Back To Turkdean: Revisiting One Of Britain's Largest Roman Sites | Time Team

[Music] 18 months ago time team discovered under this gloucestershire field what may be one of the largest roman villas yet excavated in britain we found whole ranges of rooms including a beautiful bath house arranged around three courtyards spreading all over this plateau but at the end of the three days just when we thought we finally understood the villa geophysics came up with another whole range of buildings running all the way up that hillside could this simply mean that the villa was even larger than we'd originally thought or was there something rather extraordinary happening here sixteen hundred years ago time team just had to come back to turk dean to find out [Music] [Applause] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this is what the site looked like at the beginning of our dig last year and what an amazingly clear picture it was the ground plan of a hitherto undiscovered roman villa was there as a network of patch marks in the grass oh look it's quite clearly laid out absolutely it hasn't disappeared and there's more stuff down here look and then there's a corner down there oh and look at these buildings down here look they're separate actually from the main building well they should be down towards and there's something there by the spring look but that wasn't the half of it over the next three days as we opened trench after trench the villa got bigger and bigger until by the end of our three days it seemed to cover the whole plateau and beyond as geophysics came up with a whole new range of buildings it's another wing it's another corridor and it's going right up to the hill i've put a ranging pole on the top that's about it was unbelievable stuff but time ran out on us and the new range remained unexcavated until now one year on we've come back for a second crack at unlocking the mysteries of this site over the past few days everyone's been speculating about what we might have got here some people say that it's probably a villa that was built at a different time during the roman period some people are saying it could be a temple because it was built near a spring so it could be a ritual site other people are saying that it might just be part of the original villa a sort of granny wing yeah what is it well it could be any of those so how are we going to find out well we dig of course you know we'll dig some trenches where ah will you wait till you see the geophysics okay john and chris have in fact done a lot more work on the whole site over the last year and they've produced a completely new set of results oh it looks if you've nearly done the holo gloss this year it feels like it as well that's where we did the survey last year tony the main villa on the plateau and you remember we had the arm coming out we've now expanded over the whole of the half of the hillside and well i mean we've got what appears to be a building here a big area of noise um that looks industrial and then individual anomalies that well we're not quite sure could be kilns what's all that going up there well this we're not sure whether it's a modern land drain stone line drain or if that is a spring line whether it's something to do with water courses there's actually dozens of things in the end mick decides to start with just two targets phil's going to take trench one into the isled building and carrenza trench two into the industrial area and on this bitterly cold october morning we're off [Music] last year we found walls just inches under the surface and there's an air of nervous anticipation as the machines get to work no one's more anxious than wilf musto the landowner and hey presto that's it just all you've got to do is just take the turf off and you're down onto it look at that look at it within minutes there's abundant stonework in both trenches we're on the trail but of what last year you used a great phrase about this site you said there might be a ritual component yes that means what a temple i suppose yes why did you come to that conclusion well we were starting to think given the proximity of the site to the springs that there may actually be some kind of ritual focus around that people coming to worship at the spring that's right i mean a very similar kind of site focusing on a spring has recently been discovered at swindon where you've got a steep hillside with a whole series of terraces springs probable shrines around each of these springs and this water then being carried away down through a much larger complex which is probably like the center for the pilgrims and those who are coming to worship at the site however having seen the rest of the geophysics here now there are no obvious structures that one would point to and say a temple on the contrary we've got some very clearly domestic looking structures such as this old building and other areas of activity so it looks now as if what we've got is a villa which is the center of a large estate with its ancillary structures if mark's right then the new range of buildings could provide some really unusual archaeology we'll be digging into the infrastructure of a villa estate workshops slave quarters and possibly even small shrines [Music] but first things first we need evidence the new range is actually roman and in trench two carrenza thinks she has it but we've got a very small coin from there which is rather nice take a look at that i can tell from the size almost straight away and it's going to be considerably smaller than my fingernail that is something that's called a minim which means literally tiny it's like the five piece these things it's even worse than that and they probably use them in bags hundreds and hundreds of them actually in a bag it's the sort of thing if you drop that you wouldn't even bother to pick it up no you wouldn't it's just totally insignificant but it does fix a date for us we are looking at fourth century activity brilliant it's roman and it's the same date 4th century as the villa and taken with a growing collection of slag fragments it's beginning to look as if this area was some kind of workshop that there's a way to go before we'll know what was made here in trench one meanwhile an impressively crisp structure is emerging from the ground blimey mix using a shovel you must be excited mr harding's clear oh man i got to keep him in training hey this looks good isn't it that's amazing yeah yeah i'm cleaning yeah yeah we've got a superb end of a building yeah just shot down it this is what the archaeologists have started referring to as an aisled barn apparently a common feature on large villa sites probably used for storing farm produce or livestock and it too is producing fines oh we've got some coins mark's got some coins over here yeah we've had five coins so far come out a couple of them are actually rather nice let's um have a look at them lost it oh no day one and we've lost our first fight mike bring the machine over mike yeah we've lost we lost the phone i was over there and i've walked back this way it's the con standing obviously what is it it's it's a commemorative issue about 3 30 to 35 a.d issued to mark the foundation of constantinople as the new capital of the roman empire 300's again and we've got another one here which is slightly later dates to between the period of about 364 375 a.d and shows a figure of victory and the legend securitas republica the safety of the state and does that compare well what we had last year yeah it's very consistent very consistent with last year i suppose that's good because it now ties both our buildings into the villa estate but i must admit i'd hope to find something a bit more exciting than the barn one two three four five but at least we've got lots more targets and john and chris are taking a closer look at the next one the strange blob they thought might be a kiln nine they're using a machine that picks up strong magnetic readings in the ground the sort of thing that might have been caused by burning or something completely different six seven meters across about that bit more yeah but that's doesn't look kiln like no it doesn't does it i mean those those responses that might be a rubbish pit but it's not a kiln huge rubbish pit yeah i guess or ford cortina 20 meters down again there's only one way to find out and in no time our third trench is underway [Music] we know that in the third and fourth century there was this fantastic roman villa covering this entire plateau but what were the romans doing building here stuck out in the wild of gloucestershire well it wasn't really the wilds of gloucestershire in roman times this was one of the richest agricultural parts of the province we're right down in the settled southern part of britain we're not very far away from that great roman city at siren sister which was the second biggest city in roman britain and when the romans invaded the way they ruled was to hand the land back to the local bigwigs the local tribal aristocrats because that's how you got things to run you'd set them up as the local romans by giving them back their own land that gave them the qualification to sit on the town council in that position they could run the local economy run the local society in the way that they wanted and passed it up for themselves so the guy who owned this villa was a local bloke pretending to be a roman all dressed up we don't know that for certain but it's a real probability that the chap and his family who lived here could trace their ancestry back through generations to the tribal leaders of this part of the world when the romans arrived but it was a golden age it was i mean this is a really exceptional house one of many exceptional houses in this part of britain and they enjoyed a top end of roman living [Music] we excavated some evidence of that living last year in the main villa there was the ornate bath house with fantastic painted plaster on the inside we also got plenty of jewellery including this lovely brooch and the site was full of high status pottery this year we can add to that list we found an inhabitant john who is this man you're dressed as well if you can imagine the romans were here for 400 years we always get the impression of them wearing sandals and the whole thing well at about the end of the roman empire this is what your average well-to-do roman would be wearing no more sandals we're looking at closed-in boats perrons nice and warm early on in the empire the romans were very derogatory about the celts and the germanics wearing trousers they called them brachatai very derisive term but once again by the end of the period they're wearing them because they're practical and on a day like this you can understand why that's how it's supposed to go amazing and this is from the same period too presumably is it comfortable it's it's a bit bulky i mean i don't know how easily be able to move about really something practical it's not too cold but i have got jeans on underneath at the moment so i don't know what it would be like there's a bit drafty around the ankles well if she hadn't been wearing her roman jeans what would she have been wearing under her dress there would have been um linen bloomers basically you had a pair of roman knickers didn't they well they've got leather knickers from london i don't think they're worn by everybody they'd be jolly uncomfortable leather knickers leather knickers now there's a philly these days phil's prone to wearing strange costumes too [Music] his bad back means he has to kneel rather than squat when he's scraping and his delicate knees need protection but it's worth the effort because in trench one the barn is taking a turn for the better oh there's a lot going on in here enter in particular we're getting some intriguing and very unbarn like fines these are just two of the five mosaic fragments we've found so far nearly double last year's haul and phil's pulling out bits of domestic pot all over the place this is the rim of a storage jar and this is part of a mortarium a bowl used for preparing food we've got the little granules in here for grinding up the food so it's a very specifically roman type of vessel that's definitely a throne definitely wheel thrown certainly made in britain probably in the oxfordshire area how are we doing date was well we're looking at something that's possibly second century judging by that round if you're really sad well i have to i can't be absolutely certain but it's it's certainly not into the fourth century the third century third century i know your time looking for a quick answer i don't think we're not looking at something that's fourth century we're looking at something third century or before [Music] the jar would have been about two feet high used for storing oil or spices and the mortarium which turned out to be third century would have looked like this great stuff but if this is as the archaeologists believe a barn how come we're finding lots of domestic material in it [Music] there's mystery in the trench two workshop as well no one can tell whether this mass of stones is wall or floor and we still don't know what kind of work went on here to find out we'll have to lift the stones but before we do they've got to be scrupulously recorded so carrenza has moved on to trench three the one on the blob where she seems to have found neither kiln nor cortina it just looks like clay it looks like clay from down here as well actually so is there anything there at all well yeah there is we've got an edge here so you've got a lot of stones in the edge here and there's pink here suggesting there's been heat or burning yeah um changing the color of the limestone we're in the sort of bottom left-hand quadrant of that big circular blob so like the rest of it goes up right around there behind you and down sort of just behind us what do you think it might be well i was talking to mark about it and uh he came up with what is a very interesting idea i think as to whether it's not a lime kill i mean there's no indication of date and there are there are but you see that's that's very interesting because it could either be the lime kiln to make the mortar for the roman buildings down there or it could equally well be something from the middle ages where they're robbing the remains of the roman villa reducing it to to lime to take off the mortar in the churches and houses around here but mick's attention is soon drawn back to the isle building in trench one the domestic fines and now a layer of plaster on the floor have set him thinking well we've got a four or five tesserai from it now we've got a lot of plaster and water in the bottom of it so you know it it's probably not an agricultural building as far you know from that and we've got some nice pottery so what do you think it could be well i mean it just crossed my mind it might be you know where the main house was perhaps well that would be different well i mean you know we didn't get much like that last year so you know i mean there ought to be something that's a bit a bit more domestic and house like here somewhere so far from being dull the isle structure in trench one could be the most important building on the whole site is mc wright join us after the break [Music] yesterday evening mick came up with a rather radical theory that the isles building in trench one which we'd all thought was some kind of barn is in fact another villa building you'd have thought then that mick would be hard at work here proving his theory but he's not he's 100 yards away up here opening a fourth trench what's going on let me show you on the map this is the let's get it the right way around we're like that there's our trench one trench two trench three and we've got these whole series of springs across the side of the hill of which there's one down there one right up the top over there and we're actually digging in this one here how do you know the springs well that one the farmers piped water out of it that one's still got water outfit and this one's actually a little hollow with a platform on it and it looks as if that probably was actually a spring yeah and we're interested in these because not only was there a water supply needed for the buildings but these are the sort of places you get shrines or or offer tree places they're ritual centers in fact what sort of thing might you expect to find well we might find a structure over the top or we might find offerings dropped into it so we're back into ritual again i thought we'd knock that one on the head well no it's it's always a likely function for sites like this you know the nearby villa at chadworth for instance that was dug in the 19th century has a little nymphaean built around the spring i'm going to give you until lunchtime mick wants to track the whole water system so in addition to trench four here he's opened up a fifth right up here where according to local rumor the springs actually rise and he thinks this hollow could be a platform for a shrine so he's got mick the dig hunting for signs of water and ritual [Music] meanwhile we're planning some ritual activity of our own we're going to build a roman altar and dedicate it to day of fortuna the goddess of good fortune who we're pretty sure has helped us uncover this side he might have set up a dedication like this guys composed a dedication today a fortuner from time team with thanks to fortune with our but there's a dispute about the latin translation latin it's very difficult to find latin for time team time is tempos which we've cut down to temp yeah but what we use for team is a bit more difficult i've chosen grex because it's four letters and it fits very neatly with our inscription but it's a slightly sort of a timed gang or time band is what but lindsay doesn't like that she wants a more flattering though it's a four-letter word it is rather derogatory when used for human beings but what are you doing or something like that well i think do you see yourself as athletes or gladiators because perhaps manners might be better oh good lord i don't know that i see myself as an athlete and mick certainly no way no we stick with gang or anything they're going to be fighting out over addiction tempest grex it is then and giles is soon chipping away and it looks like the goddess approves this is trench one our mystery trench the one that could prove to be the key to the whole site originally we thought it was probably some sort of roman barn with great isles running through it but then last night mick had the idea that it could actually be a high status building still what is it it most certainly is a high status building i mean we've got plastered walls on the outside and most amazingly they're painted you wouldn't get that in the park you most certainly would not the evidence is stacking up but we'll need more than plaster on an exterior wall before we can call this building a villa so there's still plenty of digging to do [Music] as we dig the finds keep coming and all of them are reassuringly domestic [Music] i quite like this stripey stuff look inside my jumper there's plenty enough to keep the local school children busy [Music] but the news from the industrial trenches is less good a layer of charcoal in the trench three pit confirms its use as a kiln but there's no chance of dating it and the stone work in trench two is several layers thick and it doesn't look like we'll ever untangle it so mick decides to close them both how are you getting on here wow that's amazing good grief something that's flowing under there isn't it it certainly is can we get capstones off yep can i help it be careful they don't fall in don't fall in god can i give you a hand with this one you can see it's not clear the water in there look how deep it all is well i'm just thinking about our question with this was whether it was anything to do with the roman occupation here david do you think that's possible i i think i think it's highly likely i mean you'd expect a water supply to feed to feed the pillar it's an awful lot of scale built up on the sides there was something very similar to this discovered at woodchester really which was definitely roman and the water was still flowing through it like this is such a thing you see here and it's very deep within the section isn't it it's got a good that's the level at which it's cut in and there's a good two thirds of a meter of silence so it is it's very likely it could be roman that's absolutely fantastic isn't it amazing just seeing it flowing like that listening to it however trench five the supposed source of the spring is still barren of archaeology so we've no idea yet where the water comes from but john and chris think they know where it goes this anomaly here that's the stone conduit and it comes down and then actually in at that point and the white splodge is where we couldn't get the probes into the ground now this coincides with the back of the building that we're excavating over there and what we've marked what we think is the back line and it's this line of canes here and so you've got the front of the building down there yeah and the back wall approximately here it's a massive building isn't it imagine it right all that lot there but they're not going to build right adjacent to the spring are they we're not going to get both in one trench well we're probably not but we want to look at the plot first we think this is the back wall here now there may be an arm going down to the spring so john and chris think they found not only the other end of the isle building but a possible link between it and the spring outflow and mick in fact decides to open two new trenches trench 6a from the corner of the building to the spring outflow and trench 6b further along to establish the other corner and by lunchtime we've got diggers hard at work in five trenches across the side [Music] first with the breakthrough is david in trench one at the bottom of the isles building but uh yesterday uh this morning rather we had a piece of red plaster yeah i saw this as we thought was external rendering yeah well now we're coming across this uh larger pieces of painted plaster well you've got about four colors on that have you that's right looks like black white red red and blue blue right but they're deposits all over here look it's obviously fallen off this wall and what we thought was an outside wall yeah clearly probably isn't so the chances are that these are deposits of fallen wall plaster and underneath this we're going to find a floor oh or even a mosaic yeah and then the room is probably quite large how far we don't know for sure but it extends quite a way in this direction i suspect yourself yeah and then possibly as as far back as as roughly here so it's heading towards the explanations last year the building and then in this direction i suspect the northern wall is a continuation of this wall here but a high status room with plaster just about clinches this as a villain and it gets better it turns out it's even older than the 4th century house we found last year this is material that has come from a great big deposit of soil that pre-dates the construction of this stone building and it's all consistently late second to early third century a.d probably no later than about 240 a.d we've got this large mortarium this mixing bowl from the oxford region the rim form is typical of a type that dates to the late second early third century ad we've got evidence for milling on a perhaps industrial scale with this very large millstone you can see the rilling on the edge here probably from yorkshire millstone grit we've got part of a tankard for drinking out of this is a classic second and third century form in the seven valley and we've also got pieces of decorated samia wear which would also be consistent with the second century dates now hold on does that mean that the building would be second century or could that be phil that's gone in this is phil that has gone in to level up this area prior to the construction of this building so it's very important piece of evidence it tells us our new building predates the one we excavated last year by up to 100 years and it looked rather different it's almost like a church in its basic um form the building seems divided with with um a nave and isles and then on in trench one that we now know that we've well we think we know that we're going to have a cross range at the west end such as you see here but do you think we're actually looking at somewhere that people were living in or do you think this is just an out hall or something definitely living in this one and they're living in uh living in quite sophisticated rooms don't forget that sometimes these buildings get very developed over the years for example you may find that the isles get divided and in some cases even get given mosaics so although it's not as elaborate in construction as last year's it could still have been a very impressive building and all the while carrenza's been scraping away at this end of it in trenches six a and b sadly she's found no sign of a link to the springs but by merging the two trenches in the thinnest excavation i've ever seen she's uncovered the whole of her end of the building and it's the best looking wall of the dig this is fairly amazing isn't it isn't it well this is the building that jeff has picked up as you can see we've got a wall coming in dead straight here 90 degree turn dead stream all the way along here and then another 90 degree turn off this way what's this here this is roof stone so this is what this building would have been roofed with so we're really pleased to discover that because that's a big help in trying to work out what the building looked like possibly an entrance turning in here and then the wall picks up again going the same direction that way but we're not entirely certain it's actually the same wall it's a different width it looks a bit rougher and that's why we're pleased that we've actually followed this wall because we're really trying to link up with how this building relates to anything that might come up around the spring and i was concerned that if we just did a section there and then picked it up here we would have had no idea whether it was the same wolf if something funny had happened in between we'd have ended up not understanding the link between the two and in fact as it happens there does seem to be something funny happening in between because we've got this entrance and the wall looks a bit different have you got that entrance on the gfp does actually show tony that was the corner kenzie was talking about we followed the wall along and then there's a break at this point we appear to have one block there and then a second block on this side and david neal was talking about two possible tower rooms with an entrance coming through here a tower room what sort of building have we got there's like a palace well i mean this is certainly a villa i think we're dealing with now the building's stunning metamorphosis from barn to villa has passed unnoticed at the altar factory where giles is still frantically chiseling and with the block beginning to look altar-like it's time to start on the decoration chris our roman paint expert is going to make black red and the real tester blue we need the recipe well we've got vitruvius here who is an ancient writer who mostly writing for architects the basic ingredients of vitruvius's recipe are sand copper and soda these he says must be ground together [Music] then moistened shaped into small balls and put onto the fire to roast overnight in this way the copper and the sand burning together are going to the vehemence of the fire dry together and interchanging their vapors lose their properties and their own character being overcome by the vehemence of the fire they acquire a blue colour with any luck [Music] all this work is for the goddess of good fortune herself and it feels like she's really on our side just as we're packing up after a really successful day's archaeology she guides us to these beautiful brooches they were both found in the stream by um tim the metal detector man the stream just behind it here and what are they made of well that's proving a bit difficult they should be made of bronze but they've got a very strange color being in the streams yeah they've got this calcium deposit on them they might be made of silver but certainly this one here has got traces of silver plating so they would have looked like silver and what's this on the back like a spring well that's the spring yes that's the spring and it's been held in place by a little iron pin they're the safety pin of the roman world really what sort of dates are they they're both late first century first century yeah so it's early we have some pottery of roughly the same sort of we've got a 400 year span for this site now great so they're very not only beautiful finds they're very useful actually yeah yeah this is as early period has been a fantastic day for us it's not often that you find a brand new roman villa and we've got the extent of it right from up there to down there tomorrow we're going to get inside this structure to find out what the people who lived here were actually doing here 1700 years ago join us after the break [Music] beginning of day three it's still bitterly cold up here i don't know what the romans were doing building on top of this hill but if the archaeologists are right then this is the entrance to the villa but what was inside it we don't yet know what do you think meg well that's what we were just discussing because i'd rather assumed you came through that door into a courtyard but david says not no i don't think so i think you came through that door into into what was effectively like a barn with a range of rooms on the north side so for example this is the this is the north side of the building is coming on down coming down here you may have a series of division walls coming through here then the rooms continuing on dividing up this aisle and then more rooms on the other side that's right so how are we going to establish that well we're going to the idea is to put a trench to extend this trench through here back back to this point here to make it an l-shaped trench and that should we should then resolve uh whether this really is the entrance and to establish uh the divisions that we've been thinking about [Music] kevin you can take take an inch out of it while the mechanical digger extends trench six at the front of the building phil and david have got something to show mick at the other end that is the old original ground surface where we think the turf line is right look at this it's going down much much deeper yeah we've had masses and masses and masses of painted wall plaster in there it's going on down and i mean david do you reckon it's a seller i'm sure it's a seller yeah this is this is clearly the north wall of the cellar the wall came presumably comes around here turns down here and comes back here well presumably this is coming from rooms up above is it david not necessarily because it could be coming from the the walls of the room now that you may think well why do you have water plaster planted faster on a cellar well that's that's right you've only got wine in yours but sometimes these rooms were not just used for um keeping goods in and produce i mean they had sometimes a quasi-religious significance for example there's locally at whitcomb they found painted plaster on the wall of the cellar there and of course the famous example is knowledge where you had the the niche with the with the nymphs with water coming out of their breasts yeah water producing nymphs are probably beyond even giles's expertise with the chisel but he's doing a grand job on the altar in the paint shop however chris is looking worried chris even i know this is not roman no no you're quite right there we've had a bit of a disaster with the um with the with the blue pigment what happened uh well we put it in a kiln overnight to get the temperature right yeah and it's um melted the pot so it's got up to temperature but it hasn't gone blue that is definitely not blue is it so we're having to resort to modern methods got a bit of poke in there [Music] while chris is barbecuing the balls i've been given the much simpler task of grinding charcoal to make black [Music] chris sets about making the red pigment from yellow ochre by heating hit it up and that'll turn red will it yeah that's the general idea sounds dodgy to me but what do i know it seems to be going already nice smokey isn't it conditions these romans worked in now all we need is a little vinegar how much do i put in or put a splash in and then a bit more a bit more let's pour it pour it brought a bit more yeah oh that's very red isn't it it's a very nice color that yeah well that'll do uh that'll do our lettering or inscription how's our blue do yeah let's have a look let's knock it with the tongs and have a look and see [Music] well it doesn't seem to have gone blue does it a little bit grey on the inside so i think we're going to have to have another couple of goes with the blowtorch on that it's all going much better down on the side tim has plucked yet another beautiful brooch from the stream wow look at that isn't that wonderful look at the colors in that the bright orange is quite unusual to have a really bright orange like that second century i mean the only thing missing is the pin that really is beautiful presumably they're being thrown on to the stream somewhere further up and it's just the force of water as over the years brought them further down here and something pretty amazing has just surfaced in trench six near the entrance to the village you see that wow look at that what a sound choice of a name to write in a block of stone i'm not sure we haven't got a bit of a c coming through we seem to have other letters actually there is a suggestion of a letter just there no no no they always phil is perfectly sufficient what do you think it might be david it looks quite crude well i assume that it's it's it's part of a it's been on in a war some is cut inscription conceivably associated with a memorial stone that is possible um and then clearly it's been demolished and the stone has been built into this with the archaeology in great shape mick heads for the incident room where he hopes the fines will reveal something about life inside our villa how are you getting on then anyway we've got masses of stuff including samia and pottery coins a child's earring and this lot the wall plaster from the cellar in trench one some of the ornate decoration is amazingly well preserved and suggests a distinctive colour scheme the basic theme of this room was obviously mustard yellow so it must have been like living in a pot of pee and ham soup not to our taste at all lindsay also had a closer look at the two brooches we found yesterday and has noticed something peculiar they both seem to have been snapped in half or deliberately yes i think they have been because neither of these have broken where you would expect them to be broken and that does suggest that they have been thrown into the stream as part of a ritual activity really you literally kill the objects yes if you break it you destroy its power nobody else can use it and it you've you've ended it these broaches are our first real evidence the springs were a focus of ritual activity they might have been thrown into the system up here where the springs are said to rise lovely you can take that loose out of there kevin yeah and clear through again i'll go have a look except trench five is still dry as a bone at least it gives some come look at that kevin [Laughter] but does it connect with the culvert in trench four and the outflow by our new villa building back on the main site if it does not only are we back on the trail of ritual activity here but we'll have uncovered the reason people chose to live here in the first place well standing up here tony we're looking at the most sheltered spot on this wonderful setting and for a basic farming community shelter and the running water we've got coming down past the building are going to be two of the most important priorities it's really a continuity of the iron age farming that we know has been going on not just on this site but the whole general area right back for centuries i think what you've got to remember as well as you're dealing here with an extended family it's not just you know mom dad and a couple of children it's probably two or three generations and all their dependents as well in this great communal structure and that family would have lived there for what about 100 years or so before they decided to move up here that's right well the possibly our family and the senior man living there he may have had enough wealth to give himself a position in the local towns like siren sester or gloucester and that may have allowed him the opportunity to get better off and better off over the centuries after that moving up here eventually once his priorities change i understand you've had a little bit of trouble with the manufacturing of the blue is that right yeah domestic production has totally uh failed so we've had to resort to uh import so we've got some uh very expensively imported um indigo here which we'll uh use for the book but you can assure me that all the other colors have been made authentically yes yes yes absolutely definitely excellent and so the painting can begin do you know how quickly this goes off it'll dry almost immediately i would have thought all right is there any room for error not a lot don't screw it up there i don't want to do it with only a few hours left before the sacrifice is due they'd better get cracking that's spelling mustard back on the site the extension to trench six has revealed the two tower rooms the archaeologists hope to find either side of the entrance and with much finer stone work than the house itself it looks to carrenza as if they were a later embellishment but this little rooms in here that were added on they really look very tiny almost functionless well i think that's probably yes i mean they're small enough to have a guard or keep a few bits and pieces in but yes i think really it's it's for it's embellishment is to make the building look more impressive it's to create a very imposing facade for anyone approaching from down here and the walls are so much better made than the really rather rough walls that we've got there it's it's a big step up instead of just being a a nice looking farmhouse you're making into a really impressive residence here stuart over mark we're going to put some dye down at the spring source here um can you see whether it comes through your end will do what is this a patented old roman pregnancy test no we've got the pucker stuff here and it's non-toxic so you can you can have a taste of it when it comes through we'll see how well it travels i'm getting in position out okay here we go wow look at that it just explodes in color absolutely fantastic now it's just a question of waiting give you a bet five minutes go i'll go for seven minutes one minute three minutes four minutes until hello stuart we have blue water down here blue water over oh fantastic we know where the water's coming from and we know where it's going but do we will it reach the outflow by our villa where the archaeologists are feeling very pleased with themselves a brand new villa is pretty good going for three days work i'm a roman potential buyer of your villa bijou dwelling yes you can impress me very high status i can see these lovely great towers this is your entrance you'd come through the engine so we opened the doors yeah which leads us into this oiled hall it's a bit like a like a church with a very high roof tonight oh forty feet perhaps wow there's a hot timberwolk at the top three windows along the side and i've got rooms here rooms for the north all along that side perhaps the rooms along the side of there and don't forget all we're sharing this with with animals and farmer equipment yeah what sort of windows did you say closer windows there's little small windows at the top of the wall it's like a church yeah and then here we come down to these apartments at this end so imagine then as you walked across you would have walked into a room above the center all your living rooms are probably up at this level you see because it would have come more or less on a level from the door where we came in yeah so a lot of it's going on up above us here that's where your main living rooms would be it's a nice place yeah it's beautiful you know you fancy it dude we got planning permission for a new one over on that hill swimming pool and this would be poor all right i'll live here for about 100 years yeah and then i'll go and live up on the hill so the story of the new villa is complete there may well have been a very basic house here in the first and second centuries but in the early third century it was replaced by the isle hall complete with cella we've excavated this week then as the owners accrued more wealth probably in the mid third century they added the towers to make an imposing front entrance but even that wasn't enough for our upwardly mobile inhabitants because by the end of the third century they've moved out of here into the really grand villa we excavated last year [Music] and to cap it all we've got the final results from the pregnancy test this is the outflow by trench six look at this oh magic yeah how long did it take then we're reckoning about 12 minutes 12 years right down both wrong though right nick wrecking five i reckon 12 minutes and that's what 250 meters maximum well what we've definitely got the spring head up there the water is bubbling out we've got stone line that's the original roman spring head up there if you're happy about that absolutely happy yeah so these these culverts down here must be wrong they've got to be it's basically an aqueduct system yeah yeah so now we feel we've really cracked the whole site imagine the imposing fourth century house on the hill with its three courtyards the old villa down the hill now houses farm workers and slaves overlooking the site is a shrine at the head of the water system that probably brought the inhabitants here in the first place so all that remains now is to give thanks to the goddess who helped us find it all where would it have been positioned well somewhere in the house or in the shrine of the house this is a household altar and would it just have been a decorative altar or would it have been practical oh no no this this is a working piece of equipment and you come and you pour a libation a sort of family ceremony on the altar what in here yes that that's called the focus and that's where the libation should be poured well i think we ought to say our thanks to the goddess of fortune only i'm gonna mess it up a bit to the goddess of good fortune it's gone blue look it's a miracle [Music] you

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 181,613

Rating: 4.9332938 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, Great Britain, Roman Empire, Celtic Tribes, Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar, Mandubracius, Caligula, Catuvellauni, Claudius, Verica, Provincia Britannia, Hadrian, Caledonians, Scottish Highlands, Romano-British Culture, Britannia

Id: mInuesqb6e4

Length: 50min 30sec (3030 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020