Archaeologists Find Prehistoric Man-Made Island In Scotland | Time Team

[Music] time team have been invited to dig in some big back Gardens before but never one as big as this and never won so jam-packed with prehistoric mystery some archeologists think that this strange circular feature here on the banks of Loch Migdalia in the Highlands of Scotland could be a stone age henge and this small pile of stones actually in Loch mcdale could be the tip of a man-made island with Stone Age men actually lived and that's not all over there a huge horde of Bronze Age artifacts was found on that hillside so what on earth was going on in this beautiful back garden over 4,000 years ago the usual time team have got just three days to find out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this site is an archaeologists dream being given the chance to excavate a possible ancient man-made island is rare enough but if the circular earth work really is a hinge and we can prove that the two sites are archaeologically connected then this would be one of the most remarkable prehistoric sites in Scotland so is your gut instinct that this is prehistoric yes 100% well yes I think that gut instinct its pristine but proportion the caution yeah word of course in the moat the actual basic shape of the monument fits also a shape of other type monument types like windmills cut circles various to have types of burial monument but I think we can safely say at the moment that I think it is going to be prehistoric if it's prehistoric what could it be I think we're looking at a thing like a hinge like Stonehenge only a tiny pocket-sized example tiny little thing but it's got an entranceway here which is looking out over the lake and if you like the world of the ancestors the next world so it's a religious site people always known that this was here well it's been an obvious feature obviously for thousands of years but Sony archeologists have known it's here at least since 1970 when they cut out a quarter of this monument then unfortunately results were quite inconclusive so what we're doing is reaccelerating their area and hopefully trying to make sense of what it was they found the first job is to remove all of the peat to define the area of the previous excavation geophysical inducting a survey to see if there are any below ground features at the center of the circle henges tend to come in all shapes and sizes this one if it is one is tiny only 12 meters in diameter they were usually places of worship or burial dating from the late Stone Age often divided and bordered by standing stones on wooden posts henges with a focal point of prehistoric ritual only 200 metres away to the east is the intriguing little island in the Loch roughly circular in shape it doesn't look like a naturally occurring geological feature it looks like a man-made island called Akron AAG cran augs were places of habitation and refuge fortified razed enclosures constructed of layers of rocks shored up by stakes driven into the lock bed connected to the land by a causeway someone large enough to house whole communities this one if it is a chronic was probably only big enough for one round house one family and a few animals its amount of stones that could be a crown OGG and we've looked a lot of minor storms like this sometimes you can see they're definitely glacial dumps and therefore definitely not a chronic well this one we can't see it's definitely not and the the hints are that when you look at it underwater the sloping sides are not a natural slope so it looks as if it's been built from that point of view it's quite circular that suggests Akron Oak how we're gonna dig it well I'm told it is just made of a big pile of stone so obviously provided we're careful and we can record the structure of the mound as we go down by the sands it's just a matter of moving stones we will shift stones until we find something that says this is artificial then we'll be very very careful we'll do everything in the most archaeologically exact manner as we do on other sites like this but at the moment it's not an archaeological site as such this area of the Highlands is jam-packed with ancient archaeology not mcdale is surrounded by Neolithic and Bronze Age sites mostly field systems and hot circles but it was also the place where in 1900 the world-famous mcdale hoard was found a unique collection of bronze axes jet jewelry and finally worked metal Robin Cora who owned the land appear to be living in an archaeological goldmine did you know anything about the history in the archaeology when you bought the estate we knew they were had circles throughout the air and not just on our iron but I mean there's an area called air dunes which is further back up on the moor which again is heavily circled as it were so we were aware of of the artifacts that we're in the area although not being sort of studied and then mcdale hoard and then there's a big deal horn did that actually come from your land it did come from our land is the meet the hold is really interesting because that's the one bit of archaeology from this area's actually being dated the Krannert gan the henge we don't know what date though we've had no fines from them at all the amygdale hoard is the only finds but do you know exactly where it came from it was found in a quarry that so we're there a granite quarry that was being blasted about 1900 and when they were blasting apparently this hoard appeared but is it hard to imagine exactly how it was found if they were actually blasting the quarry you know a rock came off as they were sitting possibly I think we need to try and find a bit more about that because that might hold the key to telling us what was so important about this area that it has a chronic and a henge if that's what they turned out to be the mcdale hoard was a key factor in helping archaeologists understand the Scottish Bronze Age but the exact place of discovery and blasting has been lost we're going to try and find it it's taken Nick fill in the crown op team nearly all morning to stockpile the excavation gear compressors and suction dredges on the island but at last it's time to start diving they've decided to put in two trenches one in almost two meters of water the second in only a few centimetres before he's allowed to dive Phil's got to learn the strange techniques of tranel digging the biggest problems seem to be how to dig lying face down in the water and how on earth do you know where your trench begins and ends there purely to to aid the recording of the soil or is it just to mark the edge of the trench it really is just to show us a general area to excavate initially so where as on land we use string and nails underwater use a metal frame okay backwards right you come over here right when I turn I should be able to just drop my end why are we putting this trench over here particular because this section of the site looks most artificial right it's all the practical stone face the stones look almost like to be made and the bottom is not too silty Nick's going to be working in the deep trench his first job starts shifting the large rocks from inside his metal frame it's back-breaking and slimy worm [Music] back on dry land John's got the results of his survey what they're telling me is that we're not dealing with a settlement site and you can tell that from the lack of noise basically I've marked the approximate position of the ring you can see there's just two spikes inside and that one there is clearly that is new stone we're not getting any areas of burning the reason I don't see the bank and ditch is because it would fit with it being a hinge type of Monument right there's no sort of rubbish deposit there's no burning no burning or anything no half and people haven't lived here guys what the results are telling me well that's encouraging so we can cross off domestic settlement from our list of potentials yeah brilliant so I think that's official then from now on we can all call it a henge everyone apart from Stuart that is if we've got a ritual site down of that henge and we've got a ritual site of that crane like you're looking for whether people live well I am but I just hate that word' hangings you've just used why well the henge conjures up images of stonehenge huge great great site and what we've got here is quite clearly a small site so if Stonehenge is a big Cathedral that's more like the parish church that's it I think we're looking at a small community on the lakeside here with their own special place where they might worship or or bury people yeah so what should we call this thing I'd call it an enclosure for the time being I think until we've really know what's going on have you found anything no not really yeah but what we have got is the sites and monuments records you can see on here all these references to prehistoric sites around here and I'm trying to see if any of these features around here might actually help us tie your henge my enclosure to the Krannert on what might be going on around here in the prehistoric period you can see there's all sorts of things on the surface around here there's a very nicely shaped hillock just there yeah just nice nice natural Hill yeah well spotted what about these two little piles of stones here yep their piles of stones as well the our clearance cans there you think for the fields up here they're nice and clean they've been improved for pasture yeah well one of the farming activities get rid of the stones and they dump them in piles and that's what these are they're they're stones have been taken off these fields but what's interesting about these is it's very much the same sort of activity there's a prehistoric farmers who built the enclosure or hinge would have been performing to clear the ground prior to starting to cultivate it I've always suspected there was more to landscape archaeology than met the eye back at the incident room carrenza is hot on the trail the mcdale horde where did it actually come from do we know well we know that it was found in May 1900 when they blasted the top of a granite knoll and there's a rather romantic watercolour which doesn't necessarily give you an accurate rendition of the landscape and it says it was found in a weathered joint of granite Knoll and it may well be that they from the condition of the objects that they found it as they were putting the explosives down in a cleft in the rock so what actually was in the hoard well there were a lot of items there was a flat axe head and it's bent in the surface of it has been enriched with tin it would have given the axe had a silvery affect on the surface there's also six armlets which are graded in size and if you were to wear them together they look like a spiral omelet there are two other things which have been called bangles they may well have been anklets and then you have these tubular sheet bronze beads which had willow to strengthen them inside and the fascinating thing about these is that they give us a direct contact with Central Europe really from that far away absolutely whereabouts essentially Bavaria in particular so they were having extensive contacts with Europe and rest of England yes that's right and also with Ireland as well we're at the northeast end of the Great Glen here and we know that they were importing copper from southwest Ireland for making their objects here I mean one crucial question is what date is this Forge we were able to get a radiocarbon date from the willow inside one of the beads and that's given us a date of between 2,200 2,100 see which is exactly the time when you get the beginning of tin bronze metallic II in Scotland so effectively what the Horde is telling us is that here at mcdale we've got a very expensive offering of items from all over the known world virtually at that time being made to the gods so it suggests something very important going on here it may be that that henge site there is a very prestigious burial site particularly given its location at the end of it all actually in the lock Phil as a novice Cranham digger begins his excavation by troweling in the shallow end he's carefully loosening the silt on the bed of the lock looking for anything that looks unnatural the spoils being drawn away by a suction dredge which aids the divers visibility by depositing the mud over 30 metres away as Nick works down the rocks are getting smaller and smaller a sequence of sorting that doesn't usually occur naturally it's looking more and more man-made but geological evidence isn't archaeological evidence with most of the rocks removed he's beginning to come down onto a new layer of sediment a layer that appears to contain organic material possibly the first evidence of archaeology anywhere on the entire site it's the end of day one and we're now almost certain this is what we hoped it would be a Bronze Age henge there's still quite a lot of work to do on it we're going to clear out the whole of this section of the ditch but the exciting place is here the ditch terminus that marks the exit out of the henge and it seems to be a particularly significant area for Bronze Age people that could well be finds here if we're going to work out who the people were who built this place and how long ago they built it then the evidence lies here join us after the break beginning of day 2 and our Bronze Age site here at Loch mcdale in the Highlands of Scotland and you may think that trying to establish whether this little pile of stones is man-made would be a doddle but in fact technically it's been one of the most difficult things we've ever had to do it took our dive team virtually all day yesterday just to set up and prepare and they were really inhibited by the fact that we can't move through the middle of this little island because we'll stir up the debris and affect the visibility so we have to pick our way around these stones all the time which takes forever but nevertheless by 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon they put two trenches in one over there and one over there and already it looks like they're coming up with the goods what is it that's been making you so excited well Tony in the first rate the one on the actual top of the mound over there behind you we've actually got fragments of charcoal what's the significant about that charcoal means burning and burning is a sign a very good sign of where people were actually living but the really good news is in that trench in there in the water yeah unfortunately I haven't been able to see it because it's so deep the visibility is so poor all I've been able to see is this wonderful plan with these Timbers we've actually got Timbers under the water more importantly we've got a stake which must have been driven in and I'm dying to see it so sue have a look at them oh look at the site look at that not now then I reckoned there that timber is look this is this one here I reckon yeah that that rounded bit I reckon that rounded bit is that bit there yeah now look at that these that there's a stake you see that that round thing it looks like a look like a sort of chutney piece down there can you tighten up on that stake of it yeah look at who that that is not that is not accidental but there's somebody who's actually driven that stake into the ground and then just a disorder that so so we're looking and accordingly 664 centimeters long and 12 centimeters boy so it's quite a big timber is incredible the degree of preservation these little toys see these little you know the little tiny bits of timber that's this little group that there and look at it and they don't like they're driven into done there the other interesting thing is there is a lots of organic remains down there as well so it should actually be able to tell what look what the world was like all the legal landscape was like at the time these timbers were down there what is that murky stuff that you were showing us down there ah the organic material that I was disturbing is broken down vegetation but the fibrous bits are Bracken and Bracken's what they laid on the floor to make the place comfortable a nice place to live in are you happy that just from the evidence that you've seen that what you've seen below the surface is man-made and is old yesterday I was not too sure I thought we had a big minder story with a forest of timber on the lock bed we're going to be spoiled for choice as to which one or two pieces to sample for carbon dating all of this murky organic stuff needs to be carefully bagged sampled and cleared but with it floating around everywhere obscuring the visibility it could be hours before we can see what else is down there today the whole focus of the diggers shifted onto the cranek and even though it's freezing cold down there everybody's getting really excited but there's still a few brave people digging away here at the henge yesterday right at the end of the day I said that they were going to excavate in here which was the exits to the henge because we might get some finds here and also that they would be clearing away this ditch you have done either of those things typically why not but it turned out to be a lot more complicated than we thought when I started trying out what I found there was a stone packing and there were dark patches and pale patches I think we've got a post at the end here now this is a cheat you just mark this with the end of your brow I have I mean if you if you actually look at it that material is distinctly darker from the pale stuff over here so this is probably peak that formed in the top of the void left by the post when it Rafi you've done quite a lot of cleaning over here yeah yes yes well what we've got here is the bank which goes around the outside of the ditch and it receivers a lot of stones over there those stones I think are stopping the bank from flowing out and the material at the core of the bank there is the stuff that's come out of a ditch I've got basically the same thing as what Francis has got you know he's got the post hole here yeah well I've also got one here which is you know respecting the sides of this instance way we've got the stones up against it and inside at the base have got an order to cage quartz chips can I pour you from it just stand there Francis yes this is supposed to be this ritual exit of the henge how come it's so narrow that well you're standing on the exit but I'm in the ditch well it's deliberately narrow I mean the whole point of an entrance into something like this is it it's special you're leaving the ordinary world and you're going through a narrow entrance into a confined space it's all part of cutting it off from the normal world just outside the henge Myles is uncovering a jumble of broken stones which seem to be lying in a small pit right in the front of the entranceway you had absolutely no fines out of this site at all no fines no apart from from quartz quartz chips carrenza Streck down tony Woodham the archaeologists who first dug the hinge back in 1972 find out more about his excavation we only dug at the center of the of the circle from the inside of the ditch to the center that's correct deposit cut into the sand was it it was lying on top of the second lion topsis and only we removed that and and it was just clean sand underneath it was in my mind that pasa possibly the site had been used during the Bronze Age for a foot for a cremation cemetery now we've confirmed it's definitely a henge we're still struggling to find out what it was used for Stuart's now taken up the challenge to find the site of the mcdale horde and local resident Marion Fraser has brought in some crucial information I was certainly taken there to see the site you were how many many years how many your lady certainly so the Granite's can you tell me where it is well it's on top of Carla fear which is translated into English as telefilm right and in the vicinity of cooler ah so you saying it was found upon Toolik Hill and that's the hill just up there above us isn't it there's path that's just beside the category up to the ridge we were told it was sort of way over there which it doesn't appear to be so it's you know to get this information is really valuable even though she was only a child when she was taken to the haunt site Marian has given Stuart a detailed description on how to get there following directions that Marian game she said he'd go over the cattle grid and this is the cattle grid here and she said you should walk up towards the mast which there's the mast on top of the hill just upon the ride he's staggering here walking some right in the middle of all this prehistoric activity on the surface you don't have to dig to find this these man ones here they're everywhere it's around about every 50 yards where the priests start the Bronze Age farmers the people who built our henge this is what they leave behind them these are their fields this is where they were living and where they were farming we're all on a mission today to try and find out if the hoard henge and cran OGG were in any way archaeologically connected Henry we're looking for evidence of human beings from thousands of years ago is GPS in the lake really going to tell us anything we don't know already I think it will what I'm going to do is to try and create a three-dimensional model of the base of the lake so really just to look at the landscape context of the panel but won't the landscape have changed since the days when people were living on that kronole well I'm hoping that maybe we might see some sort of change in topography at the base maybe something which might suggest a causeway between here a path out from here to the Crandall so the little variations that you can read might give us evidence of a pathway I mean we can hope Henry I'm going to stop this interview right now because the water has just started to leak over the top of my Wellington [Music] up on the hillside and with only an artist's impression of the Horde site to go on Stewarts now checking out every Boulder now this is exactly the sort of thing that is shown on the diagram where the artist at the time showed a rock with lines across it it sort of matches up with this type of weathering we've got on here this is exactly a type of rock that at the time they were digging out to cut for creating link holes and frames the doors gate posts that kind of thing so again all the ingredients that we're looking for up on this hillside and he reckons it's a child he used to be able to when the water in the lock was really low actually walk out to the crown all along as the exact causeway that's precisely I'm trying to find just here where was it just about they were being treated just just literally just here yes and how deep was it well no water was lowered to be about two feet below the waters oh that's fantastic excellent according to sandy that should place the causeway about here but to find the exact route Henry is still going to have to survey the Locke bed with three orbiting satellites to give a global accuracy of a few centimeters he'll be able to chart every tiny change in depth and produce a 3d model of the underwater terrain well now I'm standing pretty close to where the artist drew this drawing from I'm sure of that where the big Dale hose was found it's big Dale rock over there I've got an OL high note to my left I've got the curve of the lake to my right down there this perspective is now matching very closely it reinforces to me this connection between where people are living up here you've got the evidence for it on the surface quite clear evidence and where there were being buried and where the kind of the religious side of our life is we're at the end of the Loch there's a connection a visual connection between the two here this is important information because we've finally confirmed the position of the Horde almost a mile from where everyone previously thought it was discovered before I go there's one thing I've got to do though I must get a correct grid reference to this to ensure it goes in the record it all give me the grid reference which you can then put on the sites and monuments records so other people can come back to this place Phil spent most of today lying face down in the freezing water and at last he's found something you're still paying the charcoal a little bit yes because I will okayed my first few bits of this site but I'll get anywhere near as much as you so it just shows it must be a very discreet little concentration not earth-shattering but more definite proof of habitation mix doing slightly better with what looks like an animal tooth and bits of burnt bone let's hope the organic materials that are being bagged up will give us even more information about the lifestyle of our is yet mysterious Cranham dwellers back at the henge the excavation is progressing well but with no more obvious structure emerging and no fines there's a sense of frustration brewing we have to find some dateable artifacts so we've opened a new trench 30 meters from the henge that could be a prehistoric burial can end of day two and it's been a day of real mixed fortunes over there on the land site we haven't come up with any new evidence in any of our trenches but the Cranham that surpassed all expectations we've found more wood than we could possibly have hoped for so tomorrow we're going to try and lift some of it in the hope that we can begin to solve the mystery of who built that Island and when and what it was used for join us after the break [Music] beginning of day three and our quest to find out what was going on here at Loch mcdale hundreds or even thousands of years ago and so far we've only been partially successful we know we've got a man-made island and we know we've got a henge but because we haven't come up with any dateable material we don't know whether we're in the Neolithic or the Bronze Age or even the medieval so it's time for a council of war how do we know what period we're in if we've got nothing to date it with think about henges is they seem to be used as a kind of crystal observation platform and whatever people were doing in them in the Neolithic and Bronze Age they weren't leaving any objects Frost it's that's a bit of a dodgy old argument isn't if we know it's old because we haven't got any evidence though I'm usually for archaeology it's based on common sense actually I mean you wouldn't find a load of kitchen rubbish in the church or a chapel so I mean this does indicate that this was a special place and the other thing about it is that its shape is very very characteristic of a sort of small hinge like things you get in the northeast of Scotland so I'm perfectly happy with it being Neolithic or Bronze Age in fact it can't be anything else the one place where we have got fines is on the man-made island are we going to be able to date them absolutely no problem at all initially we know we can get dates from them because we've got at least 50 pieces of timber because it's organic we can get rid of carbon dates yeah you say that we can get dates for them but it's not dates we want its one solid day doesn't it the other day you were saying it was a cran oh you don't bucket full of fines well I think all the timbers and the bracken that we found the sheep's sorry of the animals teeth that we found to thin a bit too thin a bit I'm the born born especially I call these fines you know I know that you want pretty things but underwater something's are can I play the sexism do you really want to find something pretty structure we don't know that until we expect the active ice maybe wooden objects just because you know that we can see the top of them doesn't mean that they are necessarily part of the structure okay do you think we're gonna get anything the way of retrievable objects that are not part of the built structure yes yesterday Henry assisted by the local farmer found evidence of a causeway on the edge of the Loch today he's in deep water and having trouble enlisting help I don't do survey and I'm digging if just think of it as like a very long thin shovel it'd be fine what happens when the water gets up to here yeah their fill deeper air and three so you want me to go that way yeah tiptoeing about that all right built another cone my three meters or so just carry on you'll be fine I think it's Barry right [Music] despite Phil's problems the survey appears to show a definite raised area on the lock bed with the entire trench cleared of silt and debris it's finally time to start sampling some of the Timbers unfortunately this is a destructive process but it's the only way to get a carbon date [Music] the timbers appear to be in a fantastic state of preservation due to the oxygen free conditions at two meters below you asked us here to find out what this monument is we know it's you know it's a change I think we find it out not only what what it is but why it's here I think there's some interesting ideas developing yes I'm really really interested in the location and the orientation of this site because as you can see it's in a very striking landscape location and if you look very long the LOC the way that the hills are going forms a perfect knotch and what they've found is that the entranceway is really narrow and what we need to do is to measure across and see where the exact center of the site is and then see whether you get a significant alignment from the center through the entrance do you mind holding a erosion rod for apparently things are about to take a turn from the archaeological to the astronomical and if we measure from the center of the Bank Alison right let's that's 9 meters 50 we're trying to find a significant alignment between the center of the henge the entrance and the knotch but first they've got to find the center spot that's exactly where I am good enough look at this Francis because you just stand in the center of the entrance for us further easing the where the nose is it but another thing we need to consider is when people came here what did we see and to fully appreciate it that you got to go up there and look at it from sort of a different direction this is essentially where people would view it from when they approached it you can see that the poll tax is pointing straight towards that that notch on the skyline amazing this has been very carefully chosen it's a very special place to find out which celestial body Sun Moon or star would have aligned with and nestled in the knotch over 4000 years ago isn't easy the Earth's constantly if slowly moving around its axis as it moves through space this wobble or precession means that back in the Bronze Age everything in the sky would have been in a slightly different place Henry and Phil are still on the trail of their own alignment but the lining up of their Pole isn't so easy you got it it's a stone on the bottom there here right move on so do you reckon we won't be getting there let's see where this next one comes to oh look at that right Oh quick my steady got it yeah got it Henry's hard-won survey shows the remains of the stone causeway that once may have been 2 metres wide and raised half a meter from the lock bed either this was a submerged walkway offering defenses against invaders or it was the foundations for a raised wooden walkway long since rotted away last evening we opened a trench on what we thought could have been a prehistoric burial can Alison this is turning out to be the fourth point on our site isn't it yep what are we actually got here do you think sadly looks like a small curb can with the curb going around there and we're standing on it here right yeah and that hollow there looks to be robbing where somebody's obviously gone to find the treasure or whatever so you reckon there was a burial in there which someone's dug into and Friends stones over thataway yeah but luckily for us they miss this one you think that's a second barrel I think it could be it's a very intriguing cluster of small stones that have been deliberately placed here I think we'd better keep these stones they might well turn out to be especially selected so yeah this possible burial can is only 30 meters from our henge where new features are turning up everywhere starting to look like a Swiss cheese over here it is but it's a lovely series of steak holes what we've got is lines of steak holes that would have had wood in them radiating out from the central post they would have stood probably about this high so would these have been little fences or something they could have been it could be an internal partition within the hinge they're lines radiating out pointing to distinctive features in the landscape or marking the stars or marking the stars could well have be we just don't know he was pretty cool this is all a bit different it's looking a bit nicer now and that right smack in the middle of the entranceway we've got this sort of roughly square pit and it's filled with stones with this gorgeous stone on the size was nice in there is that been worked it looks as though it's Ridge looks like it's facedown this side but there's certainly one or two sort of tall marks where it's being rather crudely so dressed along this edge because I've fallen or do you think that's the position it was in I don't like to think it's fallen we don't know it yet until we had a chance to lift this but it's quite possible that this fits onto this and I understand well it may well and I say may at this stage be some upright actually right in the entranceway so we could have our first standing stone when stood up miles is stone fits exactly in the center of the entrance and it's alignment with the Misty Mountains can't be accidental with the small stones removed from the top of the possible burial Francis instead of finding bones is starting to uncover what looks like a wooden fence post so when we first hit it I thought it was modern and it's got a square edge but actually now that we've got a bit more exposed I'm rather excited in fact them I'm extremely thank you the reason why Francis is so excited is that the wood looks like it's been cleft or split with an axe that's the way you work wood if you don't possess saws and in the Bronze Age they didn't possess source so they had to split their wood so if this is a Bronze Age stake Allison does this make you think it's something other than information it makes me think very hard yes because I cannot think of a single example of where you've got a stake above a cremation so maybe this is a thing that really matters and this was what was buried under this miniature can within a bigger care the soil around the wooden post is littered with tiny white quartz chips another sure sign were in the Bronze Age though we don't know what they're for these hand chips mineral pieces may have something to do with a ritual purification of the monument absolutely yes absolutely and they're very common on sites of this period in typical time team fashion it's almost the end of the day and we've got fines ever we're now we appear to have a steak to go with our chips is that one of the steaks it's not really a steak it if somebody is born interesting why is it more interesting because it appears to be set into another piece of wood which is embedded down underneath the organic material about that deep so what does that imply it implies at a part of our most complex wooden thing well in bed tomorrow is the same here these two marks on the end there are too much for the end that's whether there will actually be little signatures on it from the damage in the blade of the axe adorned or without definitely two marks on it now fully excavated it's time to lift the very fragile wooden post gosh oh there you are with a one of these courtship sticking to it you can see it's pressed against that that mirrors that shape so it's been squashed on there yes the wood has taken up that shape so I'm in no doubt whatsoever that we have I mean as far as I know nothing like this has been found in this kind of context in Scotland I've never done anything quite as odd the only other items in this trench were two flat pieces of stone most likely to keep the wood straight and upright but the mysterious post still had one more secret to reveal when it was cleaned up it was found to be made not of wood but of highly compacted peat what Francis had excavated was the ghost of a tapered wooden post which had rotted away leaving a void which had been filled by the slow deep position of peat I think it may be more to do is our mocking old significant points in the landscape at significant time of the year then with any funerary thing we haven't found any cremated bone at all in here so they what they've done is to bury their sacred post with all the Timbers removed from the crown on the last job is to replace the large rocks lifted on day one this is essential to maintain the stability of the archaeology and prevent further erosion all of the planet finds are safely on dry land and it's crunch time first thing this morning we said if there was one thing that we wanted it was dateable evidence particularly out of the law we've got some sheeps teeth burnt bone of different sorts in there I say sheeps teeth but in fact we've had a look at them we think it might be deist yeah we've also got some sheep animal droppings in here probably sheep droppings and also this charcoal so we know that people were living out there there's no doubt about that we also said that there were some small stakes and timbers and we've sampled some of those here is one of them that's the bottom of it there and we have cut marks on the end of it and I think one of the cut marks in particular in fact the nicest cut mark which is this one here is very small I admit that has little striations on it made by damage in the blade of the axe that was used to cut it but I think that that's a very interesting one the cut looks at first glance to be scoop shaped and for a moment we all got rather excited because scoop shaped cut marks are a Bronze Age phenomenon and no one has ever found a Bronze Age cranek but the scooping could also be sag caused when a waterlogged find is to the atmosphere which must be what happened because radiocarbon dates put the timber firmly in the Iron Age between 100 BC and a hundred ad and are you happy to say that our henge and I canna Bronze Age yep I think their Bronze Age I think they're probably at the other end the early end of the Bronze Age in fact Alice minx there from the very beginning of the Bronze Age around 2000 BC which means we've uncovered evidence of 2,000 years of human activity here on Loch mcdale I think that is something that's worth having a dram to so what can we now piece together about the prehistoric story of Loch mcdale around 2100 BC a community of people settled and farmed on the land above the Loch for now long forgotten reason they placed some of their most valuable metal possessions in a granite cleft looking down on their ritual site a henge the focal point for what we would now probably call religion we've calculated that the wooden post at the center of the henge and the standing stone in the entrance aligned perfectly with the Sun as it rose through the notch in the hills at the spring and autumn equinoxes almost 2000 years later the people of Loch mcdale moved down from their hill farms and built Akron up [Music] while they built it how many people live there and for how long we'll have to wait for a future excavation [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 200,230

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, Scotland, Prehistory, Migdale, Crannog, Iron Age, European Neolithic Period, Late Bronze Age, crannóc, Island Dun, Bonar Bridge, Sutherland, Freshwater Loch

Id: EPRaimw-S3k

Length: 47min 28sec (2848 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rublehousen]

Used to love watching time team. I thought the 3 day thing was bollocks like, id rather they took a week or two to make it into a more in depth dig

[u/SpotmaticSP]

Time Team! I used to watch it when it was shown on Discovery Channel, and videotaped the episodes for my father who did not have Discovery. Those were the days!