Could This Field Really Hide A Tiny Ancient Roman Fort? | Time Team | Odyssey

[Music] thank you in 1998 a series of chance fines scattered across this field near Manchester inspired a local Enthusiast to start a field walking and for eight years he's been walking and walking and walking now after hundreds of hours of close scrutiny he's accumulated evidence of over 8 000 years of human activity from the prehistoric to the post-medieval but it's the Romans who seem to have been particularly active there's loads of metal work including coins brooches and this gorgeous little snake bracelet but the site itself remains an archaeological mystery so what was going on here local archaeologists believe they've discovered a fortnight but then not all the fines are military and they cover over 250 years of the Roman occupation so what were the Romans doing here in Warburton we've got just three days to find out [Music] thank you [Music] foreign s located near Manchester between the river Bolling and the mersey The Village can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon period and its Parish church is dedicated to swerberg the Anglo-Saxon Saint from which Warburton takes its name but over the past eight years the locals have been finding evidence which has pushed back more Burton's Origins much further that's a pretty impressive array you got there James it isn't it we've got stonework here from the prehistoric with the Flint work we've even got Bronze Age a small ax there which is really nice but what's really excited me on this side is all the Roman material the brooches and some of the coins and the various little bits and Bobs what do you think it all means Mike we've got quite a lot of material here from the Roman period which is distinctively military the the broaches in particular these nice little Rings well we don't get usually in the Northwest this kind of concentration if we're looking at military I think we could be looking at something like a thought or a fortnight it does seem to me to be a bit of a leap of the imagination from a few finds to an imperial fort with loads of soldiers hacking away at the poor bridge but we do have a bit more evidence that the local Archeology Society put in one or two trenches already in the field and they've got what might be an enclosure and in one of those trenches there's a ditch a Punic style ditch what's a Punic ditch it's a trap a Roman military trap Francis could this site be a trap for the enemy well I think we've got to be a bit you know a bit skeptical because I've seen steep sided ditches on farms and to my eye that metal work doesn't look military um I think it could be a farm I think we've got to be very very careful you know rectangular enclosure doesn't mean Fork it um so I think what we'll do first of all is another metal detect let's do a detailed field walk um Jeff is and put a trench in put a trench alongside the earlier trench just to prove that that Punic ditch is a Punic ditch and I might be convinced that's great it's going to be a little battle isn't it on day one nothing wrong with that history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans learn more about the wonderful and Mysterious World of the Ancients with history hit follow us as we take you around some world famous sites including Pompeii and the stunning Temple complex at Karnak we also aim to bring you the stories and legends that shaped our world through our award-winning podcast Network sign up now for a free trial and odyssey fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Odyssey at checkout so battle commences a bike to survey the landscape and Henry begins to plot out a grid preparing for the advance of an army of field walkers morning thanks everybody for coming we're going to try to Fields walk in 10 meter squares in terms of artifacts we're picking up everything from the earliest things to the latest things including soft little bits of red clay which should be what remains of the Roman pottery Helen's Trooper field walkers from the local archeology group begin to scour the field we're hoping that any concentrations of fines will give us precise digging targets and help us diagnose whether we've got a Roman fortlet or not while the field walking continues Richard the farmer begins to clear the bean crop so we can gear Fizz and putting our first trench we're hoping the geothers will help us identify the full extent of the enclosure and any internal features this should tell us whether we've got a fort or a farm but digging's not going to be held up since Francis has pinpointed his first Target using the results of the previous investigation okay Mike so those two pegs down there they Mark your old trench yep 2002 2002 and I am right that was where you got the whatever the punicip the Punic ditch yeah yeah okay so we don't want to put a hole on top of that because we'd look stupid that's going in that direction for eight meters yeah well if we go this way one two three four meters and put one in dead parallel with it we should that should come down on it yeah it should be well away from the old trench and we should cut this ditch okay in two okay you hang on to that I'll mark the ground give it a good Shake where am I going going that way right let's get my Digger so we're putting in our first wrench next to the previous excavation so that we can look at the form of this ditch and decide whether it really is Punic and this will tell us for definite whether the site's military David what was the difference between a Punic ditch and any other kind of ditch it has a standard v-shaped inner slope but the outer face is vertical or near vertical which means that once you've got in there it's extremely difficult to get out and you become a Sitting Duck to The Defenders to throw anything at you why aren't they called Punic ditches does that mean they came from Carthage as in the Punic Wars no they didn't actually come from Carthage but the point was that the Romans thought the carthaginians were extremely treacherous and these ditches Were Meant To Be treacherous to anybody who attacked across them as the field Walkers continue to march across the field we still can't be sure whether our Romans Were Soldiers or Farmers but the fines are coming in thick and fast and we're hoping they'll give us a clue I haven't got much there is a lot of some stuff that looks like brick isn't I wonder if any of that's going to turn out to be the good Roman pottery it is just bloody just sand sander more sanity it's like digging it Bourne [Music] yeah h aha that is charcoal that is burning of some sort I know it's possible that could be worms taking it all down there but it's a fair old way down isn't it well there appears to be enough Sands to build several castles but no sign of a Roman Fort lit yet this really is a military side what sort of thing might it be well it could be a fort or it could be a forklift what's a fortnight it's like a little little fort it is like a little fort but there'll be a difference in purpose between the two a fort is basically a place where Roman troops are garrisoned and they have a permanent presence in their area a forklift might be much shorter live than have a particular purpose related to say a road that it may be lying alongside mind you that's assuming it is military but suppose it was something different uh well it could be a Farmstead it could be rectangular just like a fort would be but inside it'd be rather less organized you'd probably have round houses just like they were in the Iron Age and even the Bronze Age so old style round houses at our trench it looks as they Mike there's your ditch that looks promising doesn't it so it does look as though that charcoal was coming out the other side right on the edge of it I'll be happier when we've got it sectioned and I can see it sections you want to do that by Machine yeah yeah exactly but this is good start but are the field walking finds turning out to be equally promising so what do you think of the treasures so far an awful lot of very recent comparatively yeah almost no people and almost no Roman no nothing we can for definitely say this is this is Roman but you know they're still out they're still going for it optimism I like that yeah Francis you're putting the long jumpers well look at this hey have we got something yeah look at that okay but it took us all morning to find that oh wow really on day one have I ever seen such a cornucopia of fine so what is this Francis I'm told it's Romano British and it's probably Cheshire planeswear or something like that are they being serious or are they once they are they are so what shape would that pot have been Francis um large storage jar about that seriously what have we got here um well we're currently thinking this is the ditch of the fort yeah unfortunately I don't think geoffers can help us no I think I've taken a jump backwards what's the problem with you John there's no magnetic contrast whatsoever sand on sand on Sand so I can't track its course that's its theoretical course I mean it should turn and come back can't see it I can't see it at all where do we go from here okay if we assume that is the fortnit ditch we know which side of the forklit it is and we can make a pretty good guess by measuring out where the other three sides are so that's what we're going to do Suck It And See measure it out see if the ditch is there what put more trenches in yeah yeah okay well while you do that I better oh careful fight these off to the British museum geoffers can't help us but we do know that Roman fortnights were Square although we don't know exactly how big this one would have been using the locals excavation report we think our first trench has located the Eastern Edge and we should be able to find the western side by digging directly opposite it [Music] so Bridge Francis and Matt are putting in the third trench to locate the southern side and find out the exact dimensions of the fortnight and I don't think we want the sort of pretty about with this we've got to find a dip so let's go as deep as that trench over there so a little bit deeper than that and just hammer it back till we find the thing sides progressing nicely and it looks as though we'll be able to fill in a real Gap in the understanding of the Roman Northwest there is actually quite a lot of activity going on here there are quite a number of major centers which are either industrial or military centers um does the the major legionary Fortress at Chester for instance on the on the D and then moving across we've got a fort and then an industrial site at northwich another one at middle which producing a lot of salt in the during the Roman period there's wildest pool which was a manufacturing center which is the nearest site to to Warburton and then we've got of course the Fortress at Manchester we know the mersey's a big Trade Network in the prehistoric period in the Roman period and we've got copper mining over at ugly Edge just a few miles away and there could be a road Network that that links that into the Chester Manchester York Road and we could be part of the of that kind of localized industrial network but just as the a team seem to be making advances with the fortnit Stewart begins to Signal a retreat I'm concerned about what's in Phil's trench at the moment what do you mean well I was looking at the field patterns on the map yeah and there used to be a field page boundary go down through here it's shown on the 19th century mapping so I'll just measure out where it was so I measured up from the Hedge Junction there yeah to where the line the Hedge would be its direction is straight towards the wood Corner down there it goes right through the center of Phil's training so are you saying that the ditch of the fort which feels found might just be a hedge line straight the archaeologists in Roman times a Punic ditch may have thwarted enemy attackers but right now if the lack of any archeology that's starting to challenge our own Army of experts it's all looking a bit glacial Matt isn't it yeah all the standard the gravel actually had me full from it yeah back there I thought art could be a ditch but no hey getting on here Bridge well made a long trench but I can't find anything in it no features none no fines nothing if we're looking at a fortlet it's very small for little soldiers like me just remember there should be an entrance through a fortnight shouldn't there and what about if the strength is right through the entrance if this is the entrance it's a flipping big entrance isn't it end of day one and the trenches we opened to find the Punic ditch have finally joined up to become one huge monster Trench found any evidence of the Roman Fortnight there's your Punic ditch Tony it is a Punic ditch no oh no this side it's a U-shaped ditch I think it's something off a far more hedge I mean it it's modern which is what Stuart feared yeah he's right but we do have probably the longest trench we've had on time team in many a year and unlike all those other trenches this one hasn't produced a single fine or a single feature nothing oh yeah this we have we've had those two little Pottery finds I don't know break now they came out of that ditch and I mean they could be flapper I'm not happy about them at all they're too small and yet and yet and yet this is a real puzzle there have been fines coming off this field from 8 000 years of human history and yet we found absolutely nothing why not let's hope we find out tomorrow we came to this field near Manchester yesterday because the beautiful artifacts that had been found on the surface LED local archaeologists to believe there might be a small Roman Fort here well not only have we not found a small Roman Fort we haven't found a small Roman anything no Pottery no metal fines no roof tile no brick absolutely nothing even though we've dug a trench the length of the Heathrow Runway but are we panicking absolutely not when there's a problem who are you going to call Geoff Fizz what are we going to do well look that was the arrow over the fort where we got absolutely nothing we've extended the survey in this direction and look at this area of noise so could this be the fort no I don't think so I mean look at this plot I mean that suggests sort of burning metal objects maybe so it's just possible that that's where they've been making metal work so you're gonna dig it yeah to me that's a good strong Target so I'm going to go get the machine put trench over it let's hope my luck starting to change we're putting in our next trench over John's gear Fizz to see if there's any evidence of metal working because if the Romans didn't have a military presence on the side our three-day campaign has still got to explain why all the Roman materials been found here we were first drawn to this site because James the local Enthusiast had been finding metal work all over the field with two concentrations at the bottom of the slope and Francis believes that this area should be our next Target so what you got lined up for me today then Francis well I think the key thing is to put a trench through or close by those two concentrations of metal work on the downslope of the hill and also that will give us a nice transect across the top of the the ridge here it'll also give us some indication of the thickness of the plow soil as we go down the slope well if we're going to do that why don't we pull the trench back over here what right back here yeah right back to here and extend the one from yesterday to beat it well just in case there's any stray archaeological features that would be the longest trench in time team history we're going for the full half miles of decent I'll get my man on the job okie doke so we're hoping that the trench over the two concentrations of previous fines might unearth evidence of Roman occupation and explain how the metal work got into the field in the first place we want to learn as much as we can about the fines so we've called in an archaeomatologist to see if we can replicate one of them well it's a it's a snake bracelet or at least part of a snake bracelet a Roman date I know it doesn't look like one because it's straight now but it's obviously suffered quite a lot of damage during its life and the the snake head at this end it's been broken I'm not sure that if I was going to have a bracelet made for me I would want one in the shape of a snake we tend to think of School World they did need to have been emblems of healing and have rebirth you know you see the snakes on on chemist symbols going training around a star yeah how would it have been made it was quite simple because it's a snake there's no extraneous limbs it's very easy to model we can use just some beeswax just made dreamers and pigment and literally just get it soft and roll it into a Loosely figured snake shape and then very simply just start to model the head and just start to define the features on it it doesn't take much work because it's so simple and then later when as it gets harder we can start to put the finer detail on so we can put scales on or little elements eyes and mouth or whatever so it just takes a half an hour or so just to model out we need this shutter edge of it in here now so Phil extends the trench which he opened to look for archeology relating to the previous finds it's another paulden Hill type roach meanwhile Helen's thoroughly examining them to see what they can tell us about the Roman activity in the field because we've still got to explain how all the local fines got here we're exploring every Avenue including the one that runs along the edge of the field if we can't find any signs of occupation then a rootway might account for them when we thought there was a thoughtless in this field one of the issues we were thinking about was access you know what's the thought that doing and how would you get to the to that particular Roman military site so you need for that attract way and and the likeliest candidate is is what we're standing on now but do we know that we've got to attract way it seems to me all that we've got is a path by the side of a hedge I've been looking at the geography of the landscape and the field patterns and so on it's great and what's quite revealing is this kind of long finger of a High Ridge that's where our site is this is a high dry ground we've got bog on this side we've got River plane on this side it's like a ridge of High Ground pointing out to where the river mersey is potentially for a Crossing to this High Ground over here so there is the possibility of an early route where across here so what do we do about it um I think we'll put a trench through it and I think we'll try to link that trench into to our own trench system so that we can put it in contact what might trench tell us well it history of this trackway I bet you penny to a quid that's going to be stuff underneath it and it may go back to Roman times I mean let's hope it does middle of day two and our trenches are getting longer and longer but there's still no sign of any archeology it's a real mystery and Bridge is Keen to see if a more scientific approach can explain why oh a chemistry set Bridget what have you been doing with it I've been doing some pH tests because one of the things that's come up is why is there no pottery and the little bits that are here of course are in really bad condition and it's been suggested there's quite high acidity in the soils here so I thought well why not test that out and confirm and um I've done three I've actually tested them on the three soils from with Phil dug that that feature yesterday and this one here is from soils that came from within the feature that filled out yesterday the one in the middle is from the natural geology and the one here on the right is from the plow soil and you can see that's much more yellow than these ones yeah and this indicates that it's got an acidity of 6.5 the other two are neutral they're seven to seven point five well 6.5 isn't very acidic is it I mean well it won't really cause any harm to any Pottery so blaming the lack of fines on soil PH doesn't seem to pass the acid test and as the search for any archeology continues even the dog has got involved but trench four which was open to explore the possibility of metal working has finally produced some results Kerry sounds like you've hit the metal we have hit the metal but it's not the metal we want why not well um we had a spread of something yeah and uh I think we've got a spread of Nails Nails yeah what kind of nails well just iron fairly Modern Nails unfortunately like that it's history Brian you've been working on this site for ages why do you think that the only stuff that we're finding is modern stuff um probably the farmer you know burning burning rubbish on the field you know getting rid of rubbish you're picking all your nails up as you can as you can hear now it's everywhere but why aren't we finding anything older oh probably because we've had it well it seems that we 've quite literally nailed down John's Metal working side but it's still not Roman I'm not happy you're not no we have done so many time teams in the past where you get a field where the metal detectorists have been in they've brought out a wealth of stuff and we've gone there all really excited we find nothing because the metal detectors have had it all and all we get is a couple of indiscriminate ditches what worries me is the soil is very light so every time it plows and that's why it's so easy to metal detect there's always new stuff being brought up which implies that there are features below are being eroded so I'm actually very worried while the trench over the fines concentration seems to be equally unrewarding Mata Naomi are busy working on the trackway to see if there's any evidence of a Roman Road there I'd give it another couple scrapes I can do let me grab this oh a bit tall man I don't know where that came from actually well it's not the kind of surface we were hoping for but there's still a chance there might be a Roman Road beneath it as the site continues to frustrate the archaeologists Andrew's snake bracelet is shaping up nicely so what actually happens to this beeswax model essentially gets burnt away so what I have to do before that is to apply the whole surface with fine clay fine clown sand that captures the whole thing that makes the mold and then we put heat to it and that drains out of the wax shall we [Music] it's a lovely fine mixture you just need it on with your hands foreign looks like that and every layer has to dry perfectly until you get something that's like a brick at the trackway trench finally we might have our first hint of something archaeological the trench this end behind me we went straight down onto this yellow sand and then we got to here and immediately very distinctly dropped down and we've got this kind of orangey sand here but it's a bit confusing because it it seems like a cut almost just goes straight down on the cross I'm pretty sure what you've got there is a plow Headland right and this darker material here has fallen off the plow in fact if you look along the trackway you can see there is a very slight rise just at the end of the beams can you see that oh yeah yeah which the modern track where he's using so what would have happened that the plow would have come across here turned I mean as it turns the soil that had stuck to it falls off and forms this low Bank obviously it takes a long time to do and but it goes back in that direction now Stewart reckons that this field was first plowed in the earlier 18th century something like that so you've got what two three hundred years for the soil to accumulate but what's important is that we now know that the pliers were working in that direction okay and that would explain why the fines are going down the hill or getting dragged across getting dragged across and the other thing is that there are no sign below the plow Headland here of a Roman Road or trackway nothing at all underneath it hadn't there been one it would have been buried under the Headland so this is the best place to look for it and I just simply can't see it no two days on and our enormous trench has so far produced nothing the metal working Trench empty the trackway trench zero it seems completely mystifying the locals dug in the same area and found a fortnight ditch but Phil thinks he can explain what they were looking at and it's not Roman in fact it goes right back to the Ice Age and I think that the best candida for the ore ditch is that one and now that we've seen the local geology I mean I think it's it's pretty clear that the geology here is is just gravel it's coming out of the glass here and I think as the glass here has moved back across the country all these stones have been washed out where where where we've got sand you can see very very fine lenses which is very very typical of sound that's laid down by water this stuff here I think is part of the Water Lane gravel you can see it's got a lot of the holes in where the sand has been washed out and all you're left with is the stones but I think what's happened is that the whole lot of gravel has been churned around at the end of the Ice Age and what you get when that whole all the Earth is just churned up and things like this you see how that stone is vertical not horizontal if that was Water Lane it would it would fall flat but once it gets mixed around in the ice cracks appear in the Earth's surface and Stones just drop down and of course once you know these things and you can identify them then you can interpret a natural geology can create wonderful wonderful I don't know fake features it's just unfortunate where they look like four let's so the Punic ditches which the locals thought they identified are probably glacial deposits [Music] end of day two and the troops return to base in archeology speak the pub for an emergency strategy meeting I'll be sharing three days of great significance is this the first time in 14 years that we'll have made a Time team in which we find absolutely nothing at all it's gotta be some sort of a record I must confess I mean here we are end of day two we've put in 350 square meters and absolutely nothing there can't be many fields in England where we would find so awesomely little we've looked at these things as if we were 20 years ago and so we're trying to chase individual fines with features buried below the ground you can't link fines automatically with features the archaeological world is changing what metal detectors are revealing is that the ordinary open empty spaces of the ancient world were actually packed with fines so what would have been a really rich field 20 years ago today actually it's sort of background noise so what I want to do I've heard at lunchtime today that the farmer next door on the also on that Ridge is going to be plowing and that's had very limited investigation and what I want to do is to give it the full time team treatment survey it shovel test pitted basically you take a few shovelfuls of soil you sieve them and that characterizes a whole 20 meter Square oh I could do that couldn't it that'd be a record too then what we'll then metal detect it and uh you know having done all of that I hope will have done a proper job so are you in the process of spending an entire hour watching us find not one single thing or is this going to be a classic time team where on day three we suddenly come up fronts we'll find out tomorrow although in a rather perverse sort of way I'd be disappointed now beginning of day three and we came to this field near Manchester two days ago in order to try and find the source of some fantastic Roman artifacts that had appeared on the surface and as you can see we did a pretty good job of searching except that we've found absolutely nothing so today final throw of the dice we're going to move over to that field over there and we're going to take our metal detectorists and our archaeologists and quite frankly they're going to need all the help they can get having dug this field to death we're moving into pastures new and the next field along and we're throwing everything at it archaeologists field Walkers metal detectorists even the dog I think the new field is a good Target since its Virgin Territory and more importantly it also lies on the ridge of high ground which Stuart believes is the most likely candidate for Roman activity I feel as though I'm surrounded by low-key chaos yes that's because we're desperately trying to find out as much as we can about the whole field in a very short time so we are doing a number of things first of all we're starting off with the old standby which is geophysics yeah but we're not really expecting it to produce anything because the results have been frankly terrible and then we are metal detecting all the way across the field and labeling tagging all our signals which Henry's then plotting in with the GPS the moves that we're using metal detectoring in the same way that we would normally use geothers in order to create a pattern on the ground which we can then use as evidence about where we should put a trench in yes and then the third thing that we're doing with it is because it was only plowed this morning we decided to go for the technique of shovel pitting where we did a small hole right in the middle of each 20 meter Square across the field and that recovers a certain amount of artifacts so that you can characterize what's going on in this in the top soil from those artifacts which we can then use in conjunction with the geophysics if it produces anything to locate a trench times of the essence since we've only got one day to explore the whole field so everyone gets busy everyone that is except Phil who's refusing to be dragged away from yesterday's trench and Helen still got loads of James's finds to double check he's quite worn on that edge so that's fixed into the wood of the heart somehow is it in the right I think it is I mean it's some way of Distributing straps around around the cart to a Rain travels through that yes yes yeah I mean the rain would have run through there because you've obviously got quite a lot of wear yeah on this edge here has gone quite thin and at our original field Phil's tenacity has paid off and yes he's got a result from his truck I've never been quite sure why we've explored quite this far out in the field well if you remember there was metal work that was coming off the crest there were two concentrations and Phil's trench was to come down the hill and and follow that metal work well actually it's been much better than that we've found two lynches what's a Lynch it well it literally is it's an old field system what you've got to imagine here Tony is literally a Stairway of of fields running parallel to the slope and what is happening is that plow soil as you plow a long slope soil moves down the slope and where Francis is you will have a bank and down here you've got a cutaway Terrace you can see here that you've got a dark brown topsoil that's this stuff and it comes straight onto natural now as we come down the slope we've got three layers we've got the dark topsoil but in the middle we've got this brown material which is sloping down here and at the bottom we've got the natural and this brown material is where the plow has actually sliced into the natural and moved all the soil down that way so you'll have a bank here and here there's a big cutaway and so you've got a whole series of stairways and you can see that the next cutaway Terrace is up there where the chap is there so you've got these these fields about what 20 30 meters wide going down the hill do we have a date for these lynches well we we've got Scrappy pottery from the from the bottom of this Lynch that runs through the Roman 16th century and 18th and 19th century so we might have 2 000 years of Agriculture plowing on this site but the important thing is that is exactly when the metal fines were being made that is exactly the date of all those metal objects what's exactly the period the medieval or the Romans roaming into medieval period so what you're telling me is the thing that you're excited about is the fact that we now have a field which we knew anyway we know it's going down the slope which we know we didn't know and it's got fines in it which are either Roman or maybe you didn't know that this is what you're excited there's more to it the thing about lynches is they're only formed by plowing okay and that explains how the fines got into the topsoil in the first place they were put there in manure and the manure came from the farm or the settlement which could have been over the that could have been over there I don't know this was a purely agricultural landscape but we now under understand the mechanism by which it formed and until we dug this trench down here we had no indication that there was a pre-existing field system on this hill the only field system that we could see was the present field system this shows that there was a completely different landscape here in the Roman and probably a medieval period which is why it's not on the 18th century map because these fields are totally different so finally we're beginning to reveal the history of this landscape the Lynch It's evidence of an earlier terraced field system possibly Roman and this would explain how the fines got into the soil as rubbish mixed in with the manure which fed the crops well Stuart we're getting wildly over excited about two Lynch hits out there how do they fit into what we know about the landscape I mean if you go back to the medieval period and what you've got is the is the medieval village of Warburton here in red you've got a a church down here and a Priory arable ground here Meadow around the edge and park and Manor Center up here and the Peter muslin's over here but you've got a strip of open ground all suggesting that this strip where our fields located is the pasture for the animals of Warburton Village and the parish so that's the pasture on which you'd have had the animals that would have manure the arable that's right this is quite important in the understanding of this also the pattern of movement actually is along that road that's there today the road that we we come along leading from Dunham straight down to Warburton and then crossing over the river the mersey itself is an important boundary in the Saxon period between Mercia and northumbria and if the sex occupation close to a major boundary there's a very strong chance there might be even Roman occupation so those those lynchits that we found are likely to predate the medieval pasture yeah I would say that quite categorically from the evidence I can put together yes while we seem to be getting to grips with the sight the wax has melted out of the mold and the snake bracelet has reached the critical stage of its process oh this is when I always get tense this is a bit where you come just at a perfect time because it's molten but it's also when everything could go wrong yeah so we've got The Crucible down here in amongst all the charcoal oh it's so hot I'm gonna go for it how long have you got oh just seconds okay right I wasn't expecting that to be so so liquid so liquid yeah wait some of it went over the side but that's that's fine what's the dangers of this I don't mean dangerous to you I mean dangers are messing it up well the dangers oh I mean this is why this this mold's been fired it's been fired very thoroughly yeah because the wax that was in there if any of that's left in that's going to turn to carbon and that reacts with the silver yeah the other thing is which is even worse if there's any moisture in there that turns to steam and bubbles out the top I mean it's like Vesuvius so you get silver everywhere and you get shotgun splatter of silver pellets how long does it'll take to cool off I'm going to give it about five minutes because I'm quite anxious to see you so lunchtime day three and the new field is now speared with hundreds of canes marking all the metal detector responses what are the red dots the red dots of the non-ferrous combining this with the geophys and shovel pit results we've plotted out any hot spots and with only a few hours to go the pressure's on to decide where to dig there does seem to be a long line of fines there doesn't there where's that in the field that's sort of on the edge of that Hill you know on the edge of that Ridge ah so Phil begins to dig a trench in the new field over the biggest response to see whether there are any fines and to analyze how they got into the ground it's not in the spoil that's coming out or is that in the could it be really really smaller okay this is very small yeah seems to be pretty local though he's done it is it in there for example no shine up no try that in there then it's over letting that gone or somewhere must be very very very small whatever it's all right lead when I damned so let's sail in all the seals that put on the bags that's what I think it is it's quite a nice little pattern on there our prize find who needs Roman when you've got a seal from a 19th century seed bag The Field's now littered with trenches and Helen takes a quick tour to see what's turning up no features anything good the last bit that came up the courtesy of the detector was that was the last bit we came out yeah it looks looks good on that side isn't it yeah never mind okay thanks very much you're welcome this whole field is dotted with tiny discreet test pits and suddenly we've got Phil's zonking great hole what's that all of that what we're hoping to prove is that there's a different pattern of finds in the top as opposed to that bit there yeah yeah then the subsoil and then on the on the natural and in features underneath there and how are you getting on Phil by and large all the fines that we get they're mainly Victorian post-medieval the main thing is that we're recovering all the fines not just being selective with metal and certainly once we get through the topsoil which is where most of the points are once we get into the subsoil we're not getting anything at all so what does all this tell us it's telling us quite a lot I mean it's telling us that this soil has to be manure that's where most of these modern fines are getting in finding their way in and then it's also telling us that below that there's a rather different soil which may represent pasture and then possibly earlier fields are beneath that that earlier soil wasn't being heavily manured a bit frustrating for you though all this digging empty trenches I spend my entire life digging holes and finding nothing I went with Ian you know the main Digger driver here he and I dug 1800 meters across Salisbury Plain in four days and what do we find one post hole was I disappointed no of course I wasn't disappointed the main thing is you solved the problem we came here three days ago we came here with a set of questions we want to know about the forklift we wanted to know about the metal objects in the postal and I think over those three days we've answered the specific targets I know what did really hack you off though the local pub didn't serve real ale yes you're right there well archaeologists are obviously more patient than I am [Music] just to a halt the molds ready to be cracked open and the snake bracelet revealed beautiful isn't it so after three days it's finally done it's just about it's a bit of a thing gonna try it on I'd love to try it on this please isn't it lovely so elegant she's beautiful this fantastic reproduction has given us an insight into how the snake bracelet was made but what about the rest of the wealth of Roman fines which Drew us here in the first place our three days of careful study have given us a great chance to reevaluate them but what do they tell us so Helen I can remember day one table groaning with loot wonderfully exciting important site and now we're down to this what's happened well what happened was when we got them all out of their bags for some detailed study and Analysis we discovered that there'd been quite a lot of cases of misidentification and so we ended up really with a hardcore which represents this little group here and what sort of activities do they represent these times well I think they represent quite a few things coins are people losing them through holes in Pockets bags that kind of thing something as beautiful as that I think it's probably a broken Broach pin falls out of the clothing and you can't ever find it again these turrets fallen off cart it's various ways of getting into the soil but I've seen insights and monuments records you know a brooch or something equals a sight exactly yes and perhaps a lot more significance was given to those fines and perhaps should have been so background scatter Helen I mean do these fines matter do you think well in some ways it doesn't really matter I suppose but we can look around and think people have been growing their food in this field for thousands of years I think it kind of puts us in touch with our ancestors if that doesn't sound too silly and really quite a quite a meaty kind of way I don't think it's dull at all I'm beginning to love this field aren't you guys guys guys guys you invite the time team in and we find absolutely nothing your mates are going to take the mick out of you how do you feel about it well you said you wanted something different tell me we've given it you thank you very much so you're going to keep on with your archeology we've got plenty more fields to search plenty more fields to field walk so yeah and you're going to keep on metal detection certainly am that's what you'll give us another ring soon but certainly find something different we might not answer but to be fair to the guys we have learned something the archeology has proved that these fields have been farmed for 2 000 years explaining how all the artifacts got here this could be any field in Britain and these fines many of which have come up in the last few hours could be seen to indicate the presence of the Victorian building or a Roman villa or a prehistoric settlement but now thanks to our better understanding of the results of metal detecting and field walking we realize that this is a not untypical assemblage it's what Francis rather poetically calls the background noise of antiquity it's taken us over 400 meters worth of trenches to sort this little lot out and it makes you wonder how many other sites there are out there that exist merely on the basis of a few finds and a bit of wishful thinking oh and one other thing finally we've done what we always threatened after 160 programs we've found absolutely nothing

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 42,560

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary

Id: Zol_DB_FkAA

Length: 48min 12sec (2892 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023