population of the town.
31:16Also, perhaps expansion to give opportunities for men and women to bathe separately.
31:22You can see how this building would have developed and changed over time.
31:26What is this excitement I just heard?
31:28The dig team has found jewellery lost by bathers.
31:31Just in this fine strip found a fragment of a brooch of some sort.
31:37And it's copper alloy.
31:38And it's the part where the pin would go when you close it.
31:43Evidence of fine dining.
31:45Yeah, it's a lovely bowl.
31:47But yeah, it's a really nice rope patterning, feathering.
31:50Quite a lot of bone.
31:52A big jaw of a cattle or something.
31:55Something.
31:56Still quite interesting.
31:59After the bath houses boom in the fourth century, it starts to contract.
32:04The Roman Empire is in decline and Silchester's population is shrinking.
32:10Mike has found evidence that the building structure reflects that.
32:15The bath begins to break into smaller units.
32:19That wall is taken down and a new wall built on a destroyed foundation.
32:24Yeah.
32:24And you're beginning to get a kind of reduction.
32:27The quality of the work, not so good.
32:30But it continued to give them that pleasure of having heat and warmth and a bathing facility,
32:36which they'd enjoyed for 400 years.
32:39Here at Silchester, Mike's been able to map the ups and downs of Roman power in Britain.
32:45But the dig also tells a more local story.
32:49Talking to Mike, I've come to realise that I think my view of Roman baths was completely awry.
32:56And it all being about bathing.
32:59But if we look at the plan of the whole building from Mike's excavations,
33:03we can see that this is the complex when it was at its largest and most complicated.
33:10You come in here, so the entrance is up this end, which is where the hedge is.
33:14And you come into this courtyard area, which is called a palaistra.
33:19It's like an exercise yard.
33:21And then you have your series of baths going from frigidarium through to hotter baths.
33:27That's our one that we're looking at there in the trench.
33:29Just this section of that whole complex.
33:32But looking at the function of this place, I'm starting to think of it a lot more as a leisure
33:37centre.
33:38This is the gym at the heart of Roman Silchester.
33:43This bath complex must have been a hub of activity.
33:47And the Reading team continued to unearth evidence that tells us more about what went on there.
33:53So I asked Mike to come along to the Digging for Britain tent with a collection of the best finds
33:59from this year's dig.
34:01It's fantastic to see these.
34:04Yes.
34:04What do they tell us then about the bath house?
34:06Well, there's sort of aspects of life and how the baths were used.
34:09So we've got a die.
34:10And this is bone?
34:12Yes.
34:12It looks like just any dice you could buy today.
34:17Isn't it lovely?
34:18Alongside that, these are all gaming pieces, are they?
34:20Yes, so that's another bone counter.
34:24This one where they've just taken the base of a small beaker and just cut it out to create the
34:30shape.
34:31So it would have been a very sociable space to be in?
34:33Oh, very much so, yes.
34:34It probably was the social centre of the town.
34:37Yeah.
34:37One of the most exciting finds we've got is this bronze belt fitting and buckle.
34:44It's lovely.
34:46What would it have been part of?
34:48An officer, military or high-ranking civil servant, part of their uniform.
34:54It's quite thin and fine so it's unlikely to be going around the waist but perhaps more of a strap
35:00that's going across the chest, something like that.
35:03Yeah.
35:04And then the tongue has almost got the head of a little beast at the end of it.
35:08Yes, right from the turn of the 4th and 5th century.
35:12Yeah.
35:12So it suggests that we have Roman officials there right towards the end of the Roman period.
35:17Yes, yes, and enjoying the baths such as they were then.
35:22Yeah.
35:23Mike, when I visited you on site you had quite a few more weeks left of the dig so what
35:28else did you find?
35:29I think this is from the very end isn't it?
35:30This is from the very end, yes.
35:32A really important discovery.
35:34So this is a massive oak beam which is underpinning this substantial brick extension of the baths house which we
35:42think is 2nd century.
35:44But the beauty about the find of these timbers is that they have the potential to give us a dendrochronological
35:51date.
35:51So this is a tremendous bonus.
35:53And it's brilliant isn't it tree ring dating because with dendrochronology you get the year that that tree was felled.
35:59Absolutely a year and so you can associate that with a particular emperor, a particular governor of Britain.
36:05You can sort of fit it in to some of the people of Roman Britain that we know of.
36:09And with this fantastic preservation that you now know exists on site, do you think you're going to be going
36:15back?
36:15I mean you've been at Silchester a long time Mike, I think from the 70s.
36:19I mean there's so much that one can learn by re-examining this builder's structure, seeing the things which they
36:25didn't really cotton on to at the beginning of the 20th century.
36:28So it really would be worth doing a little bit more.
36:31I think I might be coming back to Silchester to see you again next year.
36:35Oh well there you are, well then we have to, we have to, yes we'll do another season.
36:37We dig for the gods that leave, our walls for the ships, say when the sun can see.
36:46The place that we're locked in a sky of stone, the famine road and the manchers...
36:53A big old city contains a wealth of archaeology but it also presents archaeologists with lots of challenges because each
37:03generation builds on what went before, sometimes completely obscuring or at the very least confusing those layers.
37:11And because of that intensity of activity, it's very rare to find prehistoric remains under our cities unless the archaeologists
37:22are particularly lucky.
37:24This next dig is in the most archaeologically challenging of all British cities, London, on the southern bank of the
37:32Thames in Barn Elms.
37:34London is nearly always thought of as being originally a Roman city given that no substantial pre-Roman settlement has
37:43ever been identified close to its heart.
37:46But archaeologists have uncovered stunning new evidence that there was a large riverside settlement here during the Iron Age.
37:57In the past, tantalising clues were dredged up from the riverbed.
38:02In Victorian times, two battleshields and a copper helmet, dating to the Iron Age, were the star finds.
38:12The River Thames has always thrown up a lot of finds from that period and no-one really knew where
38:17the people who were putting those things in there were living.
38:22Jack Russell is archaeologist for London's new super sewer project.
38:27Excavations here at Barn Elms, just across the river from Fulham Football Club, recently revealed traces of that classic prehistoric
38:35dwelling, the Roundhouse.
38:36Lead archaeologist Mike Kernow has been cataloguing these intriguing discoveries.
38:43What we've really found is quite a lot of post holes, and all of them are really quite chunky post
38:49holes.
38:49This is one of the larger ones that we've had, that as you see, get my arm into it, is
38:55really quite deep.
38:58Such deep, wide holes must have housed huge wooden posts, capable of supporting a massive structure.
39:08This one we actually think is part of a roundhouse, with these two post holes here, and then you've got
39:15two post holes at the far side, which form part of a semi-circle.
39:20I remember there was definitely a lot of excitement when we looked down and just saw this semi-circle of
39:25post holes, and realised for the first time that what we had here was a roundhouse and a settlement.
39:31The footprints of more roundhouses have since been uncovered, and there's evidence of a bustling community with a thriving iron
39:40-working industry.
39:42This is a lump of iron slag, which indicates they were working iron on the site, melting it down and
39:49filtering out its impurities.
39:51So this is definitely a site where they're not just living, they're also working, manufacturing things, and potentially shipping them
39:59off to other places as well.
40:01The discovery of fastenings and loom weights suggests that cloth was also woven in this centre of manufacturing, but it's
40:09one of the smallest finds that's the biggest news.
40:12These coins still have the makers' tabs that would normally have been removed, meaning an Iron Age mint could have
40:20been sited here.
40:22Their design suggests they were made for the Kantiaki tribe, known to be among the first users of coins in
40:28Britain, who traded with other Europeans.
40:31The site expands our understanding of the Iron Age.
40:35It's filling into the free history of London, almost rewriting, if you like, this idea that there's nothing going on
40:41in London before the Romans.
40:44These remarkable discoveries on the banks of the Thames demand a closer look.
40:48So the site's Iron Age find specialist, Adam Sutton, has brought some of the key finds to the Digging for
40:55Britain tent.
40:57Adam, I think so often we think about London just beginning with the Romans.
41:01Well, you are showing us that there very much were settlements there.
41:05Absolutely, yeah.
41:06So these are among, actually, some of the first coins made in Britain.
41:11There is a lot of debate as to what the role of coins was in Iron Age society, whether they
41:15had a monetised economy.
41:17But it's totally possible that the fact that we've got manufacturing evidence here means that people had to come and
41:22exchange the objects which they wanted to buy for what is effectively money.
41:26Yeah.
41:27There's also potentially a ritual aspect.
41:30They could potentially be intended for offerings.
41:32The river is very nearby and we know that people like to cast metal objects into the river as a
41:38ritual.
41:39Yeah.
41:39People still throw coins into fountains today.
41:42People still throw things into wishing wells and stuff like that today.
41:44So it's a very long tradition of that sort of thing.
41:47And here are some of the finds that have emerged from in and around those roundhouses.
41:52So what do these finds tell us?
41:54We've got some really nice examples of decorated objects here.
41:57Yeah, that's lovely. I love these kind of sinuous lines of dots.
42:00We do actually have evidence that even though these pots were really nicely decorated, they were still used for cooking.
42:05And we've actually commissioned an artist to give us an artist impression of what the settlement might have looked like.
42:13That is fantastic.
42:14I mean, with the Thames here and this little settlement on the banks.
42:19Absolutely.
42:20And all that activity.
42:21It looks kind of idyllic, doesn't it?
42:21It does look idyllic, yeah.
42:23So these are completely new communities to us and they really give us an impression of life in London before
42:28London was there.
42:30Yeah.
42:30Which I think is really amazing.
42:41The geology of Britain has been sculpted by ice and water, creating some epic landscapes where you can really appreciate
42:51the destructive power of water.
42:54But in fact, water can be the archaeologists' friend.
42:57It can be very difficult and challenging to dig waterlogged sites, but then you get some incredible preservation of organic
43:06remains like wood.
43:08And in fact, that preservation is best, not even on land, but at the bottom of the ocean.
43:15Our next dig takes place under that narrow strip of water that makes the Isle of Wight an island, the
43:22Solent.
43:23Many thousands of years ago, this was dry land.
43:27So for Gary Momba of the Maritime Archaeology Trust, what's on the seabed holds detailed information about how humans lived
43:36here.
43:37In 2019, we followed Gary as he lifted and reassembled a mysterious wooden walkway.
43:45Now Gary is back hoping to find more evidence to fill in the many gaps in our understanding of the
43:51mysterious Mesolithic people.
43:53It's just the only site we've got in the UK, 8,000 years old, and it's telling us stuff about
43:57this period of time we know nothing about.
43:59Mesolithic people roamed these lands as hunter-gatherers from 9,500 BC until around 4,000 BC when farming and
44:10crops arrived in Britain.
44:13Today, Gary's embarking on an experiment that could challenge that traditional thinking.
44:18Okay, stand by. And go.
44:22He's diving down to take a sediment sample, a time capsule, from an ancient Mesolithic settlement site that's known to
44:30date back around 8,000 years.
44:33We're going to take some samples for DNA analysis so that we get an insight into DNA from all the
44:42living creatures that were around at that point 8,000 years ago.
44:48Gary hopes to reveal what plants and animals these people gathered and hunted.
44:54As he reaches the Mesolithic site, evidence of their occupation can be seen everywhere.
45:03It's like an old haunted landscape. It's like one of those ghost towns.
45:06The remnants of people still there with their flints lying on the seabed.
45:16Gary hammers his sample box into an undisturbed section of seabed.
45:24The box cuts through several layers of sediment, including Earth occupied by our Mesolithic ancestors.
45:36With the precious sample captured for DNA analysis, he returns to the surface.
45:46Success. Quite a weight to carry that.
45:49Got it. Got it. Got a cracking sample straight from the sediment.
45:55Once we get the DNA analysis, we can really break it down to find out what minutiae of every little
46:00species that was living on the site at the time.
46:02And we're going to find out all sorts of stuff that's going to help us reconstruct that landscape 8,000
46:08years ago.
46:10A month later, bioarchaeologist Kat Jarman joins up with Gary at Warwick University to get an insight into the testing
46:19process and learn the initial results.
46:22So you have this brilliant sort of archaeological treasure chest here. What's the next step now?
46:29Well, the process will be to get it into the lab. We'll get ourselves nice and suited up and nice
46:35and protected so that we won't be contaminating the sample ourselves.
46:38So that way you can be absolutely sure that what you're looking at is the real 8,000 year old
46:44Mesolithic sample.
46:45Yeah. We've just got to make sure there's no modern contamination at all.
46:50Yeah.
46:52Sedimentary DNA sampling is so sensitive even the tiniest contamination could corrupt the results.
47:00Covered. Head to toe. No contamination.
47:02No contamination anywhere.
47:04OK. Ready? Here we go.
47:05Better do it.
47:10Next, Gary opens up the box of archaeological treasure.
47:17Oh, wow.
47:18That's it. That's a bit of the seabed.
47:20Yeah.
47:218,000 years old, brought to the surface.
47:23And this is sort of the area that we're interested in.
47:29The sample reveals the layers of terrain that have built up through time.
47:33The bottom layer of silt shows the land lived on by the Mesolithic people.
47:39So that looks like that would have been the land surface.
47:41Somebody walking through it would literally be walking on this.
47:43Yes.
47:45This was the land.
47:46People were working, playing, sitting, having picnics, banter.
47:50It's absolutely remarkable.
47:53Remains of the forest floor are still preserved.
47:58Wow.
47:59That's amazing.
48:01So this is an 8,000-year-old oak leaf.
48:03Yep.
48:04First time uncovered.
48:07The sediment is placed into test tubes, ready to undergo analysis in the DNA lab.
48:15That's actually really incredible, seeing that.
48:18It's like an 8,000-year-old land surface being excavated from the seabed.
48:23And it's got everything.
48:24It's got flints, we've found twigs, a whole oak leaf.
48:27And that's just, that's the environment that somebody walked through 8,000 years ago.
48:31So the team and I are taking samples for DNA,
48:33and I just can't wait to see what that's going to reveal.
48:38Professor Robin Allaby has been interpreting the DNA analysis from Gary's sample.
48:44What we found is a whole array of plants,
48:48and then there's all sorts of large animals around there.
48:52These traces were typical signs of Mesolithic occupation,
48:56but amongst them is a reading for something totally unexpected.
49:01The really strange thing that we found,
49:05about 8,000 years ago, we get this signal for wheat.
49:10Wheat was thought to have arrived in Britain around 6,000 years ago,
49:15but this discovery shows it could have travelled north from Europe 2,000 years earlier.
49:22I mean, that's really spectacular, isn't it? And unexpected.
49:26Really odd.
49:27It's amazing though, isn't it, that a small DNA sample like this
49:30can tell that really quite big story about how people moved across continents.
49:35That's entirely true. There's a massive story written in the DNA of the settlements.
49:41The combination of Gary's underwater archaeology and Robin's cutting-edge DNA analysis
49:47seems to have moved the first recorded dating for wheat back by 2,000 years,
49:53potentially a big shift in the timetable of early British agriculture.
49:58This wheat is really quite special and quite unique.
50:02So this site really is telling a very big story from just some very exciting new technologies,
50:09and this, I think, is a really exciting one for the future.
50:18For our last dig, we're actually returning to the story of the mysteriously located
50:24Norman Church in Buckinghamshire.
50:31The exciting thing about archaeology is that it is constantly evolving.
50:36Each new find reveals a new story,
50:40sometimes adding details, sometimes profoundly changing what we thought we knew.
50:46Now, the site of St Mary's at St Mandeville has already delivered archaeological excitement in spades.
50:53When I visited a few weeks ago, there was the Norman Church that we knew existed,
50:58but under that, an unknown layer of Anglo-Saxon archaeology.
51:04And then little did we know that there was also an earlier phase with some spectacular finds,
51:13making this one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of the year, if not the decade.
51:24Earlier in the programme, lead archaeologists Guy and Rachel told us they'd identified a large square foundation feature
51:32they thought was from an Anglo-Saxon tower.
51:35But while excavating the circular ditch surrounding it, things get much more interesting.
51:43The fill of the ditch is this dark brown colour, and the shape of it are these two V-shaped
51:48edges here.
51:49And you can see that there's quite a lot of rubble material in it.
51:52And it also has this kind of darker, organic preserved layer here.
51:57And it's that layer that's producing a lot of our really amazing finds.
52:01It's an astonishing breakthrough. Over two days of excavating, the shoulders and heads from not one but two life-size
52:11Roman busts are discovered,
52:12including one by 24-year-old Cameron.
52:16Throughout the whole project, we've been trained to look for stones that are sculpted or worked.
52:21And there it was facing me was a person's chest carved out of stone.
52:25And everyone joked, so, well, it'd be amazing if you'd find the head.
52:28So about five, ten minutes later, Karen Digging came up and it was a woman's head.
52:33And it was just really cool to get something like that. It's just, like, ultra-special.
52:38The ditch has still more secrets, including a stunning glass urn, multiple pots of cremated remains,
52:46and an extraordinary headless skeleton with leg injuries that suggest a sudden violent end.
52:53It's all beyond the archaeologists' wildest expectations.
53:00But, I mean, those sculptures are, that is so rare.
53:04To find that kind of thing in an archaeological context, it is like, that is really, really rare.
53:09You can't even say it's once in a career.
53:11You would be extremely lucky if you ever found anything like that.
53:14Never mind two or three of them.
53:21Well, the dig has finished completely now.
53:23The big tent has come down and all the finds have come to storage facilities like this
53:28before being divided up and sent out to specialists for further analysis.
53:33So I'm really lucky to come here today when all the finds are still in one place
53:39because these are some of the most significant discoveries from Roman Britain in years.
53:48Rachel and Guy have gathered up their still uncleaned star finds from that extraordinary ditch for me to get a
53:56good look at.
53:58I've been so excited to come and see these new finds.
54:02It's wild, isn't it?
54:03I mean, it's an astonishing haul of archaeological treasure.
54:07This is real treasure, isn't it?
54:09Yeah.
54:09To come out of that ditch.
54:10So does that head go with that pair of shoulders?
54:12It does, yes.
54:13And we can put it back on top.
54:14Go on, then.
54:17I mean, that's just such a beautiful statue, isn't it?
54:22She's really astonishing to look at.
54:23Yeah.
54:24That face is gorgeous.
54:26It's so fine, isn't it?
54:27Yeah, the shaping of the cheeks and the mouth.
54:30Presumably that hairstyle's really dateable.
54:32Yeah, absolutely.
54:33So when we get these looked at by someone that really knows about Roman sculpture,
54:36they'll be able to tell you who they might be.
54:38And like you say, the hairstyle is incredibly dateable,
54:40so we'll get a really good date for when this thing was made.
54:42This, like, one object's going to tell you so much.
54:45Thank you very much for putting her back together for a moment.
54:49It's amazing to see.
54:50Yeah.
54:50And very unweathered, actually.
54:52Yeah.
54:53Presumably these statues were in a building of some kind.
54:56Yeah, so it's like a building had been demolished into part of that ditch,
55:00but we didn't really have much of the building structure itself,
55:04but we have what seems to be quite a lot of the contents.
55:07So the statues, there's cremation urns, there was a glass vessel as well.
55:13Oh, look at that. That's beautiful.
55:15That's an incredible object, isn't it?
55:17Look how clear the glass is.
55:18Yeah.
55:19Are you happy for me to handle this, then?
55:21Yep, just make sure you don't cut yourself.
55:23Yeah, it's sharp, actually, isn't it?
55:25So you think this is for a cremation as well, then?
55:28It could be.
55:28It could be.
55:29It could be acting like a cremation urn, effectively.
55:31We should get that back in its water, shouldn't we, to stop it drying out.
55:35So this is one of the funerary urns.
55:37Is this definitely Roman?
55:39Yes.
55:40Yeah.
55:40The pottery is Roman.
55:41Yeah.
55:42They've been thrown in and that's when they've broken
55:44and that's why it's wrapped in the bandages.
55:46There are eight of them and we also have a...
55:50Inhumation.
55:50An inhumation.
55:51And that inhumation is really interesting because it's somebody
55:54who's not buried in a kind of classic way.
55:56It's someone that's more or less been rolled into the ditch
55:59and they were buried with some coins and the coins are actually
56:01a really key thing here.
56:03These are the coins here, aren't they?
56:04Yeah, so then we get a date for those.
56:06We're going to get a really good date for when this material
56:09was all deposited in the ditch.
56:10Now, they're very muddy looking at the moment and presumably,
56:14again, as with the statues, you're leaving all that cleaning
56:16for the specialists in the lab.
56:19If we rub that mud onto the surface of the coins there,
56:22you're going to effectively erase the information that's
56:24on the face of the coin.
56:25So we want to do that with a proper conservation treatment,
56:27basically.
56:27Yeah, because that is a key piece of information, isn't it?
56:29Absolutely.
56:30That tells you when this material, which presumably at that point
56:34is being considered to be rubbish, you know,
56:36and it's being cleared into the ditch.
56:37It's being kind of almost violently destroyed, I think, was probably...
56:40What do you think?
56:41Archaeologists don't...
56:42You know, I don't...
56:42We don't want to over...
56:44I don't want to over-interpret, right?
56:45Yeah.
56:47But I think that looks like deliberate destruction of it
56:49into this ditch.
56:50Certainly the cremation urns have been thrown into that ditch
56:53with no care.
56:54And then backfilled over the top with rubble.
56:56Yeah.
56:57So this is really interesting,
56:58because then I suppose you've got the question of whether
56:59that's just expedient and you're moving it out the way
57:02before you do something new at the site
57:04and maybe that is perhaps building an Anglo-Saxon tower.
57:07Yeah.
57:07Or whether this represents a set of beliefs that are no longer operating
57:11and so you smash it up and move it out the way.
57:14Yeah.
57:14And that's why the coins are important.
57:16Because I think when we get a date for that destruction moment
57:18we would be able to say different things about it, I think.
57:20So if it's happening in the late Roman period
57:23then I think that has a different meaning
57:24than if it's happening in, say, the sixth or seventh century.
57:27So at this point there's so much work left to do on each of these different finds
57:32and each one will reveal another piece of the puzzle.
57:36Yeah.
57:36I love the fact that it's all buried together in a moment.
57:39That's so rare.
57:40Yeah.
57:40Well, please keep in touch and I think I will definitely be coming back to see you
57:44to find out more about this story.
57:45Well, yeah, I can't wait to find out more about this story.
57:48None of us can.
57:52Next time on Digging for Britain
57:54a Neolithic tomb reveals its treasure before it's lost to the elements forever.
57:59It appears to be a polished stone ball.
58:03Fantastic find.
58:05A graveyard in a proud seafaring city proves to be full of surprises.
58:10He's very pleased to see us, isn't he?
58:12Hang on a minute, let me have a look at that then.
58:14OK.
58:15And at an awesome Yorkshire castle we witness the return of the king who built it.
58:21So that's the tiny face of William the Conqueror?
58:23It is the tiny face of William the Conqueror.
58:25Oh, that's superb.
58:29Digging for Britain continues tomorrow night at eight.
58:32New stuff next on BBC Two.
58:35Greg Wallace gets exclusive access to the team baking a mind-boggling amount of malt loaves.
58:40Inside the factory.
58:44vuelves ahead of the time.
58:45Caed out in The Sun.ENA