A Muslim Port In Spain | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

fantastic view isn't it this is the costa blanca in spade holiday destination for hundreds of thousands of brits every year but it once looked very different 900 years ago this whole country was an islamic state and the towns down there would have looked like cairo or baghdad a bit of north africa in europe this is the town of denia just along the coast from benidorm over the next three days time team have been given the opportunity to dig up more of denia's rich past to find out just how exotic life really was here compared with the cold and mud of medieval britain [Music] mick what are you doing here why aren't you digging i came down here to look at this great rock with a castle on the top which is all that's left of this islamic town that was down here this is why arabs and other people from north africa yeah they're coming in at about 7 11. there's a great arab invasion that takes over the area and then they're here until 12 42 when the when the christians kick them out 500 years yeah so there's a lot of archaeology here but it's all under this town it's a bit like the sort of problem we have in england where you know you only see when you redevelop bits of the town you take a building down you dig it before the new building goes up and you have to put various plots together to make like a jigsaw out of it so we're actually going to be digging an islamic town yeah and but it's actually very relevant to us in up in britain because in the 12th century in particular the arab world is much more advanced than we are and then the ideas are actually coming through ports like this and they're flowing northwards you know to to a sort of area what do you mean the ideas are flowing things like mathematics science medicine all that sort of stuff is much more advanced and those ideas are filtering through to us so what are we gonna dig oh well i'll have to take you to it come over this way during the islamic occupation of denia the castle would have been known as the alcathaba and spain itself was called al-andalus other arabic words of course are more familiar to us so benidorm's what 30 miles up the road yeah and that's another arab settlement the the name actually comes from benidorm what's that name it's the son of dahim it's you know it's an arab place name whereas denial is actually derived from a roman place name there was a big roman settlement here there was a temple to diana and the roman name was dianium denier may never become as built up as benidorm but currently there are lots of new building projects in development and consequently a lot of rescue archaeology in progress at this site for instance where we've been invited to help pepe gizbert and his team of diggers have discovered substantial remains belonging to part of the walled islamic town cool that's good there's a lot of walls there is is this all islamic stuff well a lot of it is yeah what we've done is asked pepe to advise victor on a reconstruction so victor's drawn the wall this is the big one right across the middle of the site there you can see coming up to a doorway which is where the girls are digging just down there look and then that's coming across to the big tower base which is just down here and this is a suburb isn't it pepe yes yes it's an important suburb really the the quarter of the population of dania lives in the suburbs all the craftsmen and trademen lives here and how does this here fit into this drawing here oh it's just it's just here this is the castle the old alcazaba this is the madina the city center of the islamic town and this is the suburb that has a contact with the medina by a bridge because this is a natural channel of water the the suburb is just in front of the islamic harbor and what are these little things here well this is the burial area here that they've been digging but we we've brought jackie mckinley with us to do some work on the the bones there because it should help you if we do some osteoarchaeology or some paleopathology yes yes i think it's very interesting because with this we can see the egg the sex and the diet that of of these muslim people that lives in the suburb of tania this is pepe's best interpretation of the site so far but details may change as the dig goes on essentially this is the area where we're going to be working with the main focus of our expertise being targeted at the cemetery inside the walls of the suburb certainly an awful lot of them yeah and they um they're all arranged really neatly all facing the same direction most of them on their sides but this one here has got really curiously flexed legs tight in why would that be well i think it's probably still being shrouded because the the part of the body is quite tight although it's slumped over but right what that does indicate is that it's gone in before rig and mortise is set in okay so we're dealing islamic yeah yeah yeah to bury a body within 24 hours [Music] until now no osteoarchaeological work on the burials has been done so even basic information about the age and gender of the people buried here will be new information for pepe at the moment all we know is that they're all muslims buried facing mecca time to find out more about them well is that finished yeah it is this is denier of course and this is the greenwich meridian line so we're right directly below southern england there aren't yeah when we say that the islamic invasion came from north africa where about i think you're right i'm saying muslim invasion because it was forces composed not only of arabs but also berbers and black africans and they swept around here up through gibraltar in 7-eleven they actually crossed the gibraltar yes they did they crossed over to what they called jebel tariq meaning the mountain of tariq and then rapidly progressed reaching toledo in the same year 711 and then across this whole zone that you can see here soon became muslim spain and what's this here the frontiers well this is a sort of indeterminate buffer zone that would have had mixed communities and then up here you have a much more defined christian area but it would have changed over the centuries that's an important point so what happened to all the christians and jews who were in occupied andalusia that's a good question but they're actually protected under islam as people of the book people of the bible and people of the torah so they paid a slightly higher poll tax but they allowed religious freedom to a certain extent for us this dig is a rare opportunity to find out about this extraordinary period of islamic settlement in europe and in this area where the burials extend outside the main site phil can't wait to start work phil hello jenny we've got a fascinating little site here i mean it's quite complicated yeah but i think with one or two quite strategically placed trenches we can actually do a lot of good what we've actually got here you see where all these sticks are yeah those are actually the positions of graves our main cemetery is literally just the other side of that wall so really what we've got is a cemetery extending through that wall in quite nice lines straight across here but what we've also got here is this is this cobbled metal surface which is a road right and that's coming along here and associated with that front and onto it we've got these buildings you see quite small buildings one there and another one there and they run along here you see there's actually a burial actually inside one of the buildings and what we don't know is whether people were actually living here with with burials under the floor or whether the buildings were knocked down and the burials were put in subsequently now i think one way we may be able to resolve that look at that i was looking around here earlier on look what is that well it's a skull oh right and it's not got a stick with it yeah i don't know maybe they just didn't see it but it's it's it's in a crucial position in absolutely crucial position because it's it's it's within the road now if we can actually resolve the relationship of this skeleton to the road in other words whether we can see whether the road's been dug away and the body put in or whether in fact the metal in of the road surface goes on over it then that would give us a relationship between these two things and by inference the relationship with the buildings so phil and jenny have an important trench to dig but they're going to need help to do it time to recruit some more diggers i found to you this is patricia dominique and i'll bet you speak very very good english don't you better than all spanish anyway pepe is also keen to target our resources at another rescue site here in what was the industrial part of the islamic town it's not the most glamorous of locations but this scrap of land is in an area where islamic pottery kilns have been discovered we've agreed to do a geophys survey to detect any archaeology here which will otherwise be lost when building work goes ahead aha that looks like we have got the geophysics results well we have we're still trying to make sense of it i mean we've surveyed from the edge of the building behind you right right up to the breaking slope there but there's so much modern material it looks a nightmare for you it is and i mean there's three areas we could go at right do you fears have detected strong signals which could just be caused by modern debris on the other hand they could be kilns well it's worth having a look okay are you happy to go without mick yes but my problem is i haven't actually got a jcb on this joke no it's really hard here's lots of rubble here but i haven't got a juicy it's not a site we can dig by hand so we'll have to get to jcb well we can't do anything now so well if you two go and get a drink nick you speak spanish can you help me get out of the jcb tv i can cope with a drink as well drink absolutely what's the spanish for yellow pages at the cemetery site our strategy for digging the burials has been decided in addition to recording and lifting some of the skeletons already excavated jackie has asked for three more graves to be dug at either end of the site to establish if there are any differences across the cemetery joining us in spain is mustafa saeed a muslim born in morocco he's intrigued to see the burial ground of fellow north africans who lived and died here in denia at least 800 years ago apart from gender and age i asked jackie mckinley what else we might learn about them well mostly what you're going to see is is what we call chronic diseases long-term diseases the same kind of things that people suffer from now you know the things that give you backache and make your legs hurt and perhaps give you toothache that kind of thing um the chances of seeing what people die of which is the classic thing that people want to know is probably quite minimal because most people in the past would have died of infectious diseases which are very fast acting and a lot of the time don't have time to affect the bone do you think these people would be of particularly high status i think it's difficult to say because one of the defining criteria of the muslim barrier which these very much are you can tell from the orientation the face directed towards mecca lying on the right hand side is the absence of grave goods which archaeologists use to define status so it is very difficult to say but being a port community i would think it was quite mixed here from sailors to rich merchants even if they died there aren't any headstones or anything no well that's another of the criteria of a muslim barrel usually there aren't headstones so there could be a small marker stone at the head in some instances and a little stone at the foot but here we don't have them why are they all on their sides mr well that's the normal practices standard islamic burial that's because of the size of the grave we should not go it should not be wider than one span and four fingers therefore you have to put the people on the right on sidewalks in the grave usually on the right hand side with the right hand end of the the head one span and four fingers yes and there is a say in islam they say that that's the only thing you take with you when you go is one span and four fingers no you can't it's too fast at the kiln site the shocking news for mick the dig is that although carrenza has managed to get hold of a jcb it won't arrive until 5pm until then this site which is rock hard will have to be dug by hand carrenza we found something yes i'm finding lots of metal oh basically the magnetometer pulled up metal so the spike on the drawing is this it's not archaeology it's rubbish still it means mick can now help carrenza with hertrench [Music] the prospect of finding the islamic kiln in denia has enormous interest to all our archaeologists because the pottery made here was very advanced and clearly influenced by contact with many different parts of the world it's an expanded dish that represents a mediterranean ship of the end of the 10th century with three must three late in sales and in this case and scroll with an inscription in arabic it shows the trade with the north of africa in this period this bowl was imported from tunisia but all these other pots were made in denia in this case you have a bowl with with a section typical of a pottery of the tang dynasty in china what sort of deities is all of this then the date is about the first years of the 11th century because in in britain you see we don't get pottery of this quality with this sort of decoration for another 200 years in fact you know it's very much later yeah well this is an example of technology traveling from east to west and then traveling from south to north to get to us yes at last the jcb's arrived and the hard top layer is off time to find out what geo fizz were detecting underneath targets down one to go [Applause] have you sorted the street plan out yet no not yet i'm still at the information gathering stage right trying to just trying to get some idea of how the islamic town worked yeah stewart will be looking at how the suburb and industrial district fit into the wider picture of islamic denial right i mean are the early maps any good because that's an obvious source well they're variable they seem quite good round about the coast area with it being a port it's been fairly well mapped yeah but in the town area there they can be a bit dodgy i mean that's part of what i'm trying to do at the moment see if i can relate all the information stop back at the kiln site the signs are looking more promising so you reckon all of this is probably islamic yeah i think that is the ties yeah that's for the roof of the houses that's the handle obviously yeah no actual structure here but giuseppe has been checking a new area on the edge of the geophys survey and has found more pottery and indications that we could even have found a kiln she's okay what are these this is a kiln furniture from a kiln yes brilliant large bars to keep the vessels apart when they're being fired yes so they don't stick together the kiln furniture was found here in this patch of reddish soil which could be evidence of the structure of the kiln itself this is different to what we've been digging up elsewhere completely but i think we need to see a lot more of this tomorrow i think we get get the machine in here clear a good-sized space around here but that's about it for day one there's just enough time left now to check on phil's progress i can't believe it we've been working hard all day and you're just drinking booze what do you mean i'll tell you what we've shifted some muck today tony what do you got well we set out today this morning to actually establish whether the graves in the cemetery that go through there cut through the road that cobbled area associated with these buildings and we can now tell you quite clearly that the graves cut through the road they are definitely later and what's that you got in here well this is our star find this is the one we're really really chuffed about this is a piece of pottery which dates to the to the thousand-year millennium about a thousand a.d is that right puppy yes yes sure i think it's from a kiln of dania and it's a palatine pottery used in the table of the kings of denia in the beginning of the 11th century it's a very very nice find so what do we reckon these foundations are here yes i think it's a row of shops in the end we have found in this maritime suburb that just what we need a row of shops for the craftsmen sale its products so it looks as though we've not only got a millennium shirt we've also got a millennium shopping center join us after the break you can have some family i know you understand why we've had a celebratory drink beginning of day two in spain and i'm now standing on the greenwich meridian line how do i know this is the greenwich meridian line because there's this rather attractive monument here that says on it meridianal day greenwich and i've got bernard with me with his gps to confirm for me that this is the greenwich meridian line bernard you're not going to tell me what i think you're going to tell me are you i reckon you're about three and a half seconds west up there tony i've walked down here yards and i reckon this is where the meridian actually is thank you bernard beginning of day two and i'm about 100 yards away from the greenwich meridian line which here which is i suppose about a thousand miles from greenwich passes through this big orange grove and oranges i'm reliably informed were introduced into spain by the islamic settlers meanwhile a short distance away at the cemetery inside the walled suburb of medieval denia the site is a hive of activity with both british and spanish members of the team enjoying the challenges of communication [Music] when they've when they've moved when they look like they've moved that's happened afterwards yeah because the bodies lied on the side and then when it decomposes sometimes it slumps forward or it slumps back but they were all on all the same way to start with all of them come on at the kiln site further inland pepe's arrived to see the evidence unearthed yesterday i think you will not find yet any structure is is a is a place for the destruction of the clay i think i think it's an islamic pit so it's an examined clay pit where they were digging the clay from to use in the kilns denia is one of only three places in europe where islamic pottery can be found as well as the kilns in which it was made we found some pinched clay bars used to separate the pots during firing but have we found a kiln it's clearly different to that we think this is part of the structure of the kiln yes it seems the shape of the kiln but the problem is that in the workshop in denia there are two types of kilns right in in one of the kilns the bar form part of the of the build of the structure of the kiln so there's those funny bar shaped things form part of the actual structure on one of the kilns and in the other case the bar is used only for for separate the different the different pottery inside the kiln as you no doubt appreciate by now the potential for great archaeology here is tremendous but because so much of islamic denial has been covered up by later development looking for fines there can be pretty frustrating of course the same isn't true under the ocean which is why we're sending phil down there good luck buddy [Music] to illustrate denier's rich history as a trading port phil's been invited to see for himself just how much pottery from different ages can be collected from the seabed apparently if we're lucky we should be able to collect a variety of finds ranging from roman to medieval in date while phil's busy here i've promised to go and check on how things are going at his trench where we're excavating down below one of the walls of the millennium shops are you in charge while phil's away then i am trying to keep things moving along what have we got um we're trying to understand the front wall of our shops basically and find out how far down it goes and what's going on on the outside in the street compared to the inside so um i think we need a bit longer before we're sure what's going on but we're getting there the latest news from the main site next door is the geophys have completed a survey in the area of the river channel outside the walled suburb the old maps show a natural river channel and then the 18th century there was a canal put through as well so there should be a lot of disturbance associated with that and there's some evidence for a bridge here well the only evidence that pepe has actually shown is it interprets two walls coming off that 1811 map that would help us a lot then with interpreting what's going on in this part of the town so this would be a bridge between this walt suburb and the main tower so we've done the geophysics oh look at that wonderful it's just possible these relate to the later buildings the walls but what's particular interest is whether that could be a pier base boarding a bridge if we dig a hole we should find that out shall we can you fix that for us if we get on with it i think we can find it karenza meanwhile has taken a break from working at the kiln site to get involved in what should be one of the most enjoyable challenges of the day to try and recreate some of the food that would have been eaten here in denia 900 years ago i'm a bit late so is this what you're going to cook from yes this is the book we are going to cook from is an interesting book actually it takes to the 13th century by actually 16th century yes which is 1012 is when it was originally compiled 10 12. where does it come from i mean who wrote it this is the mrs beaton of the 10th century the anonymous medieval cookbook was published in 1966 in arabic spanish and french we've managed to get hold of the spanish translation have we chosen some recipes to cook yes the recipe we're going to produce is a plateau de cervelas that is a lamb dish with lamb with prunes that sounds lovely yes many of the recipes in our islamic cookery book use ingredients that were actually brought to spain from north africa the local market's full of them all the citrus fruits mangoes apricots olives artichokes spinach and many of the spices like saffron cinnamon coriander all introduced into spain by the muslim settlers this is something we take for granted the carrot but this actually came from afghanistan and down there of course we've got the um aubergine over here we've got the figs as well that was brought in as well yes yeah something again that we take for granted now in the uk or here in spain and introduced by the muslims and they would have grown in the conditions around here especially suited to salty water for example because it had the only natural harbour for miles around denia was always a busy and important port and now hopefully phil's got the evidence to prove it phil i am so jealous with a lot of stuff you got i don't reckon that's bad for half an hour's work is it really did he do well pepe yes i think it has been a good catch what has he got well we have all these pieces of the roman period you have a rim of anti-politanian amphora for oil and amphreya yes the rim of a roman amphora from the third century but what about the islamic period you have this beautiful neck of two bottles from the kings of dania pottery workshops of denia of 10th century and 12th century we've got pots from italy in the 17th century that's the marbled ware yes yes english ginger beer bottles from the 19th century all evidence of denier's rich history as a trading port but it's the islamic pottery that we're most interested in this 12th century tin glazed bottle for instance the product of technology that only reached britain 500 years later and who's to say that one of these islamic pots wasn't made in the pottery kiln that we're currently digging up oh yeah the boys are keen to get me chained to the cooker but i managed to sneak off to come and see how you were getting out how's it going i'm having a great time here what i've got is i've got a large hole here it's a lot bigger than it was when i saw it this morning yeah so i've got natural clay here a large hole cut into which is full of stone and clay and loads of pottery this is just a few from cleaning in here you know this is crumbs this is a few bits that i've actually just cleaned off the top wow some bits are marked out ready to be painted but clearly unfinished sure evidence of pottery production best of all the shape of the kiln is beginning to show up really well wow that is fantastic good at the local catering school our moroccan cook mustafa has enlisted the help of jose a spanish cookery student who's intrigued to learn about food as it was cooked in spain over 700 years ago if you chop the garlic i'll chop the onion it seems fairly straightforward lamb flavored with onions salt and garlic and then the spices coriander seeds black pepper cumin cinnamon and also saffron saffron of course is a vital ingredient in the famous spanish dish paella paella is an arabic word for leftovers and in the good households the servants who used to be left with all all the left overs and they used to assemble them and they make a dish for themselves after their masters okay eat and hence the word which is the original arabic word being mispronounced in spanish to paella as geophys have finished all their survey work they've been persuaded somehow to investigate their own results and are looking for evidence of a bridge pier what are you not digging no we're playing on the beach mick at the moment checking on our progress with the burials inside the suburb and in this grave it appears we have two burials where the skull and arm of one skeleton seem to be under the legs of another looking at that certainly that one looks to be overlaying that one doesn't it yeah i mean it's directly crushed slightly but they've the fact that it would appear that the bone underneath is still probably more elected positioned suggested reused the same grave for a second burial right rather than put them in at the same time yeah i know that um mustafa was saying that that isn't common practice now that wouldn't be allowed unless unless there were exceptional circumstances this is a long time ago and this is 900 years ago yeah i think things may well have been perhaps not quite as rigid or there may be slight regional variations or something in the past this one has got a hand up under the chin isn't it well that's the classic that that mustafa was talking about having one hand up underneath the head the child was buried first and then the teenager at a later date maybe they were related or perhaps buried so close because of lack of space the pottery we found in the burials examined so far suggests that all these people died during the last hundred years of islamic occupation before the christians recaptured denia in 1242 this was a time when denia was really flourishing as a port when it has become what is known as a typha i've heard this term typha allen and i understand denier was one but i don't know what they are well the type is is the name given to both the king and to the state which turned into a kingdom and these states and kings developed when cordoba fell between the years 10 10 10 13. and um nobles from the cordovan regime moved out to pre-existing towns and settled there and set up kingdoms there and so who was the first king of denia then well the first king of dani was a chap called and he was quite a character because he couldn't expand his kingdom landwards because all of these other kingdoms surrounding him so he went on as far as ibiza and it was then from ibiza in the year 1015 that he went as far as to conquer sardinia and was that the end of his ambitions then well he would have liked to have gone further in fact there's there's an italian legend which says that he sent the pope a sack of chestnuts to show that um there were lots of muslims ready to give their lives to to conquer christendom and the story goes that the pope sent back a sack of militant to say that they were indeed even more christians prepared to lose their lives defending christendom from the muslim great i like it as you can see the colors now of the saffron and so on are getting released do you think this is similar to the islamic way of cooking in the 12th century in a terracotta vessel with the fire inside another terracotta vessel yes i think this is very very much authentic for the period the reason being is the terracotta distributes the heat throughout so you get an even cooking all the way and also the amount of fire you you require with the woods you require for the fire is very small have you got the cooking times in your um no in my islamic mrs beaton she lets me guess the prunes will be added once the lamb's cooked but now using another recipe in our ancient islamic cookbook it's time to prepare a pudding we're making a date pie a dish that everyone would have been able to afford in medieval denial are you getting the knack of the dates nerf is it i'm getting wet are you getting used to doing the dates the knack it means a way of doing it this is it then more you do then is that's the neck yes once the main dish with meatballs is cooked the date pie is baked under an earthenware lid which goes on top of our improvised hearth meanwhile at the kiln site the rescue dig is proving hard work under the hot afternoon sun but it's not without its rewards it's a it's a glaze place where glazed water beautiful isn't it yeah of course how old is that i don't know exactly but i suppose that that is not very old it's maybe it's 12th century that's pretty old yeah that is pretty old well in fact according to pepe this is an 11th century tin glazed jug and typical of the fine pottery being made in denier at the time [Music] but now we've reached the end of day two and it's time to taste some exotic islamic food not only our 13th century recipes but also several other north african dishes prepared by benito a local restauranteur a splendid pumpkin pudding artichoke stuffed with aubergine and lamb and a stew made with lentils asparagus and garlic bonito's keen to restore north african cuisine back on the spanish menu what does he think to our islamic dish yes oh quite good maybe he doesn't like prunes here comes the date pie smells delicious it certainly seems to be a hit with jose but is mustafa happy with his 13th century style dish of lamb with prunes the flavors the saffron the combination of the spices it's training i just wish i lived in this country i mean the food is wow excellent it's the end of day two tomorrow we're going to try and pull together all the different bits of the jigsaw the road the bridge the buildings the pottery the skeletons to see if we can create a picture for pepe of what life was like in denia in the 11th century join us after the break day three and the start of our final day here in denia our last chance to make a big contribution to sorting out the archaeology of the islamic town that stood here 900 years ago [Music] jenny how are we getting along with our millennium shopping center not bad i'm sort of standing in the start of it really i've got uh the layer of sand that was the beach that was here before the shopping center was built so that's right down the bottom yeah right down here and we've got lots of um pottery out of it some roman some islamic was just sort of rolling around on the beach before there's anything here oh yeah this looks really like the kind of stuff that we were getting out of the sea yeah yeah big roman amphora and then basically um around the start of the 11th century at the millennium yeah dated by the pottery we found on the first day this sand dries out enough for people to start building here and um we've had this fantastic find it's uh a little coin with arabic on it so it's some islamic money can we date it do you know no it's not quite well preserved enough to actually know what date it is but it's got arabic script on it phil how long were these shops in existence for probably not much more in about 100 maybe 200 years at the most tony is certainly by uh the what the end of the uh 12th century the the buildings must have fallen down the road must have gone out of use sufficiently that we've actually got the cemetery extending along over this our over our shopping center you see here these cobbles are the road and here's the edge of the grave coming along here with these stones going round there and back there and there is the skull that we saw on the first day yeah we can see that this skull actually is facing east again by the bones on the side the cheekbones on and then the burial is back down here because here's the ribs look so you've got this peninsula of stones that's been left by another grave cut and there's a whole row of them now these graves actually are planted right on top of the road they they're not just butting up to the edge of it they're right in the middle of the road and you wouldn't actually put graves in the middle of a road unless the road had gone out of use and do we know what period these graves are well they must be exactly the same as the main cemetery so they must be certainly into the 1200s maybe yes up or 12 42 the whole thing's going out of use when the christians take over so is that the end of the story of this side almost i mean as soon as the cemetery goes out of use we've got agriculture we've got a big plow soil and that takes us right up to the modern day and modern dernier mick what's been going on here i thought we were going to crack on and get a big section through there and get all pottery out and get in the kiln you don't seem to down very much at all since we've actually done a vast amount here we're actually trying to excavate this this small kiln here it is really difficult to dig this the soil here is really baked hard last yesterday the sun was so bright you physically can't see the colours very well so as you're digging you're constantly having to check what you're pulling out it's a hard life as a digger but mick's right we're going to need extra people here today if we're going to fully understand this pottery kiln and the area around it we haven't worked out yet what part of the kiln we're digging but this is victor's sketch of one type of islamic kiln but we found a lot of those bars i don't think i'd really got clear how they were being used nice things they're setting there and it's nice to have the figures there i mean that gives a real health feel of scale scale so that said i mean the the feature in at the moment is only about that big so that's right i mean mick reckons it's the fire box but even so i would have said it was probably a bit smaller at the main site phil's now working on what pepe thinks is a gateway into the walled suburb the bones from the burials are being washed ready for examination back at the incident room while mustafa is baking bread north african style this is by way of a demonstration as several islamic bread ovens have been unearthed on this site phil you're watching how our trench really should be doug i well i mean i'm trying to learn a thing or two off these two but i ain't learning much at the minute listen look at this what have you got for us well this is our anomaly really compact stone possibly in a circle we've just got one quadrant of it here but 11th century pot coming out look at this that's good stuff in it eh and that is right off the top too yeah you're not actually into it that's just lying around on the top get digging have a bit of mustafa's meanwhile inside the walls of the suburb we've reached the stage where we're ready to talk about our study of the burial area barney for instance who's been excavating a burial here has found some dating evidence that's significantly earlier than anything found in other areas of the cemetery this little piece here yeah comes from a tiny little jar with two handles it's 11th century which is great because it seems to tie in with our idea that this whole area of the graveyard might be of a different an earlier phase also it appears that the graves in this part of the cemetery are on a slightly different alignment and mustafa has ideas about this based on his experience living in morocco the likely explanation is that the two cemeteries were run by two different attendants meaning the gravediggers so and who were measuring with different slightly different equipment so one will have this kind because you see if you can't see the alignment you don't have very much of difference it's just the fact that two different people were looking after the cemetery at different times at different times that would then allow us to have our two phases within that late islamic period there are over 200 burials here which eventually will all have to be recorded and lifted before building work goes ahead we think that this area might have been the original cemetery before it expanded in the 12th century of the 80 skeletons we examined we were able to identify 23 as being male and 28 as female jackie chose to study these two burials in detail what can she tell us about them this one here is a negroid skull whereas this one here is a corkscrew how on earth can you tell that if you look at the negroid um skull this is far the maxilla this part here that the upper jaw is far more pronounced it protrudes far further than the corkazoid one that's much flatter across there and the other difference is in the nasal aperture if you look this is much wider across here in this so i mean this is this is interesting in that we've clearly got probably european and african yeah elements in the population here well european type because some of the north african um peoples would have caucasians it depends what part of africa you're dealing with but but it does clearly show that people were coming in from different areas and settling here and there was no differentiation in where they were they weren't yeah put in a particular one particular bit of the cemetery or anything it was it was what you it was your beliefs that put you there nothing else that was all that mattered and are these the two skeletons that go with these two skulls yeah not all of them just the bits we managed to wash so far and can we learn anything about those jackie has estimated the height of the two individuals by making a calculation based on measuring the humerus bone on each skeleton the the caucasoid is about five foot five and a half whereas the negroid skeleton is about five foot six and a half all right so just a little bit they're just just a little bit taller and is there anything about how robust these individuals were oh yeah that's where the real difference size if you look at these two these are the two bones that i took the measurements on crikey that's much thicker and heavier isn't it than this one yeah is that um because he was built like that or is it because he's done a lot more work probably part part and part of each i think and with a bit of help from victor we can start to imagine what our two muslim residents of medieval denial might have looked like but now time to find out what we've discovered about the process of making pottery in islamic denial what have you got well we finally got our kiln um ready for you to see really um mick's just about getting to the bottom of it though i don't if you can see right in the bottom now it's sort of gray and ashy right at the base it would have been when it was in use it would have been about that deep um you can see how wide it was then it would have had a domed clay roof on it in fact most of the domed clay roof is sitting just behind you there what's really exciting about it though is almost unique is the fact that our main kiln is 11th century but after it went out of use in the 12th century it was these little holes were dug in it as it was starting to fill up and therefore pairing the oxides for glazing oh wow and that hasn't been found before in spain we don't think so that's a really unique find we've actually found quite a lot of the wall of the kiln so this would have gone over the top of the whole kiln that's right that's this is the domed roof that's obviously sort of collapsed in absolutely we found two types of kiln furniture and most importantly examples of the pottery being made here in the 11th century which is the same sort as what we found at the millennium shops directions that would have been one of these big shallow food dishes probably sat in the middle of the table with the family meal on it and everyone sort of helped help themselves just like we did last night yes victor's drawing is more or less correct it's just that this 11th century kiln was much smaller the pot sat on bars radiating from the walls and the firebox was underneath later in the early 12th century when the kiln wasn't used for making pottery anymore holes were dug to heat up glaze for pottery this is amazing john i mean this is the first time i've seen this well where did it come from well we think we've got one vessel here with two handles a big jug and then you can see bits of the base and it was all together and it was actually in one feature on top of the wall here now you don't know about the wall either oh no no go on tell me i mean we've got all this stonework forming this wall on this sort of alignment here now it's clearly not a base of a bridge but being out here being below the 11th 12th century pot it's clearly early so it's got to be something to do with a causeway whatever out in the estuary outside of the city it's funny you should say that you get these bits with the green they're not as sharp as the bits that are not green look at the stuff that hasn't got the green staining on the edges are so much crisper they're very very sharp whereas the stuff that's got the green staining on it is rounded and rolled and i'm sure that this means that this stuff has been actually in the water and i reckon they've just dug a trench into the sand put a root a rough sort of basin in it and like you say i think it's a causeway perhaps even a key frontage what's interesting is that the geophys structure seems to line up with the area where pepe thought the gateway into the suburbs should be so is there any evidence of a gateway here phil reckons there is here's the edge of the wall this is what i this is what i think the wall comes along there yeah i think it follows along to there yeah and i think it follows along here i think the stones in here joined up there i think that all these stones have been robbed away i think they've been taken away i think you can see where there's a stone there yeah with a mortar down there yeah there's another one there with a mortar there the evidence for the other side of the gateway has been destroyed by modern building work but as phil points out the surface of the road still survives but i think here is the actual road surface itself look you've got these enormous bits of tile they're actually impressed and broken in place actually on the road surface more works needed here to establish the date for this gateway steward believes that it could have been a later addition and that the original gateway may have been in this area in line with the road found alongside the millennium shops in phil harding's trench they picked up a road alignment and in the corner of the century there was another alignment and you can see if you line the two up it takes the roadway west of this guard chamber and not to the east stuart's also been looking at the wider picture you can see here this is modern danger from their photograph there's the castle the kiln site we've been digging and the cemetery area if we take a look at it as it was in the 11th century it's a slightly different picture castle walt town around it this is a walt suburb area here the town is built on this long sand dune that comes down here the area behind it was trapped water it's very muddy very swampy why couldn't they have built more suburbs on this green bit well it's it's a port isn't it that it's a thriving trading center in the mediterranean you want your activity your focus of your settlement to be next to the to the waterfront gathering together all the archaeological information victors created an impression of islamic denia in the 11th century with the medina the old town with its mosques bath houses and markets in the shadow of the alcathava the castle and the industrial zone on the outskirts with its kilns and workshops but it's the suburb the new town that we can now add to the picture we know the suburb was enclosed by high walls designed no doubt to reflect the growing wealth of the port as well as protect the rich merchants inside we can also confirm that there were indeed structures out in the estuary and perhaps one of them was a causeway providing a link with the rest of the town in the 11th century we think that one of the gateways into this new part of town was here and that this might have been the view that greeted any visitor as he passed through the gate one hundred years later we also know this view had changed dramatically the shops had been demolished and the cemetery for the muslim merchants and traders of tenure had expanded to occupy this entire corner of the islamic town many many things and they hope you come back soon he didn't say next year [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 102,491

Rating: 4.8911886 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, historical coastal city, Alicante, Spanish History, Muslim History, Marina Alta, Muslim Conquest, Caliphate of Córdoba, Dāniyah, Slavic Muslim Slaves, Saqaliba, Majorca, Ahmad al-Muqtadir, Almoravid, Peninsular War, Taifa of Dénia

Id: -qfzENxgcMU

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020