“The Trouble with Temples” (Friar’s Wash, Hertfordshire) | S16E01 | Time Team

in 55 bc when julius caesar first arrived in britain he reported seeing druids human sacrifices unspeakable acts by britons in honour of their celtic gods a hundred years later rome introduced his own religion into britain with yes more blood and gore and lots of pomp and theater and where did they do this in temples of course not the time teams had much luck finding any that was until we were shown this aerial photograph look at these square features they stick out a bit don't they even the most skeptical archaeologists think that these are romano british temples so will the gods at last look down favorably upon us for three days in this hertfordshire field surely we can find one this time when the romans arrived in iron age britain they didn't just transform the country's roads buildings and economy even gods and rituals were shaped by roman influence [Music] this field in hertfordshire could take us into the heart of that story it's at friars wash just five miles northwest of saint albans one of roman britain's major centres [Music] the site first came to the attention of archaeologists during a hot summer in the 1970s when an aerial survey showed up some unusual features these squares look remarkably like the footprints of roman temples but these distinctive buildings are rarely found in britain even time team after 15 years has yet to discover an entire roman temple francis i have a terrible sense of deja vu about this one how many times on time team have we gone on day one oh we may have a roman temple here and do we get a roman temple yeah um you mean yeah no they have proved elusive but tony when you've got aerial photographs of that quality with crop marks like that and you've got a plan that is a square within a square it screams out of you roman temple but even if it is a temple we don't know that there's any of it left it could all have been plowed out couldn't it well look tony you can see there's a definite rise in the field over there where emery and stuart are and um that worries me a little bit because you know that's where plowing is often worse that's right but on the other side of that where this the plow soul moves down the slope it could actually preserve the lower parts okay so what do we do well first of all i mean despite the fact we've got beautiful results on the aerial photograph we're gonna put the geophysics over it and then once we got the results from that we should put a trench in well i thought you'd say we'd put a trench in it is an archaeology program where i think you want to go straight through the middle of that temple i mean let's go for where we're going to discover something why don't we go straight through that way after all we've got two temples we ought to try and establish a relationship yeah i'm not worried about that now phil we can sort out relationships later phil he's pulling rank on it he absolutely is you don't ask questions you dig he tells you where to dig all right let's get on with it off you go to find our potential temples henry's got the difficult task of using a 30 year old photograph to find the site in the modern day field but having finally pinpointed the spot jif is get going if these are roman temples we hope to find the wall around the center known as the keller along with an outer wall which forms a corridor called an ambulatory where the people on pilgrimage here would have walked but that's if plow damage has left anything for us to find guys the time's getting on why isn't the digger up well we've got to decide exactly where to go teddy yeah and you said you'd do the gfiz and then you would dig on it yeah we've got a slight problem in that the temples are really clear in the aerial photograph yeah and well they're not quite so clear on the geophysics can you explain why well i think they've actually been plow damaged over the years i i that's my feeling ah look i know i don't know much about archaeology but i do know about the pathetic human optimism that that seduces you from plow damage we told you we told you oh our tony there's gonna be a temple here and it's not god no damage i i might be wrong it could be that just because it's a temple it doesn't show as a magnetic anomaly but the thing is we've got a sort of general footprint and the idea is we'll trench from in the middle working our way outwards so the fact that that is looking roughly circular doesn't mean much it's not roughly certain it's rectangular does it actually tally up at all with the aerial photographs yeah it's in the right part of your field aerial photograph well there there's that cross fill there and you can see the rectangle on the aerial photograph and there's the right there so what's wrong with that now before you do start again roughly circular or rectangle i'll leave it to the viewer to decide let's put a trench from the middle go out in that direction and we'll make it double width okay but it's going to be damaged double whip trenching let's do it let's do it now it just seemed hard doesn't it so from the fuzzy geofizz results it looks like plowing might have damaged any structures but undaunted phil opens our first trench to find out what has survived because anything we can salvage from a temple site will be important as archaeological evidence of roman religion in britain is rare but from roman accounts we do know that when the romans arrived they encountered brits who already had their own gods druids and sacrifices but the romans fanatical about their religion when they came over here did they burn down all the shrines and assert their new religion on the contrary tony no they tended to be a very superstitious and religious people and they would prefer to identify the local deities and find their nearest roman equivalent so we get a mix such as apollo the classical god being equated with the local kunama gloss or mars with two tardis so broadly a very encompassing attitude but having said that there were um things that they really couldn't cope with they could not deal with human sacrifice yeah that's true which was something that was practiced in iron age britain and that was just a step too far for the romans it was outlawed who built these temples mark these are very much local ventures i think tony um it's the local aristocracy the local elite who had been the bigwigs in the iron age have made the transition to civilized romano british gentleman and it's basically a local temple for local people back on site and phil's faith that there is something left to find has been rewarded with a mortar there now what is it if i was uh expecting walls in this stuff i'd expect them to be made out of flints yeah they are they are big flints it might be uh it might be a bit risky in early days but would you pick up anything like this sure john we've only done magnetic so far so you wouldn't there now see look there's big stones here i'm a little bit more hopeful about that [Music] suddenly it seems possible that there could be archaeology that survived plow damage with walls emerging everyone descends on the trench to try and work out what was once here and by halfway through day one our search for a roman building seems one step closer to its goal a real wall this time absolutely some really really good archaeology mark and far far better than we'd ever expected and we thought the whole thing was going to be ploughed away but look i mean we've got this superb wall coming through yeah it's substantial that must be what nearly a meter wide that's right as far as i can see at the moment that looks very much as though it's on the outside yeah but here you look we've got this beautiful flooring preserved so i think we're in the inside here and we can trace it going back right through the hole you can see you've got mortar and plaster and stuff on this side haven't you absolutely yeah excellent but we haven't just got a wall there's now also tesserai or floor tiles coming up that's a better one isn't it that's nice and smooth on the top and then loads of mortar on the bottom oh yeah but it was stuck in yeah there is loads of them we'll have the whole floor soon i'm sure that some of these used to be roof tile but there's loads of roof tile and and they're just sort of smashed up from there i think not very high quality low low quality [Music] from the enormous number of plane tesserae emerging we think this structure had a plane mosaic floor which is what we'd expect from a temple building we'd also expect concentric walls leaving a walkway some three meters wide and then another wall appears there it is oh look at that that's better on it yeah i'll buy that i mean if we're going for two or three meters it looks like we got a wall coming along here turning here one two meters on the button hey oh that's a hell of a sh that's a hell of a straight you got there that's out of a lot more than two meters one i'll make that three meters all right now crucially that is so vitally important because it's not unreasonable to assume that maybe we've got two to three meters on that side yeah if we can pinpoint all the outside walls and the inside walls as well we we we're nearly there i reckon we have cracked it well i think that might be a bit cause you're not cracked it getting close though so francis thinks we've found the outer or ambulatory wall of a temple surrounding a walkway some three meters wide and within the hour bridge finds something on the other side so phil looks like i found your wall here look this looks really good for the base of a wall and it's about a meter extending towards you it is more substantial than i thought it was but crucially it's bang on where i thought it ought to be we've come two to three meters off this color wall predicted there's a wall there and we got it i like it it's great [Music] at last after 15 years of trying to unearth a roman temple we seem to be discovering an entire building but as so often on time team nothing's as simple as it seems john i don't understand it i mean down in the trenches it's quite clear what's happening you can recognize ditches you had that fantastic 1976 air photo but the geophys and the air photos don't seem to marry up i'm in a bit of a muddle is it just me no it's not just you i don't know what's going on i mean we did the magnetics this morning and well we sort of got an outline of the one temple we've tried resistance now and look when you draw the outlines of where the temple should be okay we've got something that goes with that one but look at this there's nothing in the resistance data that correlates with that i simply don't understand what's going on i mean are we quite sure we're in the right temples for a start yes we we're there or there about but it just doesn't make sense [Music] john and francis aren't the only ones to think that something's odd stuart suspecting the high-tech approach has led us astray goes back to some antiquated methods back at the trench and despite the strange geophysics francis remains convinced of what we've got this morning you told me that on this mound we would find this yeah and we've got one tony i'm sure of it look right in the middle there you see that flint wall and it goes through a right angle in front of where tracy's troweling yeah that is a wall of a central tower the keller yeah okay and then behind it you can see there's more flint that's because it's got a raised floor and they often had raised floors then on the outside there's a walkway which is about three meters wide and it's got a wall the outside wall is here so that would be this wall here that's that wall and so tracy's actually traveling in the walkway yeah but if you come around this way yeah the walkway wall is in this trench here you've got it so that would be here that's right yes what about fines right well what we're getting is not the sort of stuff you'd expect in a house we're getting roof tile we're getting bits of floor tile but we're not getting domestic rubbish like bones we're not getting pottery it's a very distinctive and unusual collection of fines the sort of thing you get in a temple which is what you predicted so are we done and dusted no i don't think so tony um we've got to prove it absolutely and i think this wall coming in here and this one coming in here they'll meet up at that point down there so it's looking very good but we're not quite there yet no we're very nearly there if francis is right an entire roman temple is just within our grasp end of day one and miracle upon miracles it looks as though we may have found something that we've been searching for on time team for 15 years an undiscovered roman temple all we've got to do is to take out that square there and hopefully we'll find the temple corner except that some people are just a little bit skeptical well i've been listening to everything that francis has been saying and i don't think he could be more wrong i think he's digging in the wrong place typical time team we'll find out who's right tomorrow beginning of day two and yesterday evening francis told me that this big stone square bit here was the central core of a roman temple and all around it was what he called the ambulatory the pathway that went round that central car how fantastic to get a roman temple on day one not only that but to have nailed its layout except it now appears that francis was completely totally wrong stuart and john you're the leaders of this little revolution what have you been saying to him look he's practically in tears what to be fair to francis i mean we were confused yesterday henry thought we'd got two temples here when we looked at the resistance results it worked well with the northern temple but it just didn't make sense with the southern temple because there was nothing in the results that would match that well stewart's actually solved it the problem was that hey we were trying to get the computer to do something it couldn't really do because the photograph was very oblique so i went back to the old-fashioned techniques of a of a ruler an air photograph and a straight line you can see features on here which still exists on the ground we've got this nice straight hedge line here we've got a bungalow over here and both those features still survive if you draw the straight line between the hedge line and the bungalow it goes right through the middle of the two temple sites so if you trace that line on the ground which i've done with the poles it goes right up the middle there but when francis was describing what he thought was that you could see he was actually on this side of the line here it couldn't be that temple and it was clear we had one temple this side of the line there and we had another temple under the grass over that side so the good news is you've still got a temple it's just that we were digging the wrong one that's it tony well actually you know the good news is we've got two temples so yesterday we thought we were here on the photograph where in fact we were here the man behind this mistake was henry who had difficulty relating the 1970s photograph to the modern field so he now has to re-plot the two temples henry after the fiasco of yesterday's surveying you'd better get this right of course of course what can go wrong phil with the confusion cleared up we can get on with the task of untangling the walls that make up these rare temple buildings [Laughter] i feel like we're in a maze of possible walls yes you've got more potential walls than the builders merchants bridge is extending the trench to reveal the walls of the keller it was this sacred center of the temple that was the focus for religious ceremonies when i was a choir boy many moons ago i used to go to church every sunday i went to matins in the morning and even song in the evenings would our temple worshippers have gone to their temple with the same kind of regularities i'm still trying to recover from the horrific change in you as an adult tony now the truth is that the roman year was divided into a cycle of festivals that were tied to the seasons they were tied to imperial birthdays they were tied to days dedicated to particular gods we don't know who was worshipped here yet people could have come here on a regular basis they may have come for an annual festival tied to a fair a bit like how in the medieval era you had things like some bartholomew's pharaohs and margaret's fair so there's a religious component and there's also perhaps um a commercial social aspect to it as well what went on inside the temples i don't think an awful lot would have been going on inside because you have to remember that first of all they're very small and secondly the keller the central bit was the private space of the god and his attendance the priests and i find that quite amazing to think that the the all of the force of the god was done without anybody else seeing so i don't really understand that guy the whole thing works on magic the priests are the special men who have access to the magic they've learned all the special words it's their thing they jealously protected it's a little bit like a masonic cult if we were romans now could we invent a god right here the hey god no you don't get it the point is that god is here already you have to identify that and access his power but guy while you were saying that this hay moved in a mysterious way from other temple sites we know that ceremonism rituals weren't just confined to the temple buildings altars and shrines could be built in the area outside and just next to our temples john spotted something on the geophys what's this red line you're putting another trench in yeah we've expanded the resistance server and look we've got the temples there and we've got this superb ring feature well with a central sort of blob what do you think it might be francis well the ring ditch looks like it could be around the outside of a bronze age barrow with the central thing being a grave i'm not certain that that's a ditch i think it could actually be a stoney feature a flint wall if you had a circular flint wall here yeah would it be associated with the temple um well if yes it certainly that rules it out being a bronze age barrow um it's more likely then to be a roman mausoleum going with the temple or perhaps a shrine also going with the temple so what might be in it well all sorts of things i mean burial that's what we're gonna dig it fair enough ask us any questions intrigued by this circular structure which may hold a roman shrine phil opens trench two as the morning unfolds we're beginning to unravel the two temples we came here to investigate but there are also other features on the aerial photograph that may help us understand the site running beside the temples are what appear to be three ditches that could be a road or bank of some kind so to investigate we extend trench one i want to go down you know so that it's really clear because if it won't define up we could waste a lot of time we've only got a day and a half we're also still looking for evidence of ceremony outside the main buildings and it's not long before francis is called away to look at yet more geophys results okay so what have we got john well look on the aerial photograph we've got the two temples now we've got the ring feature but if you come this way there's a sort of splurge at that point there we've now looked at it with resistance so again follow that line between the two temples we've got a clear high resistance response i mean that suggests to me a sort of small building structure at this point well i mean that's where you'd expect to find one i mean we're in the yard outside the main temples and it's in these yards these open spaces but that's where you get the the sacrifices and and the religious offerings a sort of altar yes an altar something like that but i mean we you know we'll only know by putting a hole in it so that's what we must do i think after lunch yes so francis decides to open a third trench over the splurge that could be an altar while back in phil's trench there we go the blob on the geophysics is turning up trumps well i'm damned i shall get a brush phil is the first thing i'm going to do who would have believed that there you go hey so that's the mortar that it was yeah and it's just sitting in the bottom here look well in that nose phil they're jumping up and down saying that you've got some kind of floor we have a little mosaic floor look wow look look isn't that isn't that beautiful that's a surprise isn't that what it is totally so do you think that this is what john was seeing in the geophysics i'm almost certainly yeah well in that case there could be a heck of a lot of it oh look at that there's a coin really you couldn't ask for a better gift than a coin lying on the floor it really is a gift can you tell much about it no it's it's just way for a thin in fact there's a hole that goes right the way through it and i certainly don't want to i certainly don't want to risk trying to brush it because if there is any detail on it i might lose it but it's turning into quite a good sight doesn't it cleaning reveals the coin to be third century meaning that phil's mosaic floor had to have been laid before that date back on site and another great find is emerging mark what do you think of that oh my word look at that it's lovely isn't it now that's in fabulous condition that's constantine the first or constantine the greatest is known to history flip it over and it's the sun god soul isn't it fantastic to have a coin with a pagan god and it's the emperor who converts to christianity and found on a temple site it's just a lovely little little microcosm of why we're here yes isn't it while in our temple bridge is extending the trench to reveal the whole keller it's here in this sacred center that we might expect offerings to have been left to the gods and soon enough what is it bridge where's the most beautiful enameled brooch oh look at that oh beautiful plate brooch enamel that green area was probably originally white enamel but we can see that there are little spots of red here too second century usually those types of guys and the crescent on the top makes me think immediately of the moon yes if that's right then that would mean it's the goddess diamond well that would be great because i've actually found it inside the cali in the temple oh but doesn't mean the temple was dedicated to her she might just have been one of many gods of goddesses dedicated to here oh but don't squash on it just yet guy please it's a lovely find isn't it beautiful it's well done great tea time on day two and we're beginning to paint a vivid picture of our romano british temple and the very things that were part of day-to-day life here but as time ticks on we've still got a lot of questions about this site to answer we've now dug across the huge feature on the aerial photograph that looks like free ditches but we still don't know what it is exactly so stuart sets off to investigate the landscape could give us clues importantly our site is below a major roman road that leads to very lamium romance and albans [Applause] but there's also a river system next to our temples and we think that in roman times it might have flooded so henry's coring in order to understand how it would have impacted on our side back at our third trench and where we thought we might have an altar we've got walls guys do come and have a look at this because this is absolutely gorgeous helen can you talk guy through this i can yes do you remember on the aerial photograph those two temples and a little square shape underneath them south of them well here is our square wall now i'm hoping that it could possibly turn into maybe an external altar what do you reckon at first glance well no it's just two up for grabs because helen's quite right it might be an altar but it might be a kiosk a place well kiosk kiosk you go to kiosks have you been to a kiosk to buy something if you come to a place like this there's going to be stuff for sale i'm thinking sacred zone i'm thinking burn animals on altars you've got to remember that all these roman religious establishments were commercial outfits as well they needed places to flog off voted good so that the punter could buy it so he could give a give to the god helen is seductively waving a fine bag at us what is this i'm pretty sure that's a nice little piece of burnt bone okay it's not very thoroughly burnt and it's a bit squishy that's what i think it is it looks a bit more like a bird dropping but if she's right and indeed it is a piece of burnt bone we know that they burned animals as offerings actually it's quite plausibly a bit of a ritual and what do you got here well three bits of dating evidence there you go or coins as we often call them in english yes it's um very wasp this afternoon well they're small they're about the size of a five pence piece the third or fourth century and in fact that one with the little radiant crown and i can tell you is the third century so we've got something that's third fourth century it's on a sacred site we've got burning this isn't a kiosk is it they're not flogging football programs here this is this is an altar or something what we've got here is a really interesting structure that lies right on the middle line between the two temples down over there you've got romans and albans this has got to be a major monument of some sort that is going to greet the visitor coming into the temple guy is it exciting for the first time in many years i can actually feel it registering on my excitometer in fact it's the first time i've even seen a temple on time team oh that's good come on well if guy seems happy phil's engrossed by what's coming up in his trench he's got a substantial wall and within that an intriguing square chalk feature by the end of an exceptional day too we've discovered not just two roman temples but an entire temple complex i don't think i can remember a time team where we've had three such tasty trenches in such a small area it's been fantastic tony well you remember that circular thing that we thought could have been a bronze age barrow yes well it turns out it's got a circular wall around the outside it's a roman shrine and in the middle there you can see the base of a of a chalk altar base made out of piled up chalk and then fitted within a box made out of wood and over here in this trench we think we've got another alter although guy thinks it's a kiosk but we're working on him and over here we've got the trench with the two temples in it but it is tantalizing isn't it because it's all structures not people that's right tony that's why we want to go down and i think we'll actually get evidence for what was going on here the rituals you know the sacrifices and things and as a first hint when we were going down in the keller right up against the wall we found this now i don't know what it is it may have gone in a little recess in the wall but it looks to me for all the world like ahead so if we've got this prehistoric e.t tonight what are we going to find tomorrow when we go down further does it remind you of somebody when we came here two days ago we thought with a bit of luck we might find a roman temple but what we actually have found has exceeded our wildest expectations we've got a whole temple complex complete with ritual finds and not one but two temples at least that's what i thought until a few minutes ago but france is it's not two temples is it no it's three tony um this is a temple i mean no doubt about it and look right at the center there that big white square that's a foundation for an altar it's made out of chalk that's been dumped there and underneath it i think we'll probably find foundation deposits offerings that sort of thing how are you going to dig it phil obviously the main focus of our efforts will be on that altar base but we don't want to take that ultra base in isolation what we've got to do is see how it relates to all the rest of the deposits in the temple so what i'll do is i'll run out a slot right through from that altar base through the floors through the wall outside the temple see how that temple was put together see how it was used but more crucially when it was built yesterday we did have some lovely finds but the buzz is today we could get even more down there i think we will but i think the key thing is that what we discover is going to tell us about what people were doing here the behavior the rituals that's what really matters our mission to understand the people here has already unearthed important evidence yesterday we found one of time team's most tantalizing finds a rare type of stone that we believe was chosen for the temple because it looks like a human head [Music] it was found in the keller the sacred center of the temple and with only one day left bridge is now digging down into the keller in the hope of finding yet more evidence of ritual we've also opened a trench over what could be an altar or a kiosk for religious goods and as day three gets underway it's here that an archaeological deluge begins hi helen i i hear there's been some excitement over here yes we've got a lot of bronze coins yeah now as you know if there's more than ten bronze coins from the single find we need to report them under the 1996 treasure act so what i what i want to know from you though is do you think that they represent a horde have they gone into the ground together let's have a look let's have a look we've got two like third century coins we've got one of the early 320s the majority are all between 330 and 340 41 and there's one that we can't identify yet until it's been conserved and cleaned in my opinion that's a deliberate deposit a group deposit it's a horde and that means presumably it's gone into the ground as an offering not not as a bank to keep safe but as we're at a temple as an offering oh i think in this context yes it's a deliberate group offering fantastic so excellent and it's kind of thing you expect to find on a temple site and we've got one brilliant with archaeology appearing in the ground at every turn the pressure's on to excavate this substantial ceremonial complex and stuart's been busy investigating why people chose this spot to show their devotion critically our site's in a river valley and it's also beside wattling street a roman road that led to very lamium why do you think the temples are here and not somewhere else that's a simple question to us remember the the triple ditch system we saw in the field over there that's part of a monumental prehistoric land boundary which went all the way from the ridge on the top over there down the valley side across the river bottom here and up the side of this valley and i think what happens in the roman period is that boundary is is still an important political statement the edge of a territory and what have you so if you're coming out from saint albans this is the point at which you leave that valley and you want to make an offering to the gods safe journey onwards and the same coming back in it's where two zones actually meet guy do you buy the idea that the romans came here and they used the existing territorial boundaries for their own devices yes because the whole idea behind the roman system is that you come in and you re-brand the existing system of hierarchy and patronage so that you exploit social systems to run it the roman way in roman times people would have known this as an impressive ceremonial complex located an important position on the routes and albans today this site is so exceptional that leading experts are on hand to try and make sense of the three temples at least this morning we thought it was three francis we've extended this trench now i thought it was just a kiosk no it's not a kiosk tony it's another temple another temple yes i'm pretty certain of that because it's got a tower keller like the other two over there and i think the key thing now is to extend our trench let's see if it's got a walkway wall then i think we put it to bed we plan it and we can't hope to dig it we've got far too much to do so we've got two temples there one there one there is that four temples or am i dreaming it's four temples tony and this is now turning into a major roman temple complex i mean it is of national importance once that's sorted out tony what's your priority it would be this part of the site over here we've got a circular temple and we've got a square platform in the center of it and it's only the second of its type in the whole country and we need to find out its exact function and get some dating evidence from it what's your strategy going to be francis well we'll put a slot through the center of the circular temple from the altar platform to the wall that should give us all the dating we need and the relationship of the various features how important do you think this site is i mean it's breathtakingly important tony it's because the preservation is so good it's actually quite a big responsibility there's a lot of pressure on you today no not much so we look for two temples then four turn up and with just hours left we're faced with hugely important archaeology that we've got to make sense of in bridges trench we've got our first two temples we've got another square temple next door while phil has his rear circular temple to excavate we're also trying to understand why such a huge temple complex was built in this hertfordshire field and henry's work on the river is giving us more evidence what you can see is our our temple site just here now what struck me immediately from this data was that up the river channel up here um the stream channel we've actually got these this confidence of three different tributaries now those sort of confluences as far as i'm san francis they're quite significant in prehistory particularly in the iron age water was crucially important to people it was a boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead you went into water and you died and you were in the in the realm of the ancestors the thing about the the romans was that they don't seem to have had one overarching water god they they have little gods for specific places so you've got suelis minerva at bath where you've got an amazing hot spring and then you have somebody else like like the goddess coventino who is only known from one site near hadrian's wall so as yet we don't know which god might have controlled our water well it's quite weird because we've already said uh confluences and streams being important but we actually do know something about the nature of the water on site here because the coring worker did it's shown that it's quite a wide sort of flood plain area but very shallow river or riverlets very multiple channels and very slow moving so at certain times of year this field would have been surrounded by water giving it religious significance and with the diggers at full steam ahead we're getting more evidence of that religion by the hour guy these were found by faye in her trench and she says they're curses what does she mean almost every time when you come to a site we're detached really from the aboriginal people a religious site is one of the rare occasions that you get a bit of writing some evidence of that relationship between those people and their lives there's no writing there there will be these are rolled up sheets of lead when they're unrolled they'll probably have handwriting on them and it will be that message to the god saying that you want such and such a thing what kind of things do they say it could be incredibly petty imagine for example your cloaks being nicked or that sort of thing you go along to the temple and you say so and so has done this terrible thing to me i plead to you the goddess or the god that this person has that house fall down or something horrific like that this thing gets rolled up it gets deposited on the temple site and the person goes away hoping of course they paid for this so they go away hoping that this service will be performed for them by the god or goddess and if they think that it has they'll come back and they'll leave a gift which is the other half of the contract so they might leave an altar here or a gift of food like that burnt bone saying thanks very much are these very common no they're not at all and to find some in a religious context like this is really very unusual so people came here to make offerings and ask the gods to fulfill their desires and if you want to know more about roman gods visit the time team website [Music] back in our first trench and with just half a day left tracy is uncovering a walkway visitors would have once trod strikes me for that walkway surface is much lower than the other ones on the site is it yeah i mean it's lower than the ambulatory so i mean it's almost like you would have stepped up and then maybe a step up into the keller in the center i mean this is fascinating but it sort of implies that the level at which you're walking it's something to do with the level of sanctity of the of the temple so out here on the fringes you lower down you get into the ambulatory around the central keller and you're up and then in the color itself you know you're quite well up and of course the keller is a great tower i think there's some symbolism here we might have missed before a romano british visitor to this site would have found temples designed to inspire ore and wonder but they'd also have encountered a mass of other people coming to pay devotion the more this dig goes on the more i get a picture up the far end of the field of these four temples surrounded by great crowds or dancing and banging drums and the guys bare to the waist a bit of long hair people putting these curses into the walls with great shouts and whales and generally everybody having a good time is there anything like how you think it might have been i don't know what i can possibly add to that it's the perfect picture no you're quite right it's not like the christian church ceremony this is a much more if you like brutal pagan world which is much closer to the landscape it's much closer to the visible sense of death and sacrifice it's a much harder landscape than the one we live in today remember these are people who lived in permanent terror of the unpredictability of the natural world a thunderstorm a rainstorm your crop being ruined they're perpetually trying to control this through religion on a more mundane note what about transport how did they get here another thing that's very big in the landscape here is wattling street where is it um it's it's not the first line of trees it's the second line you can just about see it on the horizon so we're actually very visible from watching street and so maybe that's why the temple is where it is you know i'm a relentless cynic by being close to the road it makes this place a successful commercial establishment you've got to get the punters in haven't you you know what this place would have been like the glastonbury festival and a really awful summer and how close is that to the m5 on site it's now a race against time to make sense of the entire religious complex in our third temple phil's finding that under his chalk base there are no fines but a huge flint foundation well i'm getting these flints up guess what's underneath more chalk so with only hours to go he faces a tricky excavation next door with time running out bridge has finally revealed the keller of our first temple what you got british well tony we now have the whole color exposed got very few finds actually coming out of it we've got this floor tile here with some little dog paw prints inside it and we also got this really lovely silver coin from the emperor trajan dated to about 98 a.d what about structures well actually we're getting a really nice sequence of events coming up now and in fact you actually walked through where the entrance would be when you came in the trench down that plank just over there we've got demolition phases here right here in front of me then we seem to have the remnants of the original floor surface here and then under that we've got the bedding layers and into that we've got these two post holes that are being excavated now with a third here that seem to represent an earlier phase of temple so what's the big story of this trench well i think the key thing might be that head we found yesterday because i think that could be um the god or the spirit the deity that they were worshiping that they dedicated this temple to it meant an awful lot to the people here enough to build this huge tower and this temple and phil has unearthed an even rarer temple one of the most important buildings we've ever dug on time team phil are you confident now that you know what we've got here oh absolutely tony you see this brown soil in front of us well that is like a literally like a garden soil and it's got first and second century pottery in it so i don't think that the temple was here here at that stage but the floor of the temple which is literally the surface that we're walking on we've got third century pottery there on the floor of the temple which is where we're standing now and we've got third century coin from the tessellated pavement there so i'm pretty sure that the temple itself is third century when you look at the construction of it you see there we've gone through the wall and you see the depth of the foundations they are massive so imagine just how big the wall above it's going to be but if you really want massive have a look at the massive foundation for this main altar or shrine base it may look like they've just heaved in a load of flints just randomly but when you actually start to unpick it you can see that it's layers of flints and chalk it's all been tamped down time after time absolutely and and of course you don't build a foundation like that unless you're going to put something absolutely massive on top like a an enormous altar or a full-size statue it's seriously big so we think our temple complex looked like this in one temple center was a sacred stone a focus of devotion for the many who processed around the temple [Music] on the site romano british visitors offered curses and coins sacrificed animals and then prayed to the gods at a huge monument inside a circular temple [Music] is this as rare as we thought it was when we first saw it well in my career i've never seen one and of course i've talked to the roman experts around here they've never seen him either so yes it is genuinely rare you are the guy who said we wouldn't find any temples can't happen [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 279,908

Rating: 4.926743 out of 5

Keywords: Team Team, Archaeology, History, Education, Educational, British TV, British History, Tony Robinson, Phil Harding, John Gater, Stewart Ainsworth, Mick Aston, archeological dig, Channel 4, Time Team Full Episodes, Full Episode

Id: kZEHXR4ED1s

Length: 47min 11sec (2831 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020