Brancaster | Time Team (Roman Documentary) | Timeline

I'm looking on what was once an ancient coastal path here in North Norfolk the watch is just over there somewhere and nineteen hundred years ago all of this would have been beach and it would have been full of Romans but they wouldn't have been working on their tans they'd have been emptying the cargo boats which supplied a massive fort which was over there somewhere this fort was called brannad unum but we don't know how much of it survives what it originally looked like and whether it was one of the key outposts of the Roman Empire it is an incredible structure we can see the wall exactly as it was put up by the Romans what 2,000 years ago we're stretched to the limit coping with all the fines Oh lovely fantastic and astonished by the images from underground it's a very big site we're gonna dig this week over 20 acres so can we uncover the story of 250 years of Roman occupation here at Brenner dunam in just three days [Music] the Romans invaded Britain in the middle of the first century AD and by the second century they taken control of the eastern coastline this Roman sure-footed brannad unum must have dominated all that went on here what's brought us to this National Trust site are these aerial photos which show strange crop marks in three fields across the site they're tantalizing clues to the size and scale of the lost roman fort in town that are just waiting to be discovered roman brannad unum could even have been bigger than modern-day Brancaster but if it is as huge as it looks why was it built in this far-flung corner of Norfolk and what exactly was here time teams Francis Pryor is itching to get started lovely summer's day in a grassy meadow well we're not on holidays it is a lovely grassy meadow but it's also Roman fort and this place is stiff with archaeology what's so special about this place well I mean look over there okay that is what is showing up on the aerial photograph those crop marks that's a small town I don't think I've ever been on a time team that has so many crop marks well don't get carried away they're a little bit blurred well they are but for you I've plotted them out so there are the crop marks of the time here's the roman fort it is huge you are right there's a heck of a lot it is vast it's 24 acres in all and John Gators geophys team have been busy the crop marks suggest there's a huge fort and next door of veikkaus or settlement for the last 12 hours they've been scanning the fort's interior with magnetic sensors and they're brand new terrible radar technology should tell us if those crop marks are actually indicating roman buildings still in the ground but the techy team are struggling Jimi's kit loses a vital part and Emmas computer is misbehaving two things aren't going well for gif is downloading the data yeah we lost is fallen off the radar but you have managed to do some Mac I've got results and the basically what we've done is we've find the aerial photographs so we can pinpoint things accurately on the ground we've done a bit over the pink appear yeah and then a bit over this building that's on the different alignment pieces Principia presumably that just means the main building come on building but we don't know anything about this second one no we don't and I actually I want to get a trench in both those buildings because we can't hang around I mean well it's wheels are dropping off you know time is passing okay so where are we gonna put in the trench I am going to put the first trench here that is where we are going to get the most important data before [Music] while the geophys team refocused their efforts Phil takes command of the Principia trench which in no time delivers the tell-tale sign of Roman daily life moister shells oh yeah then they love their oysters Roman lunch I be convinced that Roman be honest fancy oysters are the sort of thing that would get really really worked and churned and breakfront up in a plow soil yeah these are these are servo even in good condition that's very encouraging film it really is Francis's second trench is just 50 meters away the geophys suggests it's out of kilter with the straight lines of the main fort Matt Williams and Cassie Nuland will be trying to find out just what this mystery building is [Music] the fort here has been known about for centuries it was built by the Romans to defend Britain against marauding Saxons coming over the North Sea but was Brenna dunams purposed purely defensive David gurney has studied Roman sites all over Norfolk and has got some intriguing ideas about this particular sure Fortis everybody would talk about a Roman fort I think of something that's crammed full of soldiers who leap out whenever there's anyone charging across the country and then nip back into the fort again is that not the kind of thing that we're talking about I think it ran a dunam it's more complicated than that I think it stopped possibly starts off with some trading and then it may become more defensive we're a more military function and then towards the end again possibly more trading you said sure forts so does that mean there was more than one oh yes if we we've got a map here of the 11 forts so we've got Bennett in him up there at the north end by the wash and then we've got 11 forts around the coast ending up with Port Chester down by the Isle of Wight so we do know that whatever Brandon's function was it was part of an overall strategy this is the Roman military having a very serious attempt to defend the coast of Britain and possibly doing this trading stuff as well so according to David Branagh dunam was built for invading Roman soldiers but alongside that it developed into an important trading hub probably importing supplies they could trade locally for goods they could export we're hoping the dig will shed more light on this dual role inside the fort walls Phil's excavating the larger of the two buildings which is the HQ or Principia we know it was stone built because there's an account of a clergyman who in the 1800's was robbing stone from here to extend his nearby mansion even Duggan took stone from below the ground but everything would have been nicked by the robbing Reverend I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have taken everything I'm sure either left summit for us the team have hit a layer of material that looks like a Roman demolition dump you're but amongst this Tracy's found a real surprise told you poor al he go oh wow so Jeff is really you know it's Senna it's gorgeous it's not it looks like a dice in it it's got rather more than the requisite number of dots three six nine dots there three dots there crops on the back cross on there life is rather splendid just three hours into our dig and finds are coming out of both trenches the pottery Ian's found was made in Britain for the Romans who lived here I reckon looking at that RIM it's got to be more like second third probably more likely third actually and in Phil's trench they're now digging through the layer of rubble from when the building was demolished and that too is full of surprises with such a wealth of artifacts coming out of the ground we've brought in the British Museum's Roman finds expert Philippa Walton it looks very much large pewter plate doesn't it like a pewter bowl to me we're looking at it as an object it is definitely wrong then is it yeah definitely late Roman century so what other people would be using this is it the sort of thing you'd expect on a military site well they're very unusual finds but it's not something that wouldn't come up in a military context brilliant that is amazing that's the first pewter vessel I've ever held really yeah they're really rare filled they really are so this plate from the fourth century is from the last 50 or so years of the fort's occupation possibly even just before the Romans withdrew from Britain let's hope the fines keep coming and that we start to uncover the buildings within the fort's walls Roman forts in Britain share similar characteristics as well as Principia they'd have a common dance house and barracks bath houses granaries a guest house and even workshops almost as if they were built in kid form but we've got no idea whether our fort has got all of these components it's big enough and the fines in our trenches are certainly building a picture of a bustling military fort we now think the dice found in the Principia maybe from a strategic board game played by soldiers wiling away their time so wonky old shape it looks pretty dodgy you'd want to be in control of this game what about the bigger picture well the bigger picture Tony is that this trench that we thought was relatively straightforward this morning is vastly more complicated than we imagined ah John have you got that GFS I don't think you wanted to see the Jew physics did you you didn't need to because you said on the crop marks we could see that we've got the main buildings and bailiff allow that's good enough look at what's done he surveyed the whole fort now I mean we've got the main defences we've got the main bring capilla building we've got these responses that I've not seen the like before it is such an amazing picture but that's magnetic I mean every boss Jimmy been doing is much-beloved radar then look at that oh there's clear picture the pink appear that's not radar is it that is the radar over the main buildings so we've got rooms over the main building which there was ever seen before ah now you say this room say that we haven't seen before oh you think that we can actually see these walls appear in in the bottom of our trench and look over here you've got the preen tip here of course and then look about look at that I mean I think that could be a granary I've been over here we might have the gatehouse and these buildings along here you've got a heck of a lot of choices available to use tomorrow you know it's really worrying CONUS I think are actually gonna be very important I mean you know what we decide tomorrow it's gonna be important for another 50 years you know and it's gonna sort out for dating so we've got just about the best GF is we've ever had on a Roman site we've got fantastic finds we've got loads of choices what are we going to do I think there's gonna be a lot of thinking tonight at the hotel not just drinking beginning of day two here in Branagh dunam in North Norfolk where we're looking for a Roman fort well I say looking for one look at that we found a Roman fort that fantastic GF is that John's done and that is radar there so we've got an enormous number of potential places where we can dig and you've been racking your brains all night about where to put one in so where's it gonna be well to be quite honest Ernie I haven't slept a wink all I can imagine you know a granaries our barrack blocks yeah it's just buildings everywhere it's been a nightmare there are so many targets and where are you going to dig I want to put a trench across the sea wood defenses this isn't it you've got this great proliferation of information all over this page and you want to do something right up the top ah but it's not gonna be a local thing Tony I want to go right across the defences and then come back through these buildings here I promise you a good big trench but before the digger makes the first cut the new towable radar kid makes a sweep around where the trench is going in with luck this much higher definition underground imaging system will tell us more about the buildings and fort ramparts under the ground here the ramparts themselves run 450 meters in each direction I suspect we will start cutting back rubble like they did in French one and we're hoping we can discover how they were constructed and when already Raksha rannian have exposed what looks like a wall is the first hint of an intact stone structure yesterday the geophys results astounded everyone the conditions in the ground are well drained and particularly good for their scanners so now they've decided to extend their survey to see how much of the 24 acre site they can cover we also open two trenches yesterday one over a mystery building that we want to identify the other over the fort's HQ building or Principia as well as finds expert Philippa Walton we've also called in Roman historian mark corny to assess the finds as they come out of the ground at the Principia trench Tracy's found a metal object squash nail almost I don't know mark it's art I'll tell you what it is it's a stylus no the writing implement yet we got the wedge end there we've lost about that much off the bottom which would have been the point the stylus was used to inscribe onto wax tablets and it was how Branagh dunams officials would have recorded military orders and business transactions good god I've never seen one made of iron yeah you get them in iron as well as bronze but at least definitely a stylus Wow and it's from the Principia which is the administrative part of the the for it's evidence of Roman army bureaucracy [Laughter] and there was plenty to administer the crop marks are clues that there was a big settlement just to the east of our site we know there was one of a similar size to the West because in the 1970s a housing estate was built right on top of it and while it was being excavated archaeologists found important evidence of one of the cavalry units or cohorts so who exactly were stationed here we're very fortunate actually we've got the names of two military units which are probably the only two that were here we've got from earlier excavations these stamped bricks and they give us the name of the unit CH for cohort 1 the knew more than aq for accurate Arnhem the first cohort of aquitaine Ian's from southwestern France and they're probably the ones responsible for building the fall by the 4th century AD we've got this lovely document the Natisha dignity autumn and it tells us that we've got a Cavalry Regiment of Dalmatians so that's from the modern-day Adriatic goes what used to be Yugoslavia it's a real cosmopolitan Empire so it wasn't just soldiers from Rome they were units from other ethnic groups that had been swallowed up by the expansion of the Roman Empire mark thinks that at one time there were 500 soldiers here and in the Principia trench they're uncovering fines that tell us more about those who were here in nineteen hundred years ago including something's crucial for any well-dressed Roman soldier what you got there oh that's rather nice innit well I don't know what it is but I know somebody mo you know what I found is what Angus is just found Wow that's what it is it's a strap and slimmer person I don't like to keep on harping on about it but is it the sort of thing you'd expect to find on a roman fort definitely this is something a soldier might've worn yeah fines aren't just confined to the trenches metal detectors combing our huge spoil heaps are unearthing lots of tiny finds with big stories some local tribes have been producing coins in Britain but when the Romans arrived their administrators soon put a stop to that by 155 AD the Romans were minting their own coins and these are what we're finding looks like you've got another coin here Tracey yeah this is come on spoil heap again but we do know where it's come from and that's the layer that we're doing at the moment but it looks a bit different from the one we had yeah can I take a closer look yeah it's 4th century and day and the reverse shows the soldiers spearing a fallen horseman yeah and we can date this one quite specifically to the period 3 5 5 2 3 6 1 nice such as all same period as the pottery coming out of that change well that makes sense brilliant the 40 or so coins we found could have been changing hands for all sorts of goods and services as brannad unum was the northernmost outpost of the Romans east coast defences and with no major roads leading here the sea would have been vital for trade and travel and back then is likely that the coastline would have been much closer to brannad unum than it is today Francis has sent local archaeologist David gurney and me on a mission to get a better understanding of what it was like here when the shore fort was in full swing clearly this is navigable but we are pretty far out from the shoreline but it's a very dynamic coastline and it's changed any number of times over the centuries see this is mostly salt marsh now but it would have been more open in the Roman period oh so you think that the Roman ships would have been able to get in there I think there would have been quite a wide channel getting fairly close to the fort it's hard to imagine isn't it what a peaceful day like today what this must have been like 32,000 years ago when it would have been chaos here with all those ships and soldiers and people absolutely bustling yes really busy endless numbers of boats coming and going the Romans used boats that could carry up to 50 tons at a time they had flat bottoms and were ideal for navigating coastal waters and rivers and they didn't require a man-made dock or jetty they could easily be beached on a high tide and their cargoes unloaded as the tide went out it's only day two and we've got an astonishing volume of archeology over 2500 pieces in all that tell us about everything from Roman sports to the decorative arts all these finds guys and still they keep coming that's what's so great about Roman archaeology it's brilliant the Romans make a load of rubbish and a lot of dateable rubbish too and they've got lots of late Roman pottery here we've got roof tiles and we've got some really nice beautiful small finds so what are your favorites oh well I really like this bit of Samian where that's got two little men boxing on it it's really beautiful so odds are they're boxing because they seem to be facing in the same direction because no one's punching the other in the back yeah Wow violent Romans why have you chosen a couple of bones well usually on archaeological sites you concentrate on the bones for looking at what people were eating but these are actually cockerel Spurs and that might tell us that people in the fort were doing a little bit of fighting in their spare time fighting was among the many things the Romans introduced to Britain even Julius Caesar was an enthusiast yesterday we opened our second trench over the smaller of the two buildings in the fort it seems to be built on a different angle to the walls and the brick appear building now we have a visible wall so we can measure just how misaligned it is building it's about 20 degrees off the out of thoughts walls so we've got what's on the crop art basically yeah it's definitely on the same alignment we know the Romans built settlements and forts in straight parallel lines so why does this fort seem to defy the laws of Roman town planning David we always think of the Romans as marching in straight lines and at right angles and entrench - it looks like the building isn't lined up on the fourth what do you think well you're quite right we've got straight lines but they're not all in the same look degree of straightness as I mean looking at the air photos and though the geophysics of course we can see that the building in trench two looks as though it's on the same alignment as the main road that goes through the veikkaus and therefore it raises the question as to whether or not it's an earlier building than the fort we've seen in trench one so does that make sense to you man on one hand it does however some of the other big shortfalls in Britain like Richboro and looming Kent you do get contemporary buildings which are misaligned to the fault defences so pay your money you take your choice really some of the stone rubble coming out of the trenches could help us begin to paint a picture of what the fourth swarms might have looked like over the centuries the fort's stonework was systematically removed by robbers it was such a high-quality building stone that it was reused in buildings that can still be seen in Brancaster today but that wasn't the first time this stone was relocated it's been discovered that this cast stone or gray stone is unique to a quarry at castle rising and it's now believed that the stone was transported 25 miles by sea to Brenna dunam and that would have involved well over 500 boatloads just to get the stone to sight in the trench spanning the ramparts they can finally see the foundations of the fort's huge defenses now Matt Mark and David are piecing together just how Brenna dunams ramparts would build so we've got a nice wide foundation here at 10 foot wide which is about right how far down does it go well just below you there it's at least 3 courses so maybe you know 30 centimeters or so and is that a bit of grey stone right at the bottom right at the very bottom it looks like there's a little piece left which means you know they didn't manage to get it all out so if that great stone is in situ what we actually seeing here is the rods face of the wall yes so this would have actually been in the face this way so this stuff is what's left of one came off that surface can you imagine what it would have looked like building that freshly quarried very pale grey white stone perhaps five six meters high and you know when viewed from offshore it's going to dominate this skyline Graner dunams starting to look like a cut above the average Roman short built with the finest stone it was a statement of money and power and assign the Romans were here to stay it's a significant piece of evidence which suggests brannad unum was more important than was previously thought but we're halfway through our dig and we still need to find out exactly what went on inside the fort and how long it stood here we're here at brannad unum digging a Roman site on the Norfolk coast we've just a day and a half left to discover the extent of the buildings inside the fort we could be on the brink of uncovering one of the most impressive shore forts on Britain's East Coast so far the geophys team have had such a success that they're now attempting to scan the entire site we want to find the earliest version of the fort and what other buildings might be hidden there John's latest results over the fort's HQ or Principia not only show that it was a huge building 40 metres across but also suggests there could be a chamber below the ground floor so that's the detailed radar plot oh I like it so what we're really saying then is that in between these two walls we've got basically an underground room that goes down to meters you've certainly got a greater depth of deposits here yes okay so the archaeology is beginning to look as though it's it's backing up what you're going to geophysics so you're starting to believe me no absolutely I never dated you for one moment John there's a chance that the chamber could be undisturbed unlike much of the site which over the centuries has been ravaged by stone robbers who have removed most of the fort's stonework Jeff is have also been surveying in the field to the north where the crop marks that we've highlighted are less distinct this could be the site of a much earlier forms where the first Romans landed their boats and established a base but do these geophys results reveal anything new well look these are the latest results I mean we've got a complex of ditches road systems coming across if I didn't know better I'd have said we've got the fort where is it well there's our main force and that's the field to the north you've got to put something in there Avenue absolutely what's worrying me is that we've got a little bit of today left and then it's just tomorrow I mean that's a tall order we don't really have to get cracking but you want to go for it oh yeah so if the North field turns out to be the site of an earlier fort it would imply that a pioneering roman unit was sent ahead and the development of brannad unum and it's much larger fort was a gradual process it's 20 years since Francis and his old comrade David gurney dug trenches together we need to get into that dish I'll get my shop on them I've got my Chow [Laughter] [Music] when the Romans arrived they'd have discovered land ripe agricultural development fines from the 1970s dig nearby tell us they were producing grain 2,000 or so people lived here and the soldiers and officials at least could have been living very well indeed the bones naomi has been discovering tell us something of what was on the dinner table not only have we got loads of pottery and loads of coins but we've also got shed loads tons and tons of animal bone really nicely preserved animal bone so it's keeping me happy so what have we got well we've got our typical Roman species some phone calls there from a cow we have pig which is typical for military sites we also have quite a lot of sheep then we've got quite a few jaws do you think they'd have been prepared on site yes I do Tony because we've got quite a range of butchery for example here we've got a nice piece of butchery it's been sheared off here perhaps with a cleaver something like that down to more fine knife marks for fill it in and skinning and all that kind of thing so yeah processing on site and the pottery is sort of confirming all the food preparation as well we've got the classic malt arrium the mixing bowl for preparing pastes and things like that we've got the cooking pots and finally we've got the best sundae China from which you you eat your nice lamb casserole this is from a noise so the shallow bowl would have been about this size it may have been a far outpost of the Roman Empire but they didn't go without to give our team a taste of what they would have eaten here food and drink expert Sally Granger and I have been conscripted to prepare some delectable offerings the Romans loved oysters and the abundance of empty shells we've been finding here tell us that the Romans were eating them as a staple some will be serving up some locally harvested rankest our oysters complete with a favorite accompaniment a sauce made from rotted fermented oily fish called garam imported from the Mediterranean pitchblack there's no light penetrating that at all now we're gonna try some of this with a raw oyster it smells like the first slice that my dad used to our Big Bone discovery tells us that some of branagh dunams residents were well-to-do because to the Romans pork was a delicacy so we've prepared some pork kebabs spiced with coriander and cumin which arrived here by boat from all over the Roman Empire along with exotic oils and favorite wines while we crack on with the cooking time's running out for the team looking for a possible earlier fort in the field nearest to the sea but Ian makes an all-important end-of-day find hi well we've got summer finally got a few little bits a pot domak but doesn't look moments of me Wow no I think you're right these two they've got Flint gritting I think those are well and truly Iron Age possibly 1st 2nd century BC right and this one that looks a little bit later so I place that sort of first century BC possibly just into the ad where were these from well they're from this lower fold down here in the ditch but there's no sign of any Roman in this digit salt no there that's not like going so is this in close you're going to be on H that we find out tomorrow this pottery predates the Roman invasion but before any history books are rewritten they'll need more evidence from the trench if they're going to challenge the theory that there was an earlier Roman fought on this part of the site now it's the end of day and time for kebabs Roman style but this lot are more interested in a branded dunam brewed now of course they weren't there were working-class Romans who would have drunk beer as well I think the officers would probably have drunk wine then in that case you're really gripping next the oysters posh nosh for us very much but here in roman times they were foraged and freely available well I guess when the Romans came here absolutely we've unearthed loads of finds but we're after the story of how Branagh dunam evolved and we've got just one day left with I suspect hangovers in the offing [Music] it's our final day of digging at branagh dunam roman fort in North Norfolk and there's still all to play for we think this trench over the ramparts could now be set to tell us more about just how the fort evolved but we've only scratched the surface of what could be within the fort walls but over there that is our start wrench in it we think we may have one of the most important buildings in the whole fort and that is where we're going to be focusing all our resources today this is over the fort HQ or Principia where yesterday our geophys survey revealed a lost underground chamber Phills team have been battling through layers of demolition left behind by the robbers who over the centuries stole most of the Roman stone but now they've made a breakthrough this is as big and this is as impressive as you will ever see because we've actually got the wall here and the beauty of it is that most of it appears not to have been robbed down and it is an incredible structure look at these beautifully shaped stones look we can see the wall exactly as it was put up by the Romans what 2,000 years ago and look and that's--and what's so exciting about so very interesting because it is exciting if we've got if we've got backfield natural in there and not in here this is demolition rubble that would employ that this level goes down much much deeper that's exactly as predicted on the geophysics and what do you think that we would need to find in order to establish whether or not that was the case well I mean it's going to be fresh Roman finds things that were dropped there in Roman times was everything we found up to now I think I'm right in saying phil has been removed from its original place applause fines in stitch you could tell us what this underground chamber was used for in the field to the north we've put in a trench to test the theory that there was another much earlier fort here but the ditches that we found aren't Roman they're part of an earlier Iron Age pre-roman coastal settlement so we've got these two it's all parallel ditches here when we're getting this stuff wow that's really interesting yeah even though they're really abraded you can tell by the inclusions that little bits of Flint those mid to late Iron Age so they're the earliest bits of pot from the whole sign fantastic this pottery which clearly dates the ditches to pre-roman is a great find but the trench we put in to uncover a second building in the fort is proving more of a problem we can't see why it doesn't line up as one would expect with the rest of the Roman fort and we can't identify the building but the results from a nearby trench do give us the answer the mystery of the fort's development is about to unfold at the trench dug across the fort ramparts here the team have uncovered more of its structure that actually is the earliest part of the fort that is [Music] yeah so we have the ditch coming through and then we have this other berth and ramped up which have probably would have gone all the way around this pre seat the stone rampart is actually cut against exactly so what they've done is they've come along they've decided they don't want to have an earthen man part anymore they want to build a big posh wall so they've actually cut into the earthen rampart and then constructed this massive wall that runs all around the perimeter my guess is that that was built in the 100's possibly even a bit earlier and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the first fort with the earth a rampart was on that slightly squiffy alignment alignment yeah and I think that goes with the earlier fort so we've been looking for an earlier fort out there and in other places it was under our noses all the time and you have found it in that rampart so pleased and excited Raksha we now understand the development of this site in the late first century AD it seems that the fort's earth and ramparts were constructed first along with what our experts believe was Amancio the fort's guesthouse and that this lined up as one would expect with the ramparts and the associated veikkaus then the cut stone wall was added to the ramparts making them bigger and for whatever reason they were built on a slightly different alignment we really have rewritten the history of this fantastic site and at the Principia the new discovery has redoubled efforts in the trench they've dug down now into the lost chamber and a digger notices one of those finds that could easily have been missed you know what want to get it out which obviously is quite a significant point while they painstakingly removed the delicate fragments of armour John's GF is team are pushing the capabilities of their underground radar kit so far 120 kilometres of sensors sweeping the site make this the biggest they've ever undertaken but as a result the system has crashed so basically we've collected so much data that you've put the system on overload yeah that's in a nutshell really we've built the positional system up beyond this capacity they promised to deliver a survey across the entire 24 acres but all that's now in the balance back at Phil's trench the tiny pieces of Roman armor are out of the ground it's Roman scale armor its caloric Esquimalt ax if you look carefully what we've got here are some tongue shaped pieces of bronze riveted together and if you look carefully there you can actually see one of the little rivets still and they'd be then attached to like a a six different leather or linen jerkin ah so that's not just the armor each sound no no that's just the outermost layer but it also allows a lot more flexibility and movement and it's typical of the third century onwards particularly for cavalry regiments Saru much what we've got here that's right we know the least two cavalry regiments one from Aquitaine and one from Dalmatia is amazing I mean not only are we beginning to get in this trench now I feel about the build in itself we've now got a sense of what the people who were in that building really look like yeah lovely find we've made an unprecedented number of finds here over 2500 pieces in all which tell us that this was a bustling and busy place the locals who shared their lives and traded with the Romans here were catapulted from the Iron Age into Britain's first consumer society back at the brink appear it's time to take stock of what the trench is revealed about our star building what we've got are the foundations of the Principia building itself and when I mean the foundations they've really are the foundations you can see it down there they are are massive they're about a metre across if you look at that end section you see that gray that waita stuff yeah that's the floor level of the underground room so the foundations themselves go below that but I mean that looks like proper dress stones you're not on the sort of rubble layer at the bottom that is proper wall that is all below ground level if they put that amount of care and attention into the Foundation's just think how big that would have gone up there it would have been absolutely colossal the brink appear would have impressed all those who saw it and around its central courtyard there would have been dozens of offices from where Branagh dunams officials and administrators weren't at the 59th minute the geophys team have completed their epic task of surveying the whole site even their troublesome radar survey has come up trumps up until now we've only been able to identify two buildings within the false walls okay so this is basically a 40 meter wide transect right across the interior of the fort it's going to go through the time slices and see if you can spot anything these images are an archaeologists dream come true I mean if you look carefully somewhere here you can see actually a couple of lines of color but look stop that is a massive stone structure and of those buttresses up against that wall yes definitely I don't think there's any doubt that's a storeroom or granary it could have been a storage depot for masses of grain grown in the hinterland that was being shipped out to supply larger Roman centres of population so what about the Oval to the right within that rectangle well what's crossing my mind is the fact that we know this is a cavalry forum and I'm just wondering whether this is a gyrus really you know it's it's a small arena like space than you use for breaking in and training new mounts this confirms that the cavalry regiments were right at the heart of Brenna Dunamis and there's only one other roman fort in britain known to have a gyrus within its walls this fort was jam-packed with buildings previously unknown to archaeologists our trenches have revealed two quite distinct phases of building and ramparts once clad in upmarket stone none of us could have imagined we would achieve so much in three days we leave brannad unum in the knowledge that it was a grand design a thriving boomtown and an important Centre for the region given that we've had such a triumph over in that field you might wonder why we're finishing here in front of this trench which is probably the least glitzy of them all well the answer is because this trench has transformed people's thinking about this site up till now it was assumed that in this field there was a smaller earlier roman fort we now know that isn't true what we've got here is an Iron Age site the people who lived here before the Romans the people who one day looked up and saw sailing across the sea towards them the Roman ships and from then on their lives were never the same again [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 374,961

Rating: 4.9060464 out of 5

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, roman empire, tony robinson documentary, tony robinsons romans, tony robinson worst jobs in history, time team full episodes, time team special, time team specials full episodes, tony robinson timeline, tony robinson time team

Id: Y6ZxaZUXCXs

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020