Digging For Britain: Series 8 Episode 1 ( West ) / History Documentary

the United Kingdom has an epic history and a wealth of secret still to uncover every year hundreds of archaeologists dig dive and sieve to find clues to add to the great historical jigsaw of our ancestors lives you know when people say what's the best thing you've ever found guys I'm professor Alice Roberts this year we've uncovered some astonishing finds and made some truly groundbreaking discoveries Wow look at that each team of archaeologists has been armed with a dig diary camera so they can record their discoveries as they happen that is brilliant Dave I love you our roving archeologist dr. Nisha McSweeney is out on the digs who are we looking at it's royal and I'll be inviting the teams to bring in their finds for closer analysis that is absolutely beautiful this time we explore Britain's West I've come to the edge of Dartmoor where traces of the ancient past are all around from castles to rays and circles of Bronze Age standing stones in fact all of the West is rich in archaeology join us to delve into an Ice Age cave we have found this beautiful really run authoress to follow up on reported sightings of unexpected human bones across the top of the cliffs we've got here remains eroding out of it and bid an emotional farewell to a very long running site it's unique to be able to tell this story of ourselves in one place welcome to digging for Britain our first egg takes us to the Cotswolds an area with a rich seam of anglo-saxon archaeology and the name itself is thought to relate to an anglo-saxon chieftain called Cod and his control of this territory of the highlands or walls so Cod's walls this dig takes us back to around the early 6th century the exact location has been kept secret to protect it a team of volunteers led by m OD archaeologist Richard Osgood is following up on the discovery of high status anglo-saxon artifacts in a field as a chap called Chris who's a local metal detector it's got a permission from the farmer to come and have a look at this field no one knew anything about this field there's nothing on the historic environment record he was pretty shocked to find not only a lot of Roman material but he found two really really beautiful Saxon items there was a sword pommel mount from the top of a Saxon blade which was made of silver gilt and then a silver buckle as well so these things are what are called treasure treasure is legally classified as any piece of metal over 300 years old containing over 10 percent gold or silver and it has to be reported your thoughts when you get that at the ground I was totally stunned because I knew exactly what it was I had anything like that before no no no it's a detector extremely isn't it Chris Mader's finds in 2016 and reported them to Gloucestershire Council [Music] it soon became clear that he'd stumbled on a sixth century Anglo Saxon burial ground this prompted a swift call to Richard and his team to formally excavate the site so we've got what we believe to be a nice nice cap and over here of course nice cold cover through the cranium coming up in that way and then we've got the job here with the individual teeth just poking through at this point the jawbone just there as we come down we've got what is the right armor here just the top of just the humerus then we come in to where the rib section will be once we clean those down the finds date to a time when history and material culture shows strong links with the Netherlands and Scandinavia most Britons at this time a thought to have been pagan and their burial practices involved in tearing the dead with plenty of grave Goods and this cemetery is starting to yield some very intriguing finds it's a nice massive big piece of a rim just a few days into the dig and they unearth a very rare artifact you know when people say what's the best thing you've ever found guys this [Music] the raw material for this bowl may well have come from the eastern Mediterranean a major focus for the last production at this time this exciting archaeological find is unusual as glass is so fragile it rarely survives a bowl like this would have been precious another indication of high status what really amazes me is that this has been in the ground since the 6th century it's really really shallow up there there's not much topsoil it's been plowed for for hundreds and hundreds of years and yes ok it's broken but it still survived elsewhere on site the archeologists are making more extraordinary finds wow that's fantastic it looks like a bead the anglo-saxons are well known for their incredibly intricate jewelry and decorative metalwork you know could be anything from a helmet to a drinking vessel to part the scabbard it is indicative of a high status burial it's made of silver but it's got this guild again which is why it looks like like gold that shines sounds beautifully after 1,500 years is still shiny and you put it in the summer that's that's a really magical item in early anglo-saxon cemeteries the dead were typically buried fully dressed with other objects included in the grave that still speak to us of their identity and status which has just sucked over the pelvis area here but it's just sat on what is the left hip so probably a dagger looks too small to be a spear happening here I think we've got a very very high status barrel with a lot going on [Music] this unassuming field has proven an extremely rewarding sight richard has joined me to delve deeper into a couple of the barrels which seemed to challenge our expectations this is photogrammetry of this individual over - meow the quality is that good you can actually see some of the finds in the barrel itself you've got the see this circular item just here yeah yes that's this ah is that a spindle whorl yeah that's right it's really really nice and tactile big solid stone spindle well and then just further up yeah that's that's this thing oh what's that it looks like a toggle it's an it's an ant we call it the prong but it's something we think probably used with in textile working it's got a suspension loop yeah so for wearing just around your neck as part of the the weaving process and then what about there is that beautiful of a B these are polished pieces of amethyst you can see they've also been pierced all the way through the middle for incorporation in jewelry these are objects that you would associate with an anglo-saxon woman but I'm a bit dubious actually whether this whether this is a woman that we're looking at so the first thing is that the bones are quite robust there's chunky areas of muscle attachment and and then the pelvis it's frustrating that it's say fragmentary but we are getting at the very top of that great ascetic not that the back of the pelvis I'm saying kind of probable male with that this is what's really interesting is the jaw because that's a incredibly prominent chin and then on the other side we've got the angle of the jaw which is flared out that tends to push me more in this direction of this being a male skeleton that's right so yes the sort of drinking vessels sword shield Spears things that give you this real kind of macho and machism Oh feel yes you expect them to be potentially male burials but this one if it's a mail barrier with female grave Goods really does sort of tip that on its head and this is the other burial that we saw quite clearly in in your film I was really intrigued behind particularly that can I pick it up yeah if you do it carefully adds that's really light it's so thin and fine isn't it we're wondering whether that is a Saxon dish or Bowl or in fact maybe a Roman piece of glass as an heirloom really Wow what's what's this here this this is an iron object isn't it that's the knife that we were excavating they look really good in the ground all intact but it was held together by the salt so that is the the knife and it had a leather belt which had little bronze studs and fittings that went with it around the waist of the of the individual so this is what's astonishing about these Saxon graves is you're looking at somebody who's he's buried fully clothed and then with lots of other items around them which speak about their identity in their status so yeah all the attributes of a warrior burial sword shield spear and all this extra extra equipment and then what's amazing about that is that this is a warrior burial the individual in it was about ten years old so there's the top of the shin bone and in fact the very top of it is still completely separate and then eventually when it reaches its full length it will fuse and these two bits of bone come together so yeah growing individual we're seeing it's actually the same when we look at the teeth these are the milk teeth so these are the two baby molars and they're about to be knocked out very soon by the premolars so there's two cusps teeth you have to do all this objective archaeological science but you can't help thinking about the people that laid that little body to rest when you're excavating you are the first people to see this since those that are grieving and putting them into ground and it's impossible not to project your own feelings and emotions into this an amazing pair of burials that tell us interesting things about identity in this period but will yield up more secrets as we apply more science [Music] the Saxons were originally pagan but then they converted to Christianity and they built the first monasteries in Britain in Shaftesbury Alfred the Great founded an abbey with a nunnery alongside it with his daughter ethnography as the Abbess archaeologist niche McSweeney went along to see the excavations at the site [Music] the market town of Shaftesbury dominates the landscape of Dorset it was once the home of Shaftesbury a be the first nunnery in Britain that became one of the most powerful and prominent in the land but the Abbey like so many during the 16th century English Reformation was plundered and destroyed by command of Henry the eighth I've come along to help archaeologist Julian Richards look for any remnants of this important historic site we're trying to find out whether what's laid out here is the actual truth most of what Julian knows about the abbey is from the findings of the last big excavations completed back in the 1930s following these a plan was drawn up mapping what was thought to be the footprint of the original abbey julian has pored over these plans but for him something just doesn't add up this a site that has been dug before you said in 1930 what made you come back to it now we want to see just what survived and whether we believed elements of this plan because just simply from a an architectural and engineering point of view you look at some elements of it and you think I don't believe that that's not in the right place the original saxon abbey was rebuilt through the eleventh and twelfth centuries and subsequent modifications included a rich refurbishment in the 14th century the cloister of the abbey was supposedly on the southern front commanding the view from the top of the hill but julian suspects he was never there well this is where the cloister walls supposed to be but when we excavated it we found absolutely nothing the cloister is the beating heart of an abbey not just a place of contemplation and prayer but the structure around which in Abbey's principal buildings were arranged back in 1954 historian Laura Sydenham created architectural drawings for her extensive study of the Abbey but these drawings were based on the 1930s excavation speculating where the cloister may have been locating the whereabouts of the cloister is critical to establishing where the rest of the a belay so the last thing we're doing is a couple of slots across the line with joist of all to try and see if that place that exists on the southern side so come on I'll show you what we did thank you honor thing the foundations of the lost Abbey has proved a challenge in itself there's a modern rockery garden which needs dismantling for the team to dig beneath so this is our next little problem is removing a half ton block of stone [Music] well it's the end of the first week of digging and it's been very hot and we've moved enormous quantities of soil but we're starting to get to grips I think with the layout of the abbey of what survives underneath these remains that were laid out in the 1930s it's not looking promising as we dig Julian's becoming increasingly puzzled so we've got no wall they're three meters beyond that we have got a wall but this isn't the continuous structure that we were expecting to find here marking the edge of the cloister it's just a ditch to dig in over Julian suspicions about the plans are becoming more compelling the trenches they've dug are not giving him the answers he's looking for so he decides to expand his initial dig outline in pursuit of the cloister the team have come across some telling features along the way so these cracked and worn tiles are part of the 14th century floor of this part of the church warmed by the fate of hundreds thousands of people have walked over them and also you can see here they dip down this is because they're sinking into a grave that runs in this direction because this part of the church will be where important people were buried the abbey profiting from royal patronage as well as being the site of sent Edward shrine became very prosperous over the centuries it acquired huge estates in the surrounding area it was said that if the Abbess of Shaftesbury married the abbot of Glastonbury they would be richer than the king himself this made it a prime target during the dissolution of the monasteries and in 1539 on the order of Henry the eighth the last Abbess signed the deed of surrender the lands were sold off and this great symbol of Roman Catholic power was demolished Julian's keen to show me the spot where just the week before there was a surprise find that paints a vivid picture of the Abbey's tragic demise the end of the abbey what evidence have you got for what happened here on the ground well I mean this is the bit really that I suppose gives you a very graphic idea of what happened because this is where one of the the massive pillars stood that supported the central crossing Tower but they've taken out every last bit of usable stone but what amazes me is that what came out of that in this corner they didn't want that we don't know who it is we don't we can't work out which may Queen well we don't even work out because the hairstyles are very similar it was an amazingly exciting find you know not just from the point to being a beautiful object but it does tell us something about how this part of the church which was the junction between the nuns private part of the church and the more public part looked like this excavation that first opened up you know this year and they thought they knew what they were doing they were just confirming a few a few things and actually what's been really interesting to see to see it you know actually our expectations being confound and the whole kind of thing being blown wide open we thought we knew where this giant church was we thought we knew where the cloister was because of it with kind of huge scale of the demolition that went on with the dissolution of the monasteries I mean this entire complex was just completely flattened almost nothing left of it that's quite a sobering thought to in terms of what that would have meant for the wider community and and the kind of if they were economically dependent there was socially dependent on this place and it just kind of makes you think about the wider social effects of this change despite digging all summer and discovering large sections of the abbey the puzzle over the cloister is yet to be solved Jean tell me about this like that you've been digging what was a big mystery our efforts at the moment have been concentrated on excavating in the Abbey Church so the Abbey Church I think yes it is that you're taking this summit yes so this is the area in fact you can see our excavation trenches here but we've always had slight doubts about elements of it because it just doesn't seem quite right and I've always felt that there's an element of imagination in this like the really isn't room enough for a southern cloister before you go off the edge of the slope so do you think these courses are entirely imagined then I'm beginning to think that there isn't a cloister on the south of it at all yeah I think it's probably on the north and what about the fines I thought some wonderful things in yes I mean we found some amazingly fresh looking tiles beautiful little things but still with all their glaze on them which implies that whatever was there wasn't being walked on much so you know the tiles tell a story but then this one it's it's absolutely fantastic isn't it this was just in the demolition period rubble so 15:39 the place they start smashing the place up and clearly this if you look at it it's three it's got a back to it it's not it's not a tomb figure it's a standing statue yeah and it's royal as well because you got a crown and also look these are representing jewels on the crown we think it's male it looks a bit like some statues of Edward ii but we need to research this a bit more yeah so that was a fantastic one of our volunteers was digging and said I found a plastic bead and I said no you haven't because you're digging a medieval deposit so is this jet it's jet but it's such a big bead if it was part of a rosary to me the story that you know that object might be able to tell you know was this a nun being ejected from there you know her rosary broke because this obviously just sort of fell into a corner and then has ended up in the rubble but you know to me it's it's the story that an object like that could tell you know if only it could talk as we go right back into prehistory archaeological evidence can become very thin on the ground and that's because our prehistoric ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers they just didn't settle in one place for very long at all our next dig comes from a site in North Wales which contains precious tantalizing glimpses of very early modern humans in Britain [Music] hidden away in a ravine east of the veil of Cluett lies the entrance to phenom bono cave the first excavations here were carried out by the geologists Association back in the 1880s they found stone tools and plenty of ancient animal bones over the decades this site has attracted a lot of archeological attention this year dr. Rob Dennis and a team from the University of Edinburgh are investigating the cave and they're filming a dig diary along the way this is the first week we've opened up the trenches now so where we start to work in earnest and the caves up there so let's take a wonder off and say there are two trenches one inside the cave and one just outside what we're digging here is a spoil here so that is material that come from inside the cave that's been redeposited out the front as part of early exploration in 1830 some of the earlier finds in the cave take us right back to a time when Neanderthals were living in Britain the Victorian dig found these beautiful Flint spear points characteristic of late Northern European Neanderthals another find was the type of stone tool thought to have been made by early modern humans around 35,000 years ago it's thought there was a hiatus between Neanderthals and modern humans in Britain that spans several millennia as well as evidence of early humans that first dig also turned up animal bones of sixteen different species including cave lion and mammoth reason why we're digging this is to look for material that was missed in those early inspirations and that appears to be the case we've already found from bits of Ice Age animal bones some animal teeth as well as some small and drips of stone tools the team is looking in the spoil heat outside the cave for good reason early excavations often missed key finds back in 2014 a human teeth was found in the soil it was radiocarbon dated to around 2300 BC during the late Neolithic inside the cave Rob is digging down through the muddy sediment on the floor hoping to find untouched layers most of the Ice Age sediments were actually removed journey dig in the 1880s but we have been doing some work and we found quite a lot of intact sediments that contain Ice Age animal bones we found a bank of intact sediments that contained rhino contain hyena contain intact Ice Age material and fingers crossed we'll be able to find some archaeological material in there as well as Neanderthals and early modern humans the archaeologists are searching for evidence as to who else may have used the cave they've previously found a coprolite or fossilized feces belonging to a hyena thought to be at least thirty five thousand years old the 19th century researchers also found coprolites and nated a number of gnawed bones they completed that hyenas must have been living in the cave as a den and were probably responsible for bringing the bulk of the animal bones into it the team continued to dig down into the untouched sediments here we are in the pit having a wonderful time we are down to intact cave earth they're intact deposit we have found this beautiful really run Oscar his tooth what do you run off Soros went extinct in Britain with 35,000 years ago so this means that we are in deposit that is at least that old which is significant because around that time is when we think there were last nanda thor's and the earliest modern humans in Britain so we're in the right time period on track potentially for finding archeology the assemblage from this cave is incredibly rare in fact fernandinho cave is only one of three places in Britain to have evidence of base late Neanderthal and early modern humans in the same site it appears that this cave still contains a rich seam of archeology its secrets will keep archaeologists like Rob and his team coming back here for many years into the future most archaeological excavations tend to take place over a single block of time particularly if they're related to construction and development University excavations on the other hand usually take place over just a few weeks in the summer but the archaeologists will keep coming back if there's plenty to find one such dig near it'll has turned into a real labor of love it's been going on for well over a decade and is now just coming to a close just north of Bristol close to the mouth of the 7s tree sits beautiful Berkeley castle it's the oldest building in England still inhabited by the same family whose ancestors began building it in the 11th century in 2010 digging for Britain was on site with Bristol University archaeologists who wanted to understand what was happening here before the castle was built this year we returned to Berkeley with professor mark Horton and dr. Stuart Pryor who are searching for more evidence of the origins of this site it's unique to be able to tell this story of ourselves in one place and here in Berkeley a capsule AIT's that that idea when they first started their dig they suspected the site had been home to an eighth century Saxon Minster but the scale of the monastic settlement proved much greater than they imagined the amount of archaeology exceeded expectations and has brought them back year after year to explore the Minster buildings and boundaries so this is the famous Berkeley excavation and it is a veritable slice through history but the real interests of Berkeley is the period before the conquest this is the time in which Berkeley was a Minster or a monastery we found huge quantities of material associated with this anglo-saxon monastery a Minster is an important Church often accompanied by a collection of monastic buildings a place of prayer but also a place to live and work for monks and nuns over the years 8 trenches have been dug around the estate to assess the scale of the monastery the team are currently digging in a paddock to the north of the castle according to records the Saxon Minster here was demolished in 10:43 after the Norman Conquest the stone was used to build later structures in Berkeley including part of the existing Church and castle as well as the monastery the team have unearthed multiple layers of history we've got at least a thousand years of history in one trench starting at the top we had 17th and 18th century garden features below that we had burials from the 17th century below that we had an English Civil War dish underneath that we find anglo-saxon structures IMATS bust the most important fine for us one exceptionally rare piece found at berkeley is this exquisite gold ring a fine example of just how skills the anglo-saxons were with intricate metalwork but the team has found evidence of human activity even earlier than the Saxons they haven't found buildings but there are definite traces of Roman activity we've had a Roman roadway cutting across here and it's very curious ditch like a feature and in the fill of that we found a piece of broken up silver a great big piece of what we call silver now that's what the Romans paid their barbarian mercenaries to defend their villa States literally chopping up the family silver and maybe what we actually got is a little bit of family silver that one of those Mercer was dropped and just left it there in a ditch the barky project has been an emotional rollercoaster of a journey both on and off site for Stuart there was a time when he thought he wouldn't even live to see the dig through I had a serious brain injury three years ago following an illness Stewart's prognosis was dire they thought I was gonna die if I did survive they thought I'd be hospitalized for the rest of my life [Music] but Stuart fought hard despite the seemingly impossible physical challenges and against all the odds he was determined to get back out into the fields to return to the job he loved and the dig at Berkeley fortunately for me I'm a bit of a fighter and I wasn't gonna give up basically fought my way back from being on the deathbed to being back at work again at the end of the dig with heavy hearts they've made the difficult decision to call it a day why it's ending I'm at I'm from Bristol University and you've got to draw a line somewhere and kind of that's the end of an era in its closing year the dig here has not disappointed a find late in the day provides yet more evidence of the lost Berkeley Minster sir perhaps our most important funds this season is this ditch it's not a defensive arrangement it's a boundary ditch it was a way of delimit ating the age of the of the anglo-saxon monastery and we know it's anglo-saxon because actually just last night this came out and it's part of a of an anglo-saxon buckle and what's remarkable it's still got traces of the gilding we haven't cleaned it up yet we're pretty happy that this is evidence of you know what one of those high status nuns would have been wearing in the 8th and early 9th centuries since 2005 this project has delivered year after year but now it's time to say goodbye I will be sad to leave Berkeley a part of me will always remain at Berkeley because I've loved my time working here [Music] so tell me what you've what you've found there's summarize this this kind of 15 years of digging so essentially we were looking to prove that there was actually a minster at Berkeley because nobody even knew does when we started that there was actually the Minster at Berkeley what do the finds tell you and why do they make you think that this was actually a minster so you know we've got evidence for probably maybe a scriptorium so if you if you were a king and you want to get any writing done you would go to a monastery or a nunnery and get your anglo-saxon documents torn up and so we've got evidence for that in the finds so we've got this lovely little thing here which is the astal their nationalism is a pointer for what keeping your place yes in a Beck isn't it that's right you can see there's a little Celtic Cross in there say here it would have attached onto a bone pen yeah and then when you get to the end of your page you you use the the little round bit to turn over your medieval vellum parchment on the page so that's a beautiful object in its own right but it's telling us something really important about Barkley it's telling us that there were people reading reasoning I'm writing yeah yeah so it's it's a long-standing powerful religious community what kept you going back we just didn't get to the end of all the I mean you keep going keep going down and keep going down and sweep you into eating normally until you run out of archaeology and we haven't we've got pottery we've got metal artifacts we've got all sorts of things that are Roman in origin we've got a tiny little scalpel so is that was that I mean you surgically you think I think surgically or at least in some sort of bathroom kit so if you're chopping up your makeup and and you know that sort of thing or herbs and spices I think that's almost certainly a clothespin you can see under the under the under the camera there hmm oh the head of that it's really ornate yes sir for holding your clothing together before buttons were invented and then you've got strap ends yeah get that one that's one of my favourite fires it's like a little dragon's head you can just see where the strap would have fitted that's amazing yeah yeah the anglo-saxons did love hiding little animals and faces and think that's it yeah and then next is one of my favorite vines which my students gave the name of the of the Berkeley gnome and if you put it under that camera you could use a little face it does look like a name yeah so you imagine a buck najin across guard on a bagger yeah on either end of it you've got one of those little terminals right yeah and we've got an area head yes almost certainly 15th century I think you know hasn't been shot from the castle walls from one of those so you've got fine specialists yes so we've got we've got 15 years of research findings - trying to work out exactly what they all are yeah for our final report it brings us right up to our 1980s builders Casio watch or gardeners Casio watch very precious and that's well we do total collections so our students pick up everything they find you know this in the trench and is buried it's it's a find you know in the grave um it was in the ground and somebody lost their digital watch and one of my students found it very beautiful things - well you know in 200 years time would have never seen one before yeah and they're mystified as to what it was yeah then we who's get it out of the collection yeah yeah absolutely [Music] it can be very difficult to come up with names for groups of people in prehistory we have absolutely no idea what they called themselves say often we look at their culture at the objects they made and use that as a label for them on our next acquis are joining mo D archaeologist Richard Osgood and his team of ex military personnel in Wiltshire and they're excavating a Bronze Age burial mound of a type that is linked to the mysterious beaker people this burial mound lies just five miles from Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain and is known as bury a clump we're now at the site of the last of the protected burial mounds of this part of Salisbury Plain I'm hoping to find in this trench is anything that it is put into it that will relate to the early Bronze Age this society never fails to deliver each year there's been one really incredible story that's emerged I'm really optimistic that we might in this instance be privileged enough to see a bigger grave [Music] this type of burial mound is typical of the early Bronze Age around 2000 BC this is the time when the last stones of nearby Stonehenge were set in place although there's still so much about Stonehenge that mystifies us to this day we know it was built in stages from the Neolithic through to the early Bronze Age the time of the beaker people the beaker people is it's a name that's been given because the burials are of a particular type they are usually accompanied with a pot to the eponymous beaker it's a little drinking vessel that's found in the grave with them sometimes with other grave Goods as well most of our knowledge of these Bronze Age people comes from their graves which often contain these distinctive beakers particular styles of vessels help with dating and show how traditions spread the earliest known bell shaped beaker pottery comes from Portugal and Spain but then the style spreads north within a hundred years these beakers appear in Britain - Becca barrels have previously been found at Barrow clump but Richard thinks there may be more and it's not long before the team starts to uncover human remains well the jungle abode is a jumble of bones but it appears and quite likely that this jumble of bones is in a secondary feature beaker burials are typically found under the center of a mound often surrounded by a large ring ditch this would have been dug out by hand using tools such as antler picks and cow shoulder blade shovels tools often found left behind in the ditches some lines would be reused for secondary burials these bones are most likely to be from a later time not a beaker burial as they're so shallow ordinarily you just dealing with the single scattered or even a couple of skull and you know what's attached to what so you know what you're going to expect when you when you're cleaning in the mouth will this being a toad jumble you just got to be very careful because you don't know exactly what you're gonna pour into it as they dig deeper into the mind the team find a barbed and tangled Flint typical of the Bronze Age it's a rough out for an arrowhead so it's not complete somebody's started work on it and they decided not to go any further with it it's a really nice find and it's definitely Bronze Age buried clump is officially protected as a scheduled monument despite this it's also today part of an agricultural landscape and an area of intensive military training there's loads of things that could threaten archaeology on a military training area a tank of sixty tons it's a really really heavy thing that driving over a burial mound could potentially do a lot of damage so what we're looking at here is just evaluating precisely how damaging those entities our measures have been put in place to remind the army of the important heritage here but there are some local residents who are harder to control we put signs up just to make it extra clear Biggs made signs saying no digging what it doesn't do is tell budges how to read the really big problems are borrowing animals and over the years we've been finding a lot of archaeology that's been brought out from the Badger sets meanwhile the team has worked their way down to what they believe is the center of the burial mound they've just come across human remains I can see from here that the femur and the pelvis of an individual bones look in really good condition so we're really excited because you've got what we've been looking for the whole three weeks in one small hole and this Baron archaeologist Dorothea Griffith was first to find the bones truth be told I was about to give up because we kept seeing so much friends and so many rocks I have had a chance to make a snapshot to send and post to my friends back in America and it was in Jamaica so I'll be excited having not done archaeology for over 17 years I am as I said overjoyed as the rest of the remains are revealed the team are confident that this is a beaker burial but they have yet to find an actual beaker the real hope is that there's going to a beaker at one end that would be that be the real triumph or this day now the diggers finished the finds including the bones have being carefully packaged up and taken off-site and are raving archeologist Aneesh McSweeney has been along to the labs at Wessex archaeology to find out more at the Wessex post excavation I'm hoping project manager Phil Andrews has been able to establish whether it was a beaker burial they found this unfortunately isn't this was found probably about a couple hundred meters away but the burial we had didn't have a vessel in fact it didn't have any grave goods with it and do we need to have a beak over it to be a beaker period burial we don't but we know from other evidence particularly the size of the graves which are very substantial chambered graves within the linings of evidence for timber lining that they are of that period we're very certain that it is a pika burial and we will confirm this through radiocarbon dating in due course I'm curious to know what Phil is found out about the impact of the military presence at Barrow clump we're investigating the site we've been looking at the impact of military vehicles passing over some of the remains and this is a classic example of the weight of vehicles has just crushed what may have once been a complete vessel overall the damage being caused by vehicles is very slight certainly the damage from Badgers is clearly much more significant but but military vehicles they're not causing a significant impact at all which is good news great Badgers are worse than tanks tanks yeah senior osteo archaeologist Kirsten egging Dinwiddie is examining the remains for the first time so the skull what the skull is that if I hold it like that is it not quite no it's actually this big yeah okay yeah that's quite chunky I mean mind if I feel my minds very small or it's quite serious cheekbones yeah so which is are we thinking ye I'm thinking he the scientist eyes of this individual and some of the traits and things on the skull if we look at some of the other bones the size of the head of the humerus there that's quite large so I'm pretty happy with this being a male what's exciting about post excavation is what it can reveal the age the sex so much more about who this person was so that's really nice strong muscle attachments they're not massively long so not necessarily a very you know hugely tall person but certainly quite robust and again these slightly strange muscle attachments they're an anchoring point for your muscles and attachments bigger muscles need bigger ranking points yeah what about the age then okay so we've got the ends of the bones are completely fused on not only has it fused it started to get these osteophytes these bony growths at the edges which is a sign of wear and tear not just an adolescent adult who's then live longer and say yes certainly into the 40's possibly up to mid 50s so does Kirsten think the environment at Barrow clump is causing any damage to these bones you can see that's quite a row did you lost most of the surface there what would have done could be water flowing through the grave there are many many things that affect the Barrell environment even putting fertilizer on the soil that can leach in and change the the chemical makeup of the soil and the burial environment which may adversely affect the bone meeting Phil and Kirsten today has given me a real insight into the research that is being done into the preservation on this site and it seems as though their findings are positive military vehicles tanks rolling over these graves actually it's been really good to see that that's not so much of a problem that actually it's funny it's the Badgers it's the soil chemistry and those more natural things so that's quite good to know our next dig takes us to the coast of South Wales where strange things are afoot quite literally in this case around 20 miles west of Cardiff along the case near the village of monk Nash there's a cliff proving to be a cause for concern after public reaction to what appeared to be human bones sticking out of the cliff face the police were called in to investigate the bones were identified as archaeological remains and professor Jackie Mulville from Cardiff University was drafted in to help in this case this is what we call rescue archeology we get reports from the public and obviously people are slightly concerned that the idea that you can see bits of legs are eroding out previously rescued bones from this site have been dated to the 15th century during the early Tudor period on this occasion there's been a report of a skeleton in urgent need of attention it sits right next to the coastal footpath a popular walk for the general public bits of human bone here this sort of flat section here and there's a human bone here which you caught is very hard to see as the excavation progresses it's clear the lower part of the skeleton is missing half the pelvis has gone so we don't actually have it with us today and the bit we've got a left probably isn't as diagnostic as it should be with storm swells from the Atlantic often battering the coastline the cliff face is a rating backwards coastal officer Paul Huck field works closely with the police and Cardiff University he's very familiar with this stretch of coast across the top of the cliff as you can see now we've got one two three maybe four grave cuts with human remains are rolling out of it over time as the cliffs have eroded more and more burials have just been exposed by natural erosion of the cliff face as it moves backwards the team know that the cliff is full of bones and eventually plan to excavate the other visible remains but for the moment their focus has to be on the ones they can reach Jackie hopes these will divulge more of the wider story we'll be able to work out more accurately who they were what age they were what sex they were and bits about their life histories and by reuniting them and then be entering them were actually treating them I suppose in a much better way than them sort of falling piecemeal out the cliff as the team dig on there's an unanticipated twist [Music] so far we have the elbow joint right here to the humerus pointing that way which is the opposite way to what we'd expect it given that the legs are down there and then you have the ulna so it's lower arm coming this way so we think maybe something on the hands behind the head so we're all a bit perplexed Jacky's unsure why the body is contorted in the way it is the burial has thrown up a few surprises what we appear to have here it's somebody who's been buried in a slightly sort of haphazard mother and this suggests that possibly they were buried in a hurry or by somebody who didn't actually care it could be that they're actually compressed in a grave that's too small because the person didn't have time or perhaps didn't want to make the investment to make a grave that was the right size for them so is it is unusual the coastal location and unorthodox positioning of the bodies has given rise to a number of theories as to who these people might be one theory suggests they could have been victims of shipwrecks and local legends tell of wreckers these people would put lights around the necks of sheep walking them along the cliff top to your ships onto the rocks for centuries of wrecking ships to loot cargo was a very profitable activity over the course of the day the archaeologists begin to reveal the rest of the skeleton we're making really good progress we can now see most of the head we've got the mandible exposed you can also see sort of the ribs the pelvis and the lower back so we can see we've got the full torso of an individual who's sort of slightly twisted just before the bones are lifted for further examination the team gathers some final evidence by taking a number of images we can stitch them together using a photographic program and then that will allow us to actually have an accurate record of the articulation of the bones when we get back to the lab [Music] these burials seem to be part of an unknown graveyard or at least there you know there are no marked graves up on the top of the cliff no so there's no marked graves but people have been found for decades really since the 1980s and some of the graves are aligned there's even some graves which have sort of disarticulated human remains in the doublet further back from the cliff so we're kind of like well who are they why why are they there and you've got lovely 3d photogrammetry of the skeleton as you excavating it yeah what you've got is somebody whose arms appear to be above their head and then the head is turned sort of to one side so the other burials that have been found further along the cliff they've all interred with their hands sort of down their sides for so this is an anomaly right okay okay and then we're missing this higher bottom half of this individual presumably that has just a radius of death well we know it was there because a member of the public sent in a photo and you could see sort of you know the bottom of the legs yeah ethically you kind of want yeah reassembly you know so you think this is a young individual isn't it yeah the the top of the humerus here the epiphysis is completely unfazed so that was still growing and then if I look at the teeth first main is three that comes through on average age six second man a commissary around twelve and I can see down in there the wisdom teeth still nestled in there crypts so you are probably looking at somebody who is a as a young teenager yep but around that time young teenagers you know you could be treated as an adult really yeah you would be in unemployment yeah I'm that time yeah it says tricky isn't it because with young men or boys and they haven't developed they're kind of blue boxes here the the skull that we see later on but that is quite a squared off yeah in what this is this is quite a yes with the forehead coming down to the news there we think yes it's a teenage boy who's been inserted rather strangely in a grave he's at a different level to all of the others yeah the others oval male yeah - who are they and why they all male so there's some fantastic stories about smugglers and pirates and things and in fact there's a fantastic story that the the pup which is actually now built of part of the sort of monastic Grange used to be a mortuary for shipwrecked sailors VD yes and we know there were shipwrecks around that point whether they were caused by the records or whether they were as natural shipwrecks we don't know and I mean there's quite a lot of I suppose accounts of ship direct people not being buried in consecrated ground but actually being varied quite close to the edge of quite close to where they found by the sea it's tricky because it's all kind of circumstantial that means at the moment is this using we know their worship for it's there we've got this intriguing story about the pub being a mortuary yeah say what about further analysis on this on this skeleton what are you going to try so we're gonna try and find out sort of where they lived as well what they get really essentially the more sort of analyses you do the more sort of a complex picture you build up of somebody's life yeah so you don't know I mean you know Britain's an island full of rich archaeology we will continue to find more and more coastal archaeology because of climate change storminess you know none of those things so it's important that we have good mechanisms and we get the public on side actually because you know I was thinking that this is what these sort of lost souls yeah should be bringing them all back together and if anyone does know where his legs are has preeminent Cardiff Lee please bring back yeah it's been a fantastic year of exploration in the west of Britain from the discovery of anglo-saxon treasure to hunting for a lost Abbey and digging to the depth of a Bronze Age burial mound we've shown there's still so much to discover to further our knowledge and shed light on our past join us next time as we continue digging for Britain [Music]

Channel: HistoryWorks

Views: 125,564

Rating: 4.8719749 out of 5

Keywords: history, medieval, documentary, the romans, the saxons, ancient, archaeology, skeleton, BBC

Id: m0DTrED-IPE

Length: 58min 31sec (3511 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020