Is There A Roman Fortress Buried In The Countryside? | Time Team | Timeline

one of the great privileges of working at history here and making films together with our team at timeline is the access we get to extraordinary historical locations like this one stonehenge i'm right in the middle of the stone circle now it is an absolutely extraordinary place to visit if you want to watch the documentary like the one we're producing here go to history hit tv it's like netflix for history and if you use the code timeline when you check out you'll get a special introductory offer see you there in 43 a.d the romans invaded britain along with 40 000 men and a load of elephants all packed into a thousand ships they landed down the road at richborough here in kent but immediately after that no one's really sure what happened mainly because no roman forts have ever been found here in south east england that is maybe until now because archaeologist paul wilkinson has got a theory that this hilltop at syndal may be the site of the first roman fort ever built in britain he's invited time team to use their expertise and experience to test his theory and we're going to need every minute of our three days to do it [Music] to me this looks like the perfect place to build a fort you've got a great vantage point all the way around kent perfect place for your sentries to be but what do i know the person that we really need to talk to is paul paul why do you think there's a fort here well because i've dug a trench through here and underneath the turf we've got a very very nice roman ditch and right at the bottom of that uh ditch uh was in fact claudian pottery this is the first trace that you do exactly where you're standing now well graphics have done me the kind of map that i'd understand here yes we're just there we just stood on this trench here and behind us is the other trench we dug and by joining up the profiles of those we could actually see exactly where the roman ditch ran and we did exactly the same thing on the east side yeah but two ditches doesn't make a fort does it why are you so convinced that there might have been a fort here location you know 43 a.d the roman army landed at richburg marched along the north kent coast and it's exactly a day's march to sindale where we're standing now and the roman fleet would have used the best anchorage along the coast which in fact is just downhill from here so this could be the place that they very first camped after they arrived in britain this is the first overnight stop of that roman invasion it would be fantastic if we found it wouldn't it be a real big story for british rpa it'd be wonderful over recent years paul's been excavating a third to fourth century roman town nearby but he's never had the resources to properly test his ideas about this hill so understandably this is the start of a big three days for him the prospect of finding evidence connected with one of the biggest events in british history has got victified up to and possibly even carried away but it's this huddle of time team archaeologists who are here to test paul's theory this is the only one that's got actually claudium pottery from it isn't his v-shape the case for a roman fort is very much still to be proved and knowing this lot they'll take some convincing the key thing is how long it took them here for how much trouble they had because diode does tell us there's a lot of guerrilla warfare going on here the britain's retreating into what he calls swamps and forests now does he mean around here does he mean further west so we don't know whether they got here in a couple of days or whether it took a couple of weeks so what do they think of our chances of finding the first roman fort built in britain no it's a really exciting idea i love the idea of finding an early roman fort perhaps the first one in that whole roman conquest but it's going to be incredibly difficult to pick out it's a 360 year period of history and we're talking about a place that might have been occupied for just a few weeks one year maybe a couple of years at the outside really tough so already he's starting to rubbish the idea of the first roman fought what about a roman fort though can we find that oh definitely because there's some key forensic tests we can apply to the archaeology if you like to show whether it's a fork or whether it isn't yeah i mean what are the diagnostic traits first of all a fort has defenses so it's going to have a rampart around all four sides of earth and outside that double ditches one ditch another ditch outside that in each side there'll be a gateway timber gateway built with big massive timber posts in each corner there'll be a tower rising out of the rampart to give views to the outside and finally dating it's going to be crucial to actually pin down the date of this thing because we're looking at 10 years in time so we want pottery we want the samian pottery because this is very very easily dateable this will help to pin it down even better some bits of roman armor bits of military equipment if we get that then we correct it well they don't want much do they but to my surprise their master plan at the moment is to do nothing that is until geophys have surveyed the area where paul found the clearest evidence for a roman military ditch the hope is that geophys will not only detect any other roman ditches but show us if the two bits paul found join up this would in fact reveal the shape of the fort phil explains to the diggers that there's going to be a bit of a wait but maybe not because stuart has a plan of his own this one which is asked graphics to fit to the scale of the modern map of the site [Music] stewart's interested in this big earthwork bank that's always been thought to be part of some fancy gardens that went with a grand house that was here in the 18th century i've actually got a plan here of the 18th century gardens this is date at 1760 and we've put it to the same scale and if i overlay it can you see that's the that's the road at the top that's where the house is there can you see the symmetry of the gardens that go with the house yeah it's nowhere near this is just work here and it's a totally different alignment as well so even though they were right in saying that this was an old garden they may have used something that was here before and stuck that on top that's what i wonder i think it's such an obvious earth work and the shape and form of it we've got to have a look at it even if it is a later feature what's it hiding is hiding any aspect of an earlier landscape phil come over here mate so a change of plan we're going to get a trench in oh wow stuart's given us a target to dig that's not dependent on geofiz good evaluation french down the scope out here 20 meters long it's going to be our first test of the site to cut through the bank to see if there's anything underneath it's that first hole in it and it's going to be a long trench to see if we can find a continuation of the roman ditch paul discovered [Music] so the process of testing the theory that there is a roman fort here has well and truly begun maybe take a shave more off but we're getting closer and now then oh no then that's a bit more like it and it that looks to me that's roman isn't it yeah in the incident room the evidence paul found is under close scrutiny by roman fort expert tony willmott you've got a nice crisp v-shaped profile you've just got the beginnings of the little square cut ankle breaker at the bottom but the eye is really drawn by the fact that somebody's been keen and scored these lines into the section and scored the interpretation into the section that's a digger not a roman of course it does slightly draw your eye and another photograph which goes a bit deeper you can see that there's a little bit of the ditch which hasn't been scored below it there's a straight line the expert's opinion is that paul's roman ditch is even more convincing than the way it was originally interpreted the only roman military ditch i'm aware of is this one as depicted on my idiot's guide with a steep side where the attacker falls in and a shallower side the only way out into the line of fire but there are three different types and it's the middle one here that fits best with what paul's found so you reckon we've definitely got a military ditch on the west very very very good candidate very good indeed is it one of the double ditches belonging to a roman fort like this what we need is a geophys plan of the ditches and it looks like we won't have to wait too long ah now roman all right now question is dating this looks like belgic grog tempered where it could be any time between the late iron age and about 400 plus a.d just slow down a bit belgian grog tempered yes so what does that mean it means the pottery it's both it's both handmade and wheel turned it's fired black it contains the grog in this context it's not rum it's um for pre-fire clay up clay mixes a filler with the clay of the pot itself you want experts this is the expert expert phil's just got a rim ah right okay now look that looks a bit more diagnostic now i'd like to get this cleaned up this looks awfully like it's from a biconical beaker um in up church where which should date from about the year the conquest through 200 to 130 aed quite a nice diagnostic piece so maybe what we've got is a bit of mixed up earlier pottery we have someone later pottery which is just what you expect this is the first layer we've got yes so if we keep going phil good stuff and now at last we're going to get to see the much awaited geophys results and their first survey contains good bad and very bad news the good news is that they've detected these clear features the bad news is that they're relatively modern this one being a recent field boundary we know this because it's in the wrong position to be the ditch paul found that's here the very bad news is that geophys can't see paul's ditch or any other roman ditches that might be here we need to do a lot more work but i suspect you're not going to want to wait for us neil i've heard of anti-climaxes but we've been waiting for two-thirds of a day to get information which would allow us to find out whether this was the first roman fort in britain and we've got one black blob that he's not all that keen that we should put a trench in anyway sure i think it's time for plan b don't you it sounds like it which might be well we said there was a checklist didn't we the things we wanted to find so why don't we try and attack that and it seems to me maybe the best place to go is round to the front of the fort nearest to where wattling street is the m1 of roman roads wattling street actually cuts across the edge of our site it looks as if wattling street actually goes over this earthwork as a physical relationship suggesting that the bottling street is later than this earth week what what date is the what instructions we've got pottery from the lowest levels of 80 50 ish so that what if that's the correct that would suggest that this earthwork is earlier than the ad50-ish so it's either very early roman or it's pre-roman and if we can nail that down that's a start isn't it so test number two we're opening up our second trench here where the big earthwork bank turns we want to know if this could be the corner of a fort and how the earth work itself relates to wattling street deeply buried archaeology difficult geology whatever the reasons for geophase not working the fact is that without a plan showing where the ditches are our task has become that much harder but not impossible because we have stewart's expertise to fall back on his suggestion to position trench one here has revealed a completely new ditch that was hidden by the earthwork bank where is it well it's i'm standing on it um you see the yellow natural there the yellow natural behind us all right you need an expert eye to see it at the moment but this ditch is about 15 meters away from the one paul discovered that should show up somewhere about here in trench one digging was very much part of daily life for a roman soldier i've come to give you a bit of a hand with the digging sorry i'm a bit late roman soldiers had to dig defensive ditches in pretty much full armor in hostile territory that could come off as well phil's enlisting in the ermine street guard for the day to find out what it was like this is a funny old tool annette is this is this as near as you can get to a roman spade it's the nearest we've found as far as i'm aware it's definitely a digging tool i mean you see dig with it and in this nice bricker it's a good tool to use yeah but we're your own problem is if you've got try and shovel with it like at that and that's where i would miss a a decent shovel you can't get down there and it's it's it's a poor design i just said it's a poor design yeah well i'm not sure phil would approve but over in trench two we've got what we think is our first coin resting on a shovel ready for guy to see look guys i think we've got a little coin it's come out the spoiler heap found by the metal detectorist right the key thing is the size that takes us you can see it's quite clear isn't it the legend is quite clear let me just um see if i can get that up you're right it's definitely 4th century now because i can see that little victory on the back and the mint mark round the edge it's in the middle to third quarter of the fourth century it is in fact 300 years after the invasion what we're looking for is signs of first century occupation ideally military fines although not the bits dropped by phil so is that how military equipment gets lost that's exactly right yeah it's just spun around on the on the pin and slips off it's a really cold day but this exercise has got filled thinking and not just about where the wind's blowing the other thing that i've been aware of since i've been digging here and something you just never see on a site nowadays is all the hub now marks and i mean it must have been summit which was always there on a roman show if you had roman military build anything you'd have obnox i mean it's i thought it would be a bit more i don't know uncomfortable to work with all this armor on i mean it is a bit like trying to shovel a digging in a straight jacket yeah but actually it's actually not too bad at all um yeah there is a bit of sort of chafe in there yeah and i'll tell you what i have warmed up a bit i'm glad you were just a few hours ago neil said to me don't worry about this trench it won't take up much time or labor we'll just use the jcb whip up the top soil and almost immediately will come down on fines now look at the depth and the length of this thing neil you've gone stir crazy it hasn't quite gone according to plan tony we thought we'd go through this top soil and that this was the natural subsoil but kerry has been digging into it i mean it feels like natural it looks like natural but it's got roman pottery in it which means this is roman infill down at this depth and malcolm what do you think of the pottery well let's have a look now you've got yes you've got this is saiyan this is a very eroded salmon it's lost its surface it's from a dragon door 36 dish post 70 a.d post 78 this piece this is a verti an inverted rim cooking pot very heavily averted probably third century third third probably third century this is from the carinated girth of a by conical not the carnated girth this is probably the first time that our viewers will ever have seen the corrugated girth of a biconical yeah so what you're saying is that between 43 and 130. so what you're saying is that this deposit down here is 150 years later than our accusative roman fall could be so we've got to get down another 150 years of topsoil before we get on the uh what we're looking for i think so i think what's happened tony is that all this brown stuff which has got roman pottery in it i think this is actually to do with the 18th century park what they've done is actually move large amounts of earth about to make a flat parkland landscape and making it all the more difficult for us but at least now we know the roman archaeology is buried at different depths across this site which is why we're wasting no time opening trench three because as well as locating paul's roman ditching trench one we want to see if it also continues in this direction it's been a long cold frustrating day we've shifted an awful lot of dirt and i think we started to think we were never going to find anything decent but now things are looking up aren't they we haven't quite turned the corner yet but this is a brilliant find because it's one of the key things that we need to pin it down to the invasion the coin of claudius claude is that's the fourth emperor of rome the doddling halfway put in place by the soldiers on his invasion to britain to prove his whole position to show that he's a great emperor here we see the name really clearly there claudius great thing is the coin's not very worn despite the corrosion that means it's been lost fairly early in its life damn where did the coin come from that coin came from about three inches below this marker that we've put in here um right on the top of the last piece of material in the ditch so we've still got a fair way to go to get right at the bottom but it's looking good so maybe that lower fill is actually going to have the claudium pottery that go with that coin we've been looking for all day so you think we could find this fort this is a great start it really is earlier today the graphics people gave me this idiot's guide to what you need to find a fort samia and pottery corner towers military fines a gateway double dishes join us after the break when i'm betting that we'll get decent archaeological evidence that right here we've got a roman fort just like that of day two in our search for the first roman fort ever found in britain i got really excited yesterday because down here we found a ditch and in it there was a very early roman coin of the emperor claudius hopefully we'll get lots more goodies in there later on but puzzlingly we didn't find a ditch here which would line up with the ditch that archaeologist paul wilkinson found over there last year which got him thinking there was a fort here in the first place so where is that ditch we think maybe we're not down deep enough yet and the big quest today is to get on down [Music] which is going to be easier said than done it's difficult enough to see each other let alone the archaeology right so we're gonna find a roman four in here today [Music] we're testing a theory that there was once a roman fort here but struggling without any guidance from geophys whose results so far have been foggy too at the moment they can't explain why they're not able to detect the roman ditches that we know exist on this site so we're looking for any other clues that might help us the idea that there was a fort here isn't a new one back in the 1800s various antiquarians thought the roman army had been here this is in 1874 and it says although the roman camps known more by tradition than by remains actually existing today it's still traceable round the garden the stable yard paul wilkinson's theory is influenced by the fact that over the last few years he's been excavating a third to fourth century roman settlement running alongside wattling street and he believes it to be the roman town of dura levum we knew already that there's roman cemeteries to the north there and so you know we're looking at a settlement pattern already the duo place name is an old english name meaning fort or camp and it's another reason paul thinks there may have been a fort here on a more practical level stuart's been looking at the possible shape of a roman fort on our hilltop although the standard playing card shape is fairly dominant there are a number of examples here where they're completely different we've got a trapezoid shape there one almost looks like a cricket bat and the roman engineers were very practical people if there is a fort here they may have tailored it to suit the shape of the ridge which points in that direction so we might actually have something which is that kind of trapezoidal shape so stewart reckons that if there is a fort here it could be this shape but so far all our efforts have been focused on the western side and now the feeling is that it's time to change our strategy stuart you're looking restless i'm just a little bit concerned at the moment because we've got concentration on ditches on the wayside yeah i mean whatever we've found we still only got ditches there i think we need to broaden our horizons and demonstrate that we've got another side yeah it's possible for i think we've got to sort of move over to the east and see what's happening over there is to demonstrate we have actually got an enclosure that's right yeah i was hoping that geophys might have better luck detecting the other roman ditch paul excavated on the eastern side of the site but once again their equipment just isn't seeing it what we need to know is if it carries on down there to form a second site to this enclosure i think you should just put a trench in on the basis of your alignment let us continue surveying i think that's what we're going to have to do i mean we did it over there and we've got some results so if we do the same tactic here put a long trench in to cover where that ditch might go and then it it'll allow your picture to to build up as well and see if it it fits in between the trenches won't take a picture of nothing i thought i'd say that before you did to add to our problems today our team leader neil has to leave us to attend an important meeting but before he goes i want to talk to him about my empty checklist should i be getting worried i've got not one tick in any of these boxes no but we've got two coins which are always like half a tick if you like why why are these coins so significant why do they say military they're just coins well they're coins that came over with the roman army and they circulated for about 20 years after the roman invasion where you find them they are almost exclusively associated with the roman army so they're very strong evidence that there was something happening here at the right time i think the question is have what we define in the trenches does that relate to what those coins originally came from yeah so we've got to keep going i mean certainly not time to panic he's right because the ditch we've discovered under the earthwork bank could be part of the fort it's big enough and in a good position on the brow of a hill beautiful edge there we're gonna get another a similar beautiful edge there this thing's going to go right down great big v-shaped thing are you convinced that it's roman and does it look like a defensive absolutely i mean we've got the claudian coin out of there yes they're in amongst masses of roman material so yeah no doubt it's roman well i think both dan and i are hoping that the roman ditch we've discovered here could be one of the two defensive ditches that you normally get around a roman fort the ditch paul found would be the outer of the two but the mystery at the moment is that we can't find any continuation of paul's ditch either in trench one or over here in trench three because of this we're now reopening one of paul's trenches to check the alignment so why do you need henry well that's what i want the little fella for i mean look you see that pile of dirt phil wants henry to work out how much deeper we'll have to dig to get down to the same roman level that paul found given the dumping of soil that's gone on in this area henry yeah did he call you the little fella should we deck him there's not a lot in here at least we're not superannuated old hippies i think everyone's agreed that this is a pig of a sight to get to grips with not just the landscaping but also the changing geology makes it difficult to read but we have to remember it is worth the trouble finding evidence of a claudian fought here would be major news because so little is known about the roman invasion of 43 a.d what do the historians of the roman period actually tell us about the invasion well our main source is diocasius a greek who wrote about 160 years after the event that's pretty well all we've got is very interesting question because really there's only a couple of pages and it doesn't tell us any of the information that you or any other archaeologist or historian would be desperate to have which is like exact geographical information for where they landed all he tells us for example is that they came in in three waves i mean he doesn't even tell us the number of troops you'll often read in history books that it was 40 or 50 000 men well that's based purely on working back from legions and soldiers that we knew were around here probably the best part of a generation later and a side reference that suggests there were roughly the same number of legionaries and auxiliaries involved in the conquest so that's where the figure of 40 000 has come from not from a roman historian where does that leave sindale well you know it's a key route across north kent i mean they're going to have to end up controlling it remember that the coastline's very different at that point well the coastline would have been closer then wouldn't it take sea level very important for the roman supply bases to be close to the coast because they would move most of their bulk materials by sea so this is a key road route and a key sea route so sindel must have played or any fort along here whether there's a fort here where there's a fort somewhere else controlling this route would have been vital to the progress of the invasion as the men and materials start to be moved in again just like the d-day landings in 1944 you've got to get all that stuff in and control it we've just about re-excavated paul's old trench and we can actually see the bit of ditch he originally discovered and now we've done this of course phil announces he thinks he's finally found the continuation of it over here in trench one but at least we can now check its alignment so with phil's trench in the distance and paul's old trench in the middle we can see why we haven't found it in trench three so if you line the two up the tip should come through just come here there which explains why we didn't find it absolutely in that trench we stopped a meter and a half too short at long last our diggers have got smiles on their faces is it just because the sun's come out or have we actually got more evidence for our thought i think we're starting to starting to get some more evidence now this the ditch up here in trench one is resolving itself it's a ditch it's carrying on on down where phil is down there we've got a ditch which is slightly curving in um it's quite it was confusing because it's right right on the edge of an existing landscape feature so you've already got a drop and they're they're cutting the ditch into the edge of the drop to sort of accentuate it if you came to this cold and just saw the evidence that we've got in the ground now would you think hmm looks to me like we've got a roman fort i i need more i'm afraid i need more of more of a circuit we really need to get the profile of this of phil's ditch to see if it's the same as the profile of paul's ditch but at last we do seem to be getting somewhere for the first time i'm beginning to believe that there might be a roman fort here oh no the boats come right up to here even now that's right and this is only what about a mile away from our site it is you guys can't see this seat it's like a cloud just hanging over the edge of the water there our little site is just um just a little black blob just there if you actually add in the the roman coastline there's no doubt that the site occupied a prime position and it's best appreciated on our 3d models general wetlands that's amazing isn't it because you can see how visible it would have been approaching from the coast it's a completely different perspective isn't it there's a stream coming down this family and there still is a stream flowing through favisham there's a creek in there and the vessels were able to get much much closer to our site than they can at present so you'd have had an army marching through the countryside and then along the coast you'd have had support coming from the roman votes finding a gateway into the fort is high on my checklist and the fact that the ditch phil's discovered appears to be turning suggests we could have found it entrances to forts varied quite a bit some had curving ditches others didn't but most had an outer bank preventing attackers charging the gate the current debate is about how we sort out what we've got i think we do need to extend the trench possibly at least five metres and possibly even further to try and get that out of bank all that level all that stuff down there has been so heftily landscaped um that that any any banks we're not i'm sure we're not going to find them i know you've been ignoring the geophysics up until now i mean if we look at what's in the trench and what we've got in our results now is that not what you were talking about that looks absolutely perfect look this is the sort of shape of the output you have it comes along like that and curves out in there that s shape then starts up again after gap and that's exactly what you've got that along curving out near shape gap and starting up again this is fantastic well carrenza sounds convinced but the gfiz still seems very foggy to me nevertheless we're extending trench one to find more of phil's curving ditch thankfully over in the eastern field progress is much easier to understand well we haven't found any roman ditches in this trench and we haven't found very much in the way of roman fines well yeah there's nothing really that's definitely first century but the thing i thought you might want to see phil is is these hot nails i wonder why you would ask me to bring these over yeah it's a high maintenance world you see these are always falling out those little those little rounded heads like that and then just where they've been bent over but they don't have to be military you're right they don't have to be military the other thing is we've got to be careful about this we know that loads of roman graves have been found in the area putting a pair of shoes for the journey to the underworld in a grave is a commonplace thing for romans to do and what you get are the iron hog nails left behind tell me about it i've dug dozens of them this site's been a nightmare for gfiz but they've not given up yet go ahead chris john we just finished a block of resistance survey in the eastern field and i think we've actually got some interesting results this time at last a glimmer of hope for gf's it seems their latest results may have detected a huge ditch on this side of the site one of our frustrations has been that we've only got little bits of a ditch around here and that means that we've no idea what the size of the thing is or what shape it's in but if we've got a piece around here then that really is an important piece of the jigsaw defining the eric we could know whether there's a really good chance that they're being afford here or not just from that couldn't we we need to see it on the ground we need to sit on the ground this has got to be a first john nervously rushing in to see his own results i hope this is worth it well anything's worth it isn't it look what we've got here we've surveyed this huge area and we've found this high resistance anomaly that's running along here you can see in the plot and it's right i mean what is it scholarly all right okay on the ground well we're we're it's approximately going around about here tony now it may it's about that it's about that orientation so in fact it should be just about clipping the edge of the the trench if it goes through the trench i don't know because we've not surveyed right up to the edge of the trench and it's all becoming too much for us today well i know what he means although i think they'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if they really have found evidence of the fort but it's all part of the positive trend we've had going this afternoon the feeling that we're starting to sort out the archaeology on this hill in fact i optimistically asked graphics to start working on a 3d model of the kind of fort gateway we might expect and i reckon it's this let's put the kibosh on it because now i'm told the gateway has disappeared the devastating news is we couldn't find any more of phil's curving ditch because it's been quarried away and even after massively extending trench one there was no trace of the other side of an entrance as if this isn't bad enough after extending trench three we still couldn't find any continuation of paul's roman military ditch in this direction we're following the light lines of inquiry we're not getting the answers [Music] hello neil here hi neil it's tony are you still in your agm one thing's for sure we're going to need our team leader back to try and sort it all out tomorrow in our ditch well it goes halfway around that turn and then it just stops i think let's just assess what we've got let's have a drink yeah have a look at it after a drink and we'll go at it tomorrow morning with a fresh pet of eyes find us the mood's mixed but maybe we can still solve the puzzle certainly paul wilkinson still believes there's a roman fort here how do you know the military how do you know the military um this this um this young man from english heritage tells me we've got a couple of v-shaped ditches but they're not continuous and the discontinuities aren't aren't gate-like they're just i mean okay we came here looking for a fort and i mean it's looking as though it's slipping away that doesn't mean to say we've got to give up on it but but equally if we haven't got a fort what the hell have we got i know it's just as interesting to find out what the hell we have got join us after the break because i promise you that tomorrow we'll sort all this evidence out and find out one way or another exactly what's here day three and our last chance to try and get to grips with the archaeology on this ridge of higher ground one of the most challenging sights i think we've ever tackled we're testing the theory that there was once a roman fort here but as my blank checklist shows the evidence is proving hard to find yesterday i thought we'd establish that we had a roman military ditch stretching between these two trenches you grant then we've got a ditch coming to air and then where the hell does it go i i still think i'm not convinced that the ditching trench one is paul's ditch just because it's cutting material that potentially is yielding later pottery therefore that ditch could be third century in that trench yeah but definitely not the start to the day we were hoping for i mean while i'm driving across to the other side of the site where we're looking for another of paul's ditches that in theory joined up to encircle the hill like this carrenza hi there i don't see you actually leaping up and down with enthusiasm so presumably you still haven't found the ditch no this peg is on the point at which it should come through given that those ranging poles are on the line of the ditch and as you can see looking the trench there's nothing in there at all the truth is that the whole site is a big puzzle without geophys being able to detect the ditches but our strategy of digging long exploratory trenches to locate the archaeology seems to be paying off because we've unearthed something intriguing at this end of the trench and we're widening to get a better look but the current debate is can we make sense of this site in the time we've got left neil's convinced that phil's curving ditch found yesterday is cutting through second and third century layers and can't be the first century military ditch we're looking for so really all we've got going back a step now is we're back to where paul had it last year in his trench i know this all sounds a bit like just chasing ditches but i am saying let's go back between the two trenches again now let's see if we can find out where that ditch really goes work from the known into the unknown i mean maybe it needs to prove that it's a fork surely to goodness you know we we need to look at the archaeology we're going to spend the rest of the three days arguing about whether or not it is or actually trying to come up with something constructive so it's not a fort but this is what we think it could well be otherwise look at the archaeology of the site and yeah as we witnessed the other day with this plucky legionnaire roman soldiers did occasionally lose bits of kit but we've seen nothing in the way of military fines and the feeling now is that the ditches could belong to a roman farm rather than a fort even the big impressive ditch we found under the earthwork bank could just be a property boundary although dan who excavated it needs convincing it's it's still a big ditch and it's still a deep ditch and if it's linked with uh farming and landscaping field systems for instance i think it's just too big and it's too clean it still looks a bit like a military ditch i'll grant you but it it hasn't got the context i mean as you say everything else is is is going now and even the pottery from it had a had a wide date range didn't it it could be claudia but the range means that it could be hadrianic again although dan's big ditch might continue under the earthwork bank it's not possible for us to get at it here in trench two because we've discovered would you believe the remains of a fourth century roman road and any earlier evidence would be deep beneath it we've got metal surface it's really nice we've got a camber it's coming much lower down here it's rising up we don't have many cobbles here it may be rock marks from transportation right and it's aligning in this direction unearthing a roman road coming off wattling street may not be what i was hoping for but it is in itself a significant discovery another bit for paul to add to his growing picture of duralevum the third and fourth century town he's been excavating here at syndal but the whole team are now convinced that there wasn't a roman fort here and it's time to break the news to paul so i've got to say i think we've given you your ditch a good gopro but i just don't think we've got the evidence that that forms a continuous line to make us a side of a fort it's a v-shaped ditch but it doesn't have it doesn't have the other features it's not continuous with you know gates in the brakes a military ditch tony has to go around something the theories that have been coming out and the kind of analysis of the archaeology that we've got so far really seems to me to rip to shreds your whole reason for getting us here in the first place which was to establish whether there's a fort here how are you feeling about that um [Laughter] we can't keep going for detail of actually trying to find out which ditch is which ditch and how they all tie up we've got to look at the wider picture the best use of our time now it's felt would be to dig at the top of the hill excuse me being a bit skeptical but that sounds to me like a very clever argument for saying in desperation we'll just sling in some random trenches for the next eight hours those ditches must have surrounded something and we've got to find out what they're surrounded now we're confident it's not a thought the only way to find out is look somewhere in the middle so we're going to excavate in the middle of the site to see if we can get any clue to what was going on here any information now about this hill will be useful [Music] and the most promising news of the day has come from where we've been widening the trench on the far side of the site but we have really started to hit some major roman levels here that's a bit of a big hole you got mars i'm afraid so yes um we were hoping this morning it was going to be part of this this great big ditch going across the site but it's actually turning into it's either a well or it's a pit or it's some kind of another ditch that isn't a ditch another one yes exactly it's going straight down and we haven't hit the bottom yet anything in it that's about the best piece of pottery i've seen off this site just look at the decoration it's really delicate all those scrolls here you see the little pair of birds on either side you see little bird turning back there another one over on this side hang on these are all off the same bowl did you see this no that goes on there there's a bit missing there and i'll bet you that's the one look it must have been around oh no we've got a little bit in the middle people look the most interesting thing about the whole thing is the way it's been riveted together do you see the lead rivets that have been put through on the top bit here there's a hole for a leather that's been missing and what are they for well seems incredible you could take such a flashy piece of decorated bottom put these socking great rigbets through it making it really ugly yeah but actually all the way i think right up to the 20th century you would still rivet vessels you can make them watertight so a valued vessel you'd look after like that even though it looks incredibly ugly to us what sort of dates this late first century somewhere flavium period that's actually very good for us but it's still not back to the invasion well that is by far the best find that we've had on this dig there's a bone pin there oh yes sometimes you tell me something there's a bone pin and it just looks like a bit of old mank to me but that's beautiful can you imagine trying to make that without breaking it so you did it and then we've got a ring there as well i don't know what you think of that guy hexagonal or it's octagonal isn't it yeah it's either silver or it's silvered bronze to look like silver the other thing that's really interesting we haven't had before so far that's fantastic because all we've had across here are bits of what we think might be fields as gullies and ditches that sort of thing building this is part of a a curved roof tile called an imbrex laid out in a row like that with the flat roof tiles called teguli on either side absolutely roman form so we've got roof tile we've got a roof we've got a building what do you think we've got guys this looking like a quite wealthy farmhouse at the end of the second century i think that's a real possibility with that kind of thing that's that's a curved roof tile you'd have a whole row of those up the middle of the roof and the flat tiles underneath on either side um absolutely a roman type i think you've got another piece there with a fingerprint oh we've got lots of it coming up right then that tells me that there's probably a structure in the vicinity a roman building and that's the first evidence we've had for that what's so reassuring to me is that we've had these little scatters of roman evidence but we've never really had a focus for anywhere where actually real tangible things might have been going on so whatever this is the new challenge is to try and make sense of it in the time we've got left but it seems we're talking roman farm rather than fort and that apparently is why the geophysics didn't work okay let me try and explain if we look at the magnetics if you've got a ditch and that's part of a fort inside the fort you'll have lots of activity burning rubbish pits and so on when the fort goes out of use the material the burnt material goes into the ditch fill when we walk over with the magnetics we get a strong signal if that ditch is actually just a field boundary there's no force then you don't have the burning you don't have the rubbish so the fill that goes into the ditch it's sterile when we walk over no signal that's the magnetics the resistance look at the same ditch normally the fill is waterlogged so when we go over the currents pass through easily we get a low signal if that ditch is on a slope then the water drains away down the slope so when we walk over no signal so that's two reasons anymore how long have you got geophys can take some consolation from the fact that our evaluation trenches have now established that there wasn't any roman archaeology to be detected on top of the hill but there is one last chance for geophys given that we're now finding evidence of roman settlement in this field they've nervously suggested that we check out the one large anomaly they detected close by so what's this trenching aid of then john look that's what chris got yesterday this huge anomaly running through there high resistance so where's our trench trench is going right across there fortunately as we haven't got a lot of time this mystery doesn't take long to resolve so a roman villa right where did that come from well i thought that this uh somebody suggested that maybe this was going to be the wing of a roman villa who you've answered the question it's gravel yeah but it's where we said it was going to be phil so that that's all that matters would you believe it it's that parkland landscape again this is probably the worst geophysical site we've been on and we want to go home don't brush away you could sell the aggregate if only back in the 18th century they'd known that creating a park here would cause so many problems but later landscaping isn't the reason we've had to dig deeply here this we've now established is a roman well stuffed with clues about daily life here in the first to fourth century miles this is my favorite bit of the site you've got more fines yes it's a third century coin see that little radiant crown on the head yeah third century anything else yeah these are just coming up uh in and around the area of the shaft right bit of metal where it's very heavy isn't it it feels nice well it's i think it might be a weight off a steel yard you know those olden day balancers where you'd have a shaft with weights hanging off it on a hook it's so heavy that that must be its function it's certainly got a suspension hole for this right red where do you see the finger marks there for the decoration around the thrill there's a place over in hertfordshire called much hadam which produced quite a distinctive sort of red pottery some of which had faces on the front dating to the fourth century some a little bit earlier but again you know you've got a complete mishmash haven't you have dates all the way through yeah i mean it's mostly uh third and fourth century but there's little bits of first have you got different levels in it or is it just all mixed up the actual shaft is just one homogeneous fill going right right so somebody's gone around bulldozing all the rubbish off the surface here having just one point dumping it in yeah so in the end although victor enjoyed his chance to draw the roman invasion of 43 a.d we didn't find any evidence of military activity at syndal the evidence we unearthed points more to a picture like this of a second to fourth century romano british farming settlement that was most likely reusing ditches that had been open at the time of the invasion and part of an iron age landscape or at least that's the latest theory for consideration i think it's going a bit beyond the evidence really guy you know we've got a series of ditches haven't we none of which have the same fill as each other put any bunch of archaeologists together and they'll end up arguing theories but there's one thing that we're all agreed on that we've scotched the 150 year old idea that there was once a roman fort on this hill which means of course that the first roman fort ever built in britain is still out there somewhere just waiting to be found you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 183,084

Rating: 4.9100389 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, tony robinson, time team, british archaeology, roman history, roman military, time team investigations, roman fort

Id: OMVZIMgEHcY

Length: 48min 54sec (2934 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021