➤ Time Team's Top 3 MOSAICS

this is the kissing gate of St Kerber's church here in the village of cter in Cambridge and it's one of the most beautiful medieval churches in England and yet it's what's under this Church's graveyard that's got our archaeologists very excited because beneath my feet could be the remains of a mysterious Roman building but it's not just one Roman building by itself over there in the school playing field across there in the rectory in fact everywhere I look archaeologists have found impressive Roman structures this could add up to be something very special looks like it's going to be a hectic 3 days that is if I can never get down again is that Roman already pieces of Roman Mosaic flooring called tessora are turning up back outside it's now raining cats and dogs on our archaeologists in trench one thank you so much but despite the weather and the geiz results this trench is turning into something of a gold mine we got some fines for we're getting loads of fins out already this is just a selection there's this stuff which is kind of Saxon Norman dates the 11th early 12th century round about the time the church was built so they're quite possibly robbing out the Roman buildings for stone to build the church and we' got our first bit of early middle Saxon handmade Pottery 5 six 7th Century something like that what about this chunky stuff here well we've got Roman as well there's some bits of Roman color coated Pottery which is late third fourth bit of a mosaic Tes as well possibly cracking selection of fins already it looks like there's something coming out of the trench fi yeah but this is the crucial thing Tony as Paul says we are beginning to get Saxon Pottery these are the first levels that we're actually coming down on to they could include Saxon buildings here this is really rather extraordinary for us we always have a problem finding Saxon on time team to find it great but then to find it on the site where we looking for Roman is a little bit more difficult what do we find next so we're going to open our second trench here in the old rectory garden and after some promising GE Fizz we've decided to put a third trench in this corner of the school field this is another spot that our antiquarian artists and later archaeologists have explored and it seems to have been an artist favorite because he drew the remains of this impressive Roman bath house he reckoned he'd found here if so our trench in the old rectory Garden could be right on top of one but if artist's plan is accurate it's the north graveyard where we really need to focus our efforts so Jimmy's now geop fizzing here and by midaf afternoon he's latched on to something um you've turn up just at the right time look at this we've got a really strong reflector here and it's at least 5 m me across well that's nothing like anything else in the churchyard is it no no up until now I mean there's been the odd reflection but they've looked like um they could just be Stone casket or a slab lined grave but I mean this is much much bigger and it's about halfway up the slope just beyond where this mess is well this is where the one building was meant to be from antiquarian records where they got this early Mosaic it's possible Jimmy's detected this striking Roman Mosaic flaw that art is Drew in his book of illustrations and if our antiquarian site plan is to be trusted it makes sense that geis are getting a strong signal here there must been something here for them to Rob and raid to use what are you guys doing here all the excitements on the far side of the church you're stuck around the back yeah but we've been looking at all the Roman stuff built into the church the tile and the stonework and so on and the idea that comes from a huge Roman building that's somewhere around here the back of the church artists had a theory that all the Roman buildings to the north of the church were one giant structure and Steven thinks this is how it might have looked well it's a pretty enormous building Tony I mean from where we're standing to The Far Side is 110 m c well if it's that big it would absolutely dwarf the church wouldn't it yeah it would it would be three or two or three times bigger than the church so what could something that size actually be let's go back to artist he called it a priori what's a priori well in art his terms he were used to digging Villas of fairly modest size and this was the biggest thing that he ever saw and ever dug and he gave the term pratorum implying its size we've only got one day Ben what do you think our overall strategy should be well I think artist was very good archaeologist for his time but I'm I'm not so confident about this sort of floating building here is it attached to the other buildings around it what alignment is it on we need a trench across there to try and tie it to the other buildings and sort out the alignment think of the church here you can see that in the path well a few years ago I cleaned up a bit of wall there and there's definitely something there but I didn't get much of a look at it is that a big building range as artists depicts it and I'm off up there now so Phil's on the move to this spot just north of the church to help Jackie dig a new trench in the graveyard and raksha's opening a trench as well in the area that Ben's interested in with over 20,000 burials in this churchard it's not going to be easy finding any evidence for our pretorium but in the rectory Garden trench which phase now taken over from Matt we may be on to something what have you actually got going on over there Tim well I seem to have this surface it's got a few tessay in it but it's very Pebble and not very good now that's what's interesting cuz where I am I've got nothing I've got a great big rectangular hole with no archaeology in it and my only explanation for that can be that this is where artist shoved his trench and he basically took everything away with him and therefore that's why we've got this line along here which I think's a rubbed out [Music] wall everywhere on this site we seem to be following in the footsteps of this chap artist some of us quite literally I need some measurements from this line now so I can put them on the drawing oh excuse me excuse me beg your pardon your on time Matthew I think the Peg's come out who put the peg in Matthew sorry sir went up and again that's your wages dot yes Mr anworth Right Next the rectory Garden next Matthew anything you say Mr aworth back in the graveyard Phil and Jackie are up against the clock digging carefully around lots of human bones they've now only a few hours left to get down to the floor of a potentially massive Roman structure are these individual burials or are they lots of Bones on top of each other well we' we've had a lot of loose bones spread about turning up all the way across here but the difference here is you can see we've got about five skulls all dumped in together in one place so you do think that that could be a grave digger who's cleared earlier Graves dug a pit chucked these in so that more people can be buried yeah I mean basically it looks like a chal pit but we do have a problem don't we that we've got lots of Bones and lots of smashed Mosaic but no structures whatsoever what we can be certain of is that in places the grave diggers have been through the Roman floor otherwise we wouldn't have this sort of material what we've got to Hope is that they didn't destroy it all and that they've left some of it for us and that means digging deeper that means digging deeper thankfully raksha's trench at the Western end of the graveyard looks to have got something more substantial how's it going it's going very well actually um put this trench in here to find what we thought was a wall coming through there and uh lo and behold we have a huge wall that was actually poking out the ground before you started it was we knew that was there but I didn't realize how massive it actually is so we've got one wall here which is in running in that direction and then where John is we have the return and that's running in this direction so they should actually come out and converge around about here it's amazing isn't it this is the first time that we have seen anything like the kind of monumental walls that Edmund artist saw yeah this is the this is the only trench where we actually have huge walls in the old retory Garden where we're looking for what could be the East wing of our pretorium we now have two [Music] trenches but our main hopes lie with these trenches in the graveyard rack shars at the Western Edge and Phils just north of the [Music] church Phil you know how I said I was getting a lot more building material and Big Blocks of Tessa oh W now I'm getting lots of PE grip which is coming this fine grip and look what it's coming down onto oh good lord that looks like a floor it looks very like a floor and this is an insitu burial that's lying directly on top of it the look of it all that is good stuff I'll tell you what blimy we could be just inches away from finally getting evidence of a big Roman structure and crucially it's slap bang in the middle of our pretorium plan back in the old retory Garden fa is getting really stuck in cool this looks a bit different to yesterday you're well down I am but fantastically we've got a huge great big section of wall a big Roman wall isn't it yeah without Shadow and we were a bit worried yesterday about the sort of relative Heights of all this I mean there's a there's a surface very much higher than the Roman wall you can see where artist put his trench which is basically this line down in this section here and I actually think that level there is where he was standing really yeah which is why it's so compact with Footprints what size boots did he have come on SO demanding I haven't got any Footprints in there and it's also a very significant chunk of Walling on the Eastern side of what we think is one single enormous building fa's discovery of this massive Roman wall previously dug by artist is a really good sign maybe we can rely on our antiquarian after all meanwhile there's breaking news from the graveyard we've spent the last 36 hours poking around in this graveyard trying to get permissions to dig it getting permissions to dig it then finding nothing but Roman rubble and a tumble of old bones but at last Feel we've got something exciting haven't we we have got artist's floor look if you look down between that pair of legs you can see a mosaic floor actually in situ you're smiling William I'm really excited about this if arst right about this he might be right about the pratorum here we are they took Jesus from the house of cus esto pretorian to the pretorium in AR's day he would have heard the word pratorum when he went to church because that was the word used to describe um where Jesus was arraigned in front of pontious pilot so he was tried in the priori priori gone I was going to say this is so important to what we're trying to do we've now got the floor you can actually begin to see some sort of an alignment on the tassy we might be able to actually say exactly what the alignment of that building was finally our efforts in the graveyard are being rewarded rsha this is awesome I love this this is fantastic it looks a lot different than it did yesterday it is it's a lot lot different raksh shar's revealed a huge section of wall and a step Foundation the classic Herring bone style shows that this is definitely Roman people were a bit skeptical yesterday I talked about finding this big Herring bone wall and and I I suspect that people didn't quite believe me this looks remarkably similar to what was found on the other side of the church in the 50s yes I remember that I've seen photographs it's on a similar line and he found step foundations like this this is a photo of those step foundations excavated at cter in the 1950s they're more than 100 met away from our trench but they're virtually identical to those found by rure and as the last few hours of our dig at Caster tick by the news just gets better and better so what's the story of this transen sen basically we have a Roman building and actually down there we've got a room with what looks like a hypercore system we've actually got a two Lev building so what did they do fill it in or cover it up and then build something on top or they had stairs that took you up to another room ah right right right a building on two levels makes sense because the Romans had to factor in the slope of a hill here in the old rectory garden and on the western side of the church the massive Roman wall that rakar found at the Western end of the graveyard nearly 2 m wide was built to support a building possibly three stories high and at an extraordinary 110 m in length this is the largest Roman building time team has ever [Music] excavated time team is 100% independent and funded by our incredible fans joining patreon gives you access to exclusive reive interviews 3D models master classes and more please join us on this exciting Journey we need more support to make more episodes this is withington in the cot walls an area of outstanding Beauty with a lot of Rich farmland and some very classy houses in Roman times it seems to have been pretty much the same because 200 years ago Plowman somewhere around here discovered a huge Villa and excavations revealed some Exquisite mosaics but no one was able to date The Villa and there's no record of exactly where it was but that's just the beginning of our story 200 M below the Villa field is this lovely little spring and guess what Roman Mosaic and Roman tile have been found here and in this field over here no one's dug here but the two sides are too close together not to be connected could the big Villa over there have had a huge complex of buildings down here I think it could but I'm more interested actually in the spring which is under the bush over there this is called withington by the wall well which rather suggest it was you know perhaps named in the Saxon period and we know that Romans when they come in they often take over pre-existing sites like Springs which are religious interest and put temples and turn them into their own religious sites Temple well maybe but this is a very unusual location it's very wet down here there's a lot of water about it's going to flood I think it's much more likely main Villa is further up the slope but perhaps this is the predecessor the early villa which then replace the later Villa further up the slope David what about these bits of Mosaic do they give us a clue well these could belong to an early Villa um but I think it's more likely a bath house so we could have elaborate Bath House associated with with a villa either down here or up there or and perhaps we could have a swiming pole associated with early Bill the the the important thing which I keep going back to is what is the relationship between what is happening down here and the really big biller up there all right if you were all gambling men which I know that none of you are what are you going to say this is Temple I'd like a temple early villa villa to all early Villa Bath House Bath House per Temple swimming pool we're not going to know till we start digging are we get going Phil no sooner has Phil got the turf off the Mosaic pieces start appearing got our first one look nice T out the top yeah what matter it proves Roger wooden plant in them oh look there's another one popping out all over the place yeah the Villa was excavated by an eminent antiquarian called Samuel license and that's the problem really cuz he seems to be be more interested in chasing mosaics than he was in working out the extent of the Villa so our first job's going to have to be to find it but John we've got these zoning great pylons here aren't they going to get in your way it shouldn't be too much of a problem these instruments are designed to filter out that sort of noise there are so many tessi or pieces of Mosaic coming out in the lower field that Phils put the machine away to avoid any damage to the archaeology in the in front of Spade that one yeah another one there nice one that's loads you found loads and all I've done is top soil from there to there found about 10 but what we want is to get them in a floor man that's what we want we've barely been going 5 hours Phil says he's found something to bring me out in Goose pimples what you got oh look this is what we got we got a mosaic look there it is isn't that absolutely incredible and look it goes right the way across there it's still going there look it's still going look there it goes and you can see so there it is let's have it go find go on the other there see there it is Riley it's still here two square meters already wow I know and of course it's going back in through there and the further it goes back in there the better protected I think it's going to be because I think here we're right on the edge of where it's been taken away by the plowing when we say a Roman Mosaic this is just white with the occasional bit of red in isn't it it's not it's not pretty oh come on Tony what do you mean it's not pretty look it's a Roman Mosaic how often do you find a Roman Mosaic just like that on day one very very rarely J who've splited into two teams have a hunched there's also a villa down here by the river their first magnetic results told us where to dig Now by using resistance they should be able to pinpoint the walls and the outline of any building that may be here our first trench in the upper field has delivered good archaeology but we can't begin any evaluation work on the scheduled Villa until we're sure that we found it bridge where are we we're on a Roman wall yeah you can see it's completely running off in that direction and we've got two faces one running up here and one on this side here it's measuring about 50 cm across but the problem is what's going on on either side of it we've got this really dense material here we've got various things coming out of it compacted material look we've got here teso coming up we've also got a few bits of this gray Weare Roman Pottery oh look even licens his beer bottle I don't think that's Roman by the end of our first day we found more archaeology than we often see in 3 days there's even a second Mosaic at the other end of Phil's trench the problem as always is understanding what's going on what we've actually got at this end of the trench I think we're outside the building and you can see we've got the collapsed roof which has come sliding down out here here's the main uh back wall or front wall of the building this we now know is a corridor going through so your straight edge becomes part of the next wall which has been robbed out and now inside here we've got the main rooms of the building with a collapsed Mosaic where's the Mosaic Matt we've got one piece there that bit there and that long piece going across there so it's quite extensive isn't it so what are we going to do here tomorrow well we've got John's new geophysics this has got the resistance on it isn't it yeah and I think what's exciting about the results is when we' only got the magnetic we thought we might have just a simple maybe three roomed Villa now we've got the resistance it clearly shows that the rooms extend in this direction it's much bigger and more complex than we thought so we're going to do a bit more with this area tomorrow and then Target a trench somewhere in the middle a probably a 10 by 10 something like that and what about our Villa up there well the big news Tony is we've actually found lic's Villa but the problem is we actually know where we are in it so we're going to get a trench across it tomorrow let's work out where we are on his plan the Romans were renowned for their water engineering it seems odd to go to such trouble to bring fresh running water down to these buildings from a spring further up the valley when the river was so close in the lower field our Roman experts might have the answer they've been looking at the finds from this trench and they're now convinced that the building was a bath house a basic Roman bath house had three rooms a a warm room a hot room to sweat out your dirt and a cold plunge pool to cool off they think we're digging in the hot room oh come on how can you tell that from one trench because it's got distinctive types of tile including this one which is a fousa which is the one of these box tiles forming the vault in the ceiling so you literally get a tube of ofre of of boxes going around the wall allowing allowing the hot air to circulate up the walls and around the ceiling so this this sort of odd shape is is deliberate oh yes that is incredible so that's it and we've even got a bit of the Vault this is a tuur nice light Limestone so you can get the whole of the stone Vault for half the weight so you get a really good Stone Vault instead of a wooden roof which would rot in a hot steamy room so is this the vaulted sort of roof that has caused our mzac to collapse in highly likely yeah and presumably It All Belongs to the fourth Century that's what the coins are saying anyway but does it because I've got a piece of box tile here from the from a wall box tile which is which has roller stamp decoration and is almost certainly first or second century implying therefore that we may have an earlier bath house on the site so this decoration is literally put on with a roller correct you got a piece of clay and you as opposed to as opposed to a comb decoration freehand comb decoration hey this is really good a it really because it looks as though we've got not one bath house but two bath houses yes I need to get my head around this David and Richard are saying that we've got two phases of bath house here 300 years apart and as this might be a hot room could there possibly be a hyper coost an underfloor heating system right here under the rubble this is all made up ground Stone I think what they've done is they dug a slot into the soid of the hill to take the stone away and that's what John was seeing on the geophysics the thing of it is it's not all doom and gloom because we do actually have some preserved Roman archaeology in here I mean we've got Tasser in there look got it and animal bone so I think what's happened is that that literally this Quarry has chopped away all the Roman archaeology last night we wanted to close down the lower field we've solved Rogers molehill mystery we're convinced it's a Roman Bath House complete with collapsed Mosaic floors now we can see how the rooms of the Roman Bath House related to each other in this lower field next door to the plunge pool Matt's beginning to uncover what we suspected all along David come here a minute there was a hyper coost here an underfloor heating system so this must be the hot room I think might init bit of the bath house if you just po down there look at this oh definitely that's there the peely for the for the floor the stack here still in situ stacks of tiles called peely supported the Mosaic floor allowing hot air to circulate underneath and through flu in the walls we've got some what one two 3 four five six at least five yeah and they're still going down as well at least yep getting down there and there's rub and stuff no sign on the floor yet well we've got bits of this floor floor here y but the bottom of this you can't see how deep how far down it is actually going bit of Tess coming out all over the place you may find another stack somewhere here so close well they sometimes separated by roughly 30 cm that's good good thanks at last it's coming good in the upper field after all the hours of geiz and Collective head scratching they've stumbled on the remains of a mosaic and alongside is the decisive clue a mosaic has been lifted from here and who else would have done that other than our old friend Samuel license this is the Mosaic you mean this is this that's right the problem we've had for two days is that we've been chasing license was his rooms running in this direction or they going in that direction so where would the Aus Mosaic have been that would have been under the grass at the far end of the trench in that direction well it's been a struggle yes thank goodness I was able to chiver you on otherwise we might never have worked it out it's all down to you it's disappointing that we didn't find more of the licensed Villa that we assumed would be easy to load locate the quality of these mosaics alone tells us that this was an impressive fourth Century Villa occupied most probably by wealthy yman Farmers the early ancestors of England's medieval knights yesterday back in the lower field the experts thought that there were two bathouses on the site one earlier than the other and today Matt found the concrete evidence we got this huge chunk of open Signum concrete but as you can see it's got this lovely kind of curve on there do you know which part of oh oh yeah so I know exactly what this is this is the first floor for this room and it part of the same phase as the concrete that you got on the concrete floor that predates the Mosaic this the earliest the ear the ear pH and and in this phase I suspect the room was us being used very much as part of the bath house for the use of the bath house was a hot room and the that when the Mosaic was put down possibly the use of the room had changed somewhat that there would have formed the base the floor of the bath and here is here's the edge along there that's the quarter round molding yes this would been totally waterproof and at the bottom of the bar um no this is not in citu this has been this has been ripped out and and just dumped but this isn't quite as fancy as a mosaic though is it verion PL but yes but it's waterproof so it's it's vital Yeah undeterred by failing to find a spring head John's at it again 25 5 and still the geys worth waiting for though look at this we've got the whole landscape now magnetically here's the sheduled Villa series of prehistoric enclosures surrounding it then we've got this Avenue that we saw yesterday now appears to connect the two Fields with the possible Shrine down here we still don't really know yeah and then in this field sort of Bath House Fields as we've been calling it look at the resistance results there's the stream there's the stream just to orientate there's the plunge pool there's the trench with the Mosaic look we've got a whole new Range corridors rooms absolutely fantastic and basically it extends up the hillside there and even more exciting look at the scale it's actually larger than the sheduled Villa up there so is it another Villa it looks like it doesn't it it's got to be 2,000 years ago there would have been many more people living in this landscape ape based on our finds it looks as if a modest range of farm buildings including a bath house was in use by the river just after the Roman occupation in 43 ad this settlement grew into a larger and more affluent complex with its own piped running water but it would have been vulnerable to flooding so perhaps it was the same family that built the Villa that lysens discovered further up the hill on the site of some other prehistoric farm buildings this later Villa almost eluded us but no one could have predicted the quality and the significance of the other discoveries we made we came here because of a handful of tessari in this field but we found this amazing bath house once Romans would have sat among these beautiful mosaics sweating then they would have sprinted over to Phil's plunge pool to cool off and exchange the gossip of the day but this being time team in the last few minutes we've been handed this it's geiz of yet another Villa up on this slope here it's bigger than license's original Discovery and part of a huge Roman complex time team is 100% independent and funded by our incredible fans joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models master classes and more please join us on this exciting Journey we need more support to make more episodes have a look at this drawing see the detail in that rose pattern there classic evidence of a Roman villa but that's not all experts think there could be even better Mosaic still down there although there's a very good reason why they haven't tried to look for the last 100 years this whole area has been an army firing range what we've done is we've resurveyed a small area and I mean the results are just so clearly it just has to be Villa building all the wall lines corridors rooms a whole mass of responses how deep down do you reckon this stuff is I think it's pretty shallow probably not more than you know half a meter the gef hints at dozens of rooms any of which could hold the mosaics but one spot in the corner looks particularly promising so in goes trench one and oh look someone's happy and almost immediately Phil and Neil find something rather special oh now then what oh well even you know what that is Phil you do that's part of a mosaic floor that was quick tiny bits of stone like these are called tessai the building blocks of a mosaic let's hope that's a good omen of things to come oh oh well it's not bad is it for the first the first spit of the first trench got Tess three and we got a coin you know there's only 12 coins recorded from this site so far from the antiquarian so lucky 13 so our second trench goes in just a few meters away from our first to see if we've got a high status room in the middle of the Villa with one of the mosaics in it and bang on target guess what we findo Tracy there are excited Whispers from the other trench that you found a little bit of Mosaic we have Tony yeah I mean you can see we've got a little bit in here and then a bit beyond where R's working a little bit of a mosaic come on Tony it's car caring on underneath here so I think we're going to have to extend the trench back this way there's a gap in the middle there do you think you accidentally hit it no we didn't hit it um it's most probably plow damaged if you actually look at the section we're not that far from the top at all so Jon's looking pretty pleased with his geophysics although it's still very muddy this must be one of the mosaics we've been asked to look for this is a smaller room here with this Mosaic in the division between the room room should be about here in this train and like buses you wait for ages in the cold for one Mosaic and two come along at once imagine all the hundreds of Posh sandal feet that must have walked over that yeah and not just the Posh guys because there's a whole Army of slaves and servants that are needed to keep a house of this style and Status running I mean there are some Latin offers that talk about a group of called the bagundi which are B of sort of runaway slaves and brigands roaming around Britain and ghou rans sacking and just nicking things so actually in in rubble and burning we're seeing the last days of Rome in Britain absolutely it's really about the end of the Roman way of life which is funded by the Roman economy as the day draws to an end the sun and the color in the mosaics are starting to shine through sadly they've deteriorated since they were last seen 150 years ago probably from plowing but at least we've ensured that they'll be protected in future is this one room or two rooms or what yes it's both it's what's called a bipartite room two rooms that operate as one you've got like your entrance hall almost with this lovely Mosaic that's really sort of vibrant with its colors now that it's been sponged out then you can see here that we've got this semicircular footing yeah what we might have here is like half column actually attached to the wall rising up with a nice big decorative capital in which case we're looking at a grand double doorway through the steps into here or it's the pedestal base for a statue either way we're looking at a very very Grand room what would the walls have been like almost certainly richly decorated painted wall plaster but of course we haven't found much here because this has already been cleared out by monton in the 1860s and that's not all curiously we appear to have post holes driven into the Mosaic floor this act of vandalism is perhaps more evidence that life here struggled on after the end of Roman Britain over the past 3 days we've Unearthed a villa which mirrors the rise and fall of Roman Britain [Music] a modest house which ended up with pretensions of grandeur in its Heyday cheap blue and white lias Mosaic corridors would have led into a large summer dining room with two Mosaic floors and on a fine day views across the valley Beyond on the dining room table perhaps the fake Silver Spoons we found all in all dare we say it just a little bit [Music] chav home to a minor Aristocrat his or her family and of course keeping the whole thing going in the background servants and [Music] slaves but the good times weren't to last it struggled on into the fifth century but the Villa along with Roman Brit was past its cell by [Music] date hello my name's John Gator time team is fanf funed by patreon this vital support helps us to make new episodes joining patreon gives you access to exclusive interviews 3D models and master classes plus lots more

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 27,950

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: k9TBKijkePg

Length: 37min 54sec (2274 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024