Is This Ancient Roman Sarcophagus Time Team's Most Important Find? | Time Team | Odyssey

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] this is irman Street the road built by the invading Roman forces as they sweat North in the First Century A.D the Conquering legionaries established a base here at Ancaster in Lincolnshire shortly after the invasion and there was a continued Roman presence here for the next four centuries there's evidence of Roman Life everywhere around here just around the corner there's a cemetery where they've discovered over 250 Roman burials including 11 stone sarcophagi and these fines all discovered by local people coins brooches this lovely statue of the Goddess Minerva are evidence of what an affluent Town it was but then something weird happened at the end of the third Century this established Town suddenly decided it needed to build a big defensive wall around its Center why time team have got just three days to find out [Music] thank you [Music] it's a wet and I mean very wet start to day one Jeff Fizz and our diggers are battling gale force winds and torrential rain as we set about uncovering the history of Roman Ancaster and the man we have to thank for this rather bracing dig is our Roman expert guide La Bedouin air guy you've brought us to the epicenter of the worst weather in Britain today this is warm for Lincolnshire what is it about this place that is so exciting to you well we moved here about a year ago and my son younger son went to the primary school and I couldn't believe it when the head teacher started showing me all the Roman fines that have come up from all around here but the strange thing is Ancaster is not really very well recorded so we know very little about what sort of place this really was previous excavations do tell us a wall and ditches went up around Roman Ancaster in approximately 280 A.D why those another matter and the theories range from the purely defensive to a status symbol built by an increasingly affluent population but just about everything inside this walled area is now either built on or scheduled are we going to be stymied by the fact that we can't dig the walls now the scheduled area is is the sort of wall there in the middle but it's quite clear it goes either side of that at least and so there's lots to do we're just outside the wall here as Mick said and it's absolutely stuffed with Roman fines I mean literally you can just stand look at the ground and pick bits it's all over the place just like this you know it's literally as easy as that and what's so shown up so far is that there seems to be a cluster of very dense artifacts and then a bit of a gap and then another cluster and then a bit of a gap so what is going on here outside the town history hit is like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you our extensive catalog of documentaries covers everything from the rise of Hannibal Barker to the illustrious Treasures of King Tut so sign up today for broadcast quality documentaries uncovering the mysteries of the ancient world we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and odyssey fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Odyssey at checkout so we've decided to concentrate on two sides outside the wall town carenza will be in charge of this wheat field to the east which our rain sodden diggers have started to field walk Meanwhile we're off to the other side of town where Phil is already digging just outside the churchyard previous excavations have established a large Roman Cemetery here while our early Geoff Fizz results indicate a lot of activity look when the church extended the churchyard some years ago to put more burials in they actually came across more burials uh Roman burials anyway this this Roman Cemetery had you turn left here yeah um it's a bit slippy on this mud as well this Cemetery had Stone sarcophagy uh in it what does that indicate about period Well that really means that it should be late Roman they should be Christian by then because um earlier on I have a lot of cremation of course but the other thing is that film also has a lot of domestic activity in it what do you mean well settlements houses turn left here so there's a there's a there's a dating problem of course you know which which comes first turn right here where these chaps are they we've got uh a big Matty area across the across the entrance so can we see anything in the cemetery can we see anything of the civil settlement and what's the relationship of data those hip well we've got an incredibly impressive hole I think for what our mornings were fantastic only drawback is there isn't anything in it oh very little what no evidence of cemetery settlement or anything you look like it no you would have expected in a trench what five meters as long as three meters wide 15 square meters if we were in the middle of a densely packed Roman Cemetery you'd get at least one burial but you've got no burials no burial Cuts we've got no burials and we appear to have no other earlier features either this empty trench is rather mystifying because geophys results for this area show a mass of anomalies but Phil thinks he's found the cause a hard layer of natural iron it's pretty metallic iron pan is that what's giving the geophysics signals then well I mean I've already had a word with John Gator about this I mean I think it's important very important that he comes over and has a look at this so is this natural lion that says lying well yeah I mean I suppose the problem is is it the bottom of the sequence presumably going to cut through it don't stop too absolutely got to while Phil goes through the iron pan to see if there's archeology underneath it I've got a chance to visit the local Primary School which has become an unofficial Museum of ancaster's Roman past over the years members of the public children have brought them into school we house them here for the children's Heritage and for the community to come and view the fines and one child's father got particular yes very fortunate the guy came along with William well what do you think of all this stuff well it's really fascinating because although we've got fairly standard Roman material right the way through the period we've got first century broaches second century pottery and third and fourth Century Pottery we've also got these carvings of gods there's a hunter God there and this is the Roman goddess Minerva do we know much about the Roman gods who around here well the only one we've actually got a name for is viridius now he turns up on an inscription which was found a number of years ago underneath the church and Records an arch that was dedicated to him what does viridius mean well a little bit difficult to know but the beginning bit probably means Mighty or great the end bit deal is not really sure is it just dios God that's a possibility so it might mean something like Mighty God high and mighty God great God Guy believes karenza's field could be a prime candidate for a temple or some other sacred site and the fines trays are already overflowing with evidence of Roman activity although korenza hasn't even dug a trench yet what we need now are some geoffiz results ditches in Black magnetic survey so cutting to the ground big pits as well and what about buildings well there may be a building as well in here well I think it's really exciting because what I've postulated about this whole area because we've got this religious sculptures that we may have a temple somewhere now look you've got an enclosure and we've got a building that looks fairly isolated in the middle of the enclosure that is exactly the sort of way a Romano Celtic Romano British Temple might have been said okay okay but we need to do a bit more I think the sensible thing for the minute then is for us to get started with the trench across the ditch okay if you can carry on get any more detail on the building because I think this if it is a temple we really need to get in at the building very important yeah so corenza's first trench goes in across the ditch of this potential religious site [Music] down in Phil Cemetery field we've got a breakthrough he's now managed to get under the iron pan [Music] it's beautiful sand don't it building the bigger picture of Roman Ancaster is now well underway and Stewart's getting to grips with the effect the third Century wall had on this already well established town Phil you're saying the town expanded well I was well outside these Earthworks pretty good indications that the town extended outside these Earthworks in all directions so it's quite critical in the way we understand this I mean I'm gonna have to fight really hard I suspect so I'd like to have some geophysics in this area well it would certainly be very valuable particularly inside the Earthworks it's going to be hard work to get them out of there we got some fascinating results Tony we've got this one is sort of an irregular area of burning there and quite a circular area of burn in there but in the corner we've got this uh area across here sort of brownish stuff with a with a reddish Edge and then in here this sort of regular square ended thing like that and in here we had a massive pottery with big Hefty rims and that's all underneath this panning but to be quite honest I've got the foggiest idea what it is what do we think that burning might be well the burning is really intense and this so-called iron pan it's really magnetic there's lots of charcoal in it so whether we've got metal working going on in this area and we've got bits of slag around or whether we've got I suppose Piers from burning bodies well you have to get up to about 600 why there'd be something to eating gentlemen then or something to do with the cemetery because presumably well we know that there is cremation burials being found in gardens around here so if you've got an earlier Cemetery it's got to be a cremation cemetery and they had to burn the body somewhere so why not on the edge of the burial places with the possibility of this being the site of a funeral pyre Margaret's Keen to find out as much as possible about the Roman Cemetery in this field she and Mick want to dig a trench to the north of the modern graveyard where there may be burials it's a proposal that doesn't exactly appeal to an overstretched John I can see where this is leading yeah what do you mean yeah well I think you need to have a look at it for us please what else have you got to do well we're we're halfway through the new field um Stuart's talking about us going into the scheduled area as well do we need to GFS before we dig on the Northern side oh well yes I think you do yeah yeah but it's a question of which we do I mean we ought to go in and Survey that if you're going to dig in there what's the priority well I think that's a priority because there's some recording here isn't the film yeah and there's a bit more excavation too I mean there's still work to be done in here so Phil will continue to unravel the mysterious burning in this trench while Jeff is returned to the cemetery field to find a new Target but we're almost at the end of day one a frustrating day for Phil but a fantastic one for corenza and her team in the wheat field where the archeology isn't just abundant but surprising yeah how's it been going well but we've had masses of human bone coming out that we're getting trays of it here you can see the jaw there very distinctively human it's utterly bizarre though because we've got this Stony feature coming along here which might be a ditch filled with rubble or it might be a wall we've got this feature coming along here and you can see there's Bones still in the trench human bone all jumbled up not neatly laid out skeletons and it's got animal bone mixed in with it as well so have you finished doing the geophys of this area well this is as far as we got before you stopped us we've got this really amazing enclosure she's just here isn't it this is turning into a really strange sight in the cemetery we haven't found any bones where we thought there'd be habitation we found hundreds of Bones and what about this thing here whatever could it be might it even be the temple which we hope might be here join us after the break foreign beginning of day two in our search for Roman Ancaster and at last it stopped raining and the sun's come out which is a big relief to everyone over there beyond the church corenza's still grappling with this mystery of a confusion of animal and human bones apparently on top of a Roman building and here in the cemetery field Phil's just walked away from the trench that he was digging all day yesterday beyond that big hedge in order to open another one Phil what's going on well actually Tony we're going to open two trenches look we've got the geophysics now and you can see this fantastic ditch coming through here but the thing is we don't know whether it's the northern boundary of the cemetery or whether it's an earlier Fort ditch an earlier Roman Force Roman four yes so why are we digging two trenches to actually undertake one big one might be a bit more than we can we can bite off we'll put one in on that uh anomaly there that dark area there and also one across the the ditch yeah so we've we've laid in those two trenches all we've got to do now is dig them what do you mean you've laid in them well we've located them we've plotted them on the ground you lay in a trench that's what you do well I was only asking hopefully these two trenches will give us more than just the edge of the Roman Cemetery we're looking for as much dating evidence as possible to help us unravel the 400-year history of Roman Ancaster just just flung back far enough were particularly Keen to discover more about what happened to the town when a wall was built around it in the late 3rd century and from the air Stuart may have found a clue we want one thing looking it from here Mickey's Once you get over this Ridge to the east yeah just how close you are to the fence and where the original Roman Coastline was this actually is such a a key position in the Roman Hub of things it's not surprising the town grew up here anyway is it yeah the wall town is actually quite small yeah compared to what we're looking at which is a town which spread over onto that Hill huge Cemetery areas out here did you see I think the reason for that is that if you've got cemetery and occupation and looking from here look it's going to go from where the church is across the Greenfield out into the Triangular food where we're digging and then at some stage you have to provide some defenses then my guess would be that something that is actually across the road that actually cuts off a piece of the road that walled area does yeah is ideal if your job is to control the roots rather than to defend the whole occupied area which you probably couldn't do so that's right it's almost like a Roman toll booth in a way isn't it you know you've got to go through it haven't you yeah so we may be getting an idea of why the town wall was built but other aspects of this site continue to baffle we thought we might have a temple in karenza's field but at the minute all we have are a series of mysterious burials what we've got in this Trace is all adult bone you've got this femoral head from the thigh bone is that is that really human yeah this is human although it's broken so it looks a bit odd and this is the top of a humerus so the upper arm and they're huge and that's why I wondered they're sort of class size yeah well you know he or she was a very very large person whereas this person here this is from the lower arm this is the radius in fact um comes from somebody who's fairly short you know or at least got very short arms so it's extremely unlikely that these come from the same person this is a little bit of mandible from a male interestingly though for the for the Roman period if if that's what this is from is that they there is no disease on these teeth they're quite worn which suggests that from an older person but classically Roman teeth are actually quite bad they had could have quite refined diets with lots of sugars and karyogenic foodstuffs and you get lots and lots of Decay so you're saying they don't you don't think that's a Roman well it's a possibility that it may not be from a Roman person so this Roman side could have been later reused as a cemetery yet more proof of how corenza's Fields jam-packed with archeology but I don't think the same can be said of Phil's so-called Cemetery field despite them literally leaving no stone unturned a local chat with telling Kerry about it yesterday so we said well you know we've got to go and have a look and it is the sort of thing you'd cover a sarcophagus within it well it might be you know it's what I'd call a good piece of stone even if I haven't got a use for it is that what you'd call it yeah are they your back Garden's full of those yeah it is actually what do you write in Terry it's not looking good to be honest in spite of Phil's almost desperate optimism it does look like this is just a regular piece of stone and as his second trench of the day goes in there are Rumblings of discontent over the amount of Manpower being used in the cemetery because we could really use them to open up even more of karenza's field where there seems to be no end to the archeology can't see anything that's not human here and again Quran so they're big people you know they're uncharacteristically Roman to see so many but I'm not saying you never get at all Roman but these are all talk big people guy what do you reckons going on here well we've ended up with these damaged disruptive bodies that means there must have been an earlier burial when they weren't damaged they were laid out properly exactly the question is has the enclosure and all the other occupation debris we've got here does that represent a cemetery area or have we got a whole earlier occupational before the cemetery so that's the problem so I guess what we need to do is find out exactly what's going on here in this trench why are these burials in there and then look at the inner enclosure around that building as well do you think precisely at the moment certainly in this trench all we can really understand is the final phase of activity continued excavation here and trench will really help us to understand what this enclosure was originally used for so we're putting a second trench across the center of the enclosure so 10 meter trench bucket width I think yes let's just start here take about 10 meters should cover go right across that area and just see what we've hit yeah with such a demand on our resources this is probably our last chance to investigate guy's theory that we may have a temple in karenza's field a theory partly based on the large number of religious finds discovered around Ancaster the most striking was found in the grounds of ancaster's church which many believe sits on the side of a much earlier Roman Temple this unique inscription dedicates an arch to a mysterious God called viridius why would he like an arch well something Victor's prepared is this lovely drawing of what might have been here on this site underneath the church it's quite common for Christian establishments to be built later over a place that has a local tradition of religious worship here we've got Temple but an entrance way through a notch now an arch in Roman religion that period it's a sacred passageway from one zone to another but we think we may have a temple further down the slope don't we does that mean that there would have been lots of different religious places in the town it's certainly possible there'll be more than one religious place within the town but it's also not uncommon to find religious centers immediately outside particularly if they're along main roads but a Roman temples also a kind of an entertainment thing it's also a way of giving thanks for your journey there may also be a hostilary an inn association with it so there's a lot of value to a Roman and having this kind of thing in a town and a lot of passing trade that this kind of place can benefit from so this might actually have been the thing that was driving the town in its early years exactly good Lord big old piece of Partners well decorated yeah yes very nice over in the cemetery it looks like Phil and his team have at last come up with something cool what on Earth is that well I mean this is shell tempered Ware um which is classic for the Iron Age in this area and it's handmade but it's got this very regular scoring but very short scoring and this is actually the shoulder it's going to be a large storage job now the difficulty is is obviously going to be the dating it could be late Iron Age but there's no perceptible change between the late Arnold and the early Roman so we we could be looking at a big area of settlement which extends to into our trench on the south side of the modern Cemetery yeah yeah and Phil's original trench has also now yielded evidence of early occupation good afternoon we think we've got a kill we've got a concentrated area of burning up there yeah which is tobering off away behind me and we think these may be the bases of pots what these these little round things yeah left it that from the last firing blimey does this actually help with what you had on the geophysics that's brilliant I mean right the whole point is iron pan is not magnetic no yeah the iron pan we had that big block of stuff we're looking at yes it was really strong yeah and I said there had to be some sort of fire going on here sort of industrial process or attire and to get a kiln I mean brilliant explains all the anomalies it now looks certain there was a settlement here in this part of Lancaster before it became a Roman Cemetery very useful for our history of the town I mean well you know it may not you know it may not push push the story along like you know but it's still good archeology yeah but can we really justify keeping Phil and his team down here when we need more diggers up in karenza's field Mick I don't understand why we're so obsessed with the cemetery field we don't appear to have found any buildings we don't appear to have found any burials whereas on the other side it's jam-packed with stuff yeah everyone's getting really excited about it so why are we bothering to continue to look for the edge of the cemetery well I I don't think we are I think I think from what I've seen of these trenches now we're at the position where we can answer a lot of that and say you know there is archeology here there's not a huge amount of it yeah I mean there's not not much archeology there's stacks of archeology here yeah but in terms of the problem we've set ourselves there's far more on the other side that we probably ought to be examining what what was it you tell me what the the purpose of these trenches was see where there was occupation and and the history of the town on this side of the enclosure okay we've we've answered that we've got a lot of evidence of occupation in over here what else was the other object of it to find the edge of the cemetery right now I know we haven't found one yet but where I'm digging at the moment you've got a straight edge along there turning around there and coming back there it's aligned east west it looks like it's filled up with very loose back filled natural now I don't know that is very very similar to the sort of fill you'd get in a grave yeah it was a close scrape but filled by some more time in the cemetery field up in karenza's field the new trench is coming along nicely while the decidedly non-roman bodies discovered this morning are about to be lifted can you just hold the whole side yeah yeah that's it I think it's almost certainly a female because this is smooth and rounded and these are sort of medium in size and there's no really pronounced brow ridges or anything so I think this is a woman wow she's in very very good condition isn't she yeah well no argument about that is there doesn't look like it does it looks like a big coughing lid to me that does so how will you excavate that once you've cleared all the loose and the rubble and stuff away from the top as always Define it I mean you know we got the first part we literally follow it back at that level I suppose what I'm really saying is I want to know what's under that slab how long will it be it's a much bigger job isn't it because it don't get too hasty if this job's worth doing it's worth doing well and I mean there's there's a lot of work involved here plus you've got to remember it is still a grave and we've got to show a certain level of respect for it so it's not just a matter of ripping out and lifting the lid off and it's about the sarcophagus with renewed Vigor corenza's discovered evidence of a building inside the enclosure so maybe we have got a wall Foundation that's actually coming straight through this along with the evidence in corenza's first trench and the field walking results suggest there was a substantial suburb to the east of irman street but Stewart's now convinced this suburb dramatically changed when the center of Ancaster was surrounded by the wall and two massive ditches in the late 3rd Century but when you come down here this is much more like the ditch was during the Roman period yeah I mean look at look at the size of that Rampart ground it's a huge been cut to a huge depth comes down you've got this wide ditch that we're standing in here then in the middle you've got this Rampart yeah then beyond it another ditch the same width as this then the rampart of the Walt town then on top of that you've got the wall itself so this is a huge huge construction that's taken an awful lot of town out if he came across here isn't it absolutely it's a massive construction it is cool tomorrow we'll dig a trench next to these defenses in the hope they'll provide the final Clues as to what happened here almost two Millennia ago but as day two draws to a close Phil's now certain he's got an intact Stone coffin although the news isn't all good well we've had the metal detector guy go over it and he says there's a suspicion of metal sounding underneath it well that isn't good news because that means there might be a lead coughing then so what's that mean well it means there are all sorts of health and safety implications that we've got to think about like what well for a start you know lead it will oxidize and the minute the stone is taken off if the lead is oxidizing they'll be lead oxide in the air right which you you can't inhale because it's poisonous but it also means that we'll probably get what we call Body liquor which is from the decomposing tissues and associated with that you have to assume that the risk of biological hazards which means we have to suit up and wear masks that are actually fairly sophisticated in terms of filtering out biological particles we've got all that stuff we've got all of those here we came prepared I'm glad of that have you ever taken the lid off of a sarcophagus before Phil if you've done it before no I never have it's kind of do you find it an uncomfortable thought I feel differently to what I would with a normal skeleton even if you're in a grave you kind of know that it's there and you just go down onto it there's a body there yeah but knowing that there is this Stone container with a body in it I can't put it into words a reflective end to day two in the cemetery field thankfully the up game of cricket with the locals gives us all a chance to unwind and review the progress of our two sides so how far did you manage to get karenza well we've got most of the bones out of the first trench and the second trench is starting to turn up structures like floors and walls it looks like and of course we have that fantastic geophysics with all these new enclosures and what we really wanted to do was put a couple of trenches into those new enclosures to find out what date they are and what's going on inside them now when I spoke to you Earl it was all yes yes we're going to put all our energies into that field we're pulling out a cemetery field and I've seen nothing since I mean have we still got the Manpower for that I think we have because there's a number of trenches in that field coming to an end anyway and where Kerry is for example so it'll be extra people did you get as far as you hoped for I think we got further than we'd hoped actually I mean obviously the main effort got to be tomorrow to actually find out what's in that sarcophagus the stone line coffin really so tomorrow we've got a heck of a lot of work to do to try and sort out the story of Roman Ancaster but I can't help admitting that there's a bit of me that really wants to see what happens when Phil lifts the lid of that stone coffin join us after the break [Applause] it's a sunny start to day three in Ancaster and the latest geophys results from karenza's field have revealed at least five more enclosures suggesting our Roman suburb could be much bigger than we expected we've got to put a trench in somewhere and find out whether they're just Farm areas or whether we've got perhaps industry going on yeah these definitely look industrialized right perhaps if we could find a trench that would go across one of the ditches and into the interior so another trench goes in to judge the extent of occupation while in Phil's Cemetery field which we will within minutes of shutting we now have a stone coffin in one trench yeah let's go sort of middle for diddlish 43.63 and to further burials in the other trench plus loads of vital dating evidence with a classic day of digging in Prospect until Mick drops a bombshell I assume that I think everyone else assumed that we were going to lift the lid of this sarcophagus first thing this morning but now you're saying well should we and have we got the resources to do it I mean I think I need to be convinced about that should we Margaret yes I think we should and this is a different type of sarcophagus it's not actually a sarcophagus it's more of a kiss burial what do you mean it's a it's not a sarcophagus it's a kiss it's a sarcophagus is created out of one piece of stone this is actually created out of slabs that form a sort of pseudo sarcophagus and so as far as we know there are none of those on the on the main Cemetery site now that makes this a very unusual type of burial how long is it going to take to deal with what's inside because that sounds like a big job to me it won't take very long to get the lid off because we've got the resources and we've also got the resources to deal with what's in size so I think we can do it today do you want me to excavate that Graver don't you I think if Margaret's clear that there's good reasons for doing it and we've got the resources to do it then we should we should go ahead yeah I mean I just needed to be reassured about that you're assuredner yeah let's go ahead if we do have to suit up for a potential biohazard the whole excavation process will become very time consuming so Phil decides to take a quick peek under the lid to assess the danger let's go in yeah get your arms underneath there well done at the moment no immediate sign of a lead coffin so that I'm sure is a relief to all of us got it hold on with the stone coffin declared a lead-free Zone it's all now down to fill right can somebody get me some digging tools well I guess lead me to it giving Mick and Me A Chance At Last to catch up with the suburban sprawl in corenza's field nearly knocked you into the trenches exuberant he was there yeah I'm lost what's been happening here right over the far side we put a trench across one of these little square enclosures because we were thinking they might be part of a settlement um but it looks at the moment as if they're actually paddocks because we're getting very few finds at all it doesn't agricultural rather than Town well we're getting no occupation very little Pottery so it looks like they might be fields which makes again this enclosure that we're now standing in the middle of look again as if it's rather out on its own so we put this trench right in the middle of this enclosure to try and find out what's going on in the middle of it and we've got some really interesting stuff out of this we have got a wall it's brilliant isn't it not very deep but it's well built and it's straight behind it all that stone what looks like Rubble is actually a cobbled surface all the stones are laid in at the same angle we've got some sort of yard or something else something like that I reckon yeah but that's all quite late and a lot later than this end of the trench because that wall is sitting on top of all this Sandy very humic so of occupation debris in the trench here and that's produced some Fantastic Finds we've had masses of stuff out of it you can see we've got trays of it we've got a piece of samian here which has actually got a stamp on it so we should be able to good death get a good date on that and we've got a lovely first century Broach yeah that's a nice one yeah but what's really interesting is it's very early fines like this brooch point to higher status occupation here in the first and second century and then there's nothing for at least a couple of hundred years until this fourth Century wall and floor indicating a much later period of rebuilding it now seems likely the third Century Town wall had a lot to do with these two phases Stewart certainly thinks so backed up by John's massive survey of the field filled in that area Mick there's the the Roman town yeah that's the wall in the ditch yeah coming through there but the thing of real interest that looks like a road coming out this could be a key area couldn't it in identifying that sequence was that road here when the town defenses were cut or is it a road that's putting afterwards to support this suburb the key thing I think is that if this road is chopped through then that does actually give us that evidence that the construction of this Ford disrupted the town so are you saying that this town wall would be a bit like the M25 everything that was there before would suddenly be cut off absolutely yeah Berlin Wall you know with streets coming up to it completely blank a trench across this possible road should give us the answer we need all we need is the metal surface government but if the third Century wall and ditches did completely cut off this suburb then it's highly unlikely the war was just a decorative or status construction there must have been a very good reason for such a drastic action is there any historic evidence which might explain why they put up this wall well the context seems to be that in the first part of the Roman period we're on a boom roll towns grow and expand almost like wildfire you know the little Iron Age settlements are then a few decades later they're sprawling towns but in the latter part of the period we start to hear about Pirates raiding the coast and the whole place seems to become much more insecure the guy we're miles away from the sea what not in Roman times we're actually quite close to where the sea was and the Romans in Britain have to throw up a whole series of forts all around the east coast and the South Coast also many of the Roman towns start to get walls and it's possible that here at Ancaster we've got a place that's halfway between a town and the fort so are you saying that you think the specific reason these walls were erected was to protect the people inside from outside the town that's right where we once had a much bigger town I think people have pulled back to go within the walls they've got protection there a refuge it may also house troops but presumably also it was have looked quite impressive that's one of the arguments but I don't think if you want to look really impressive I think you'd throw up a bigger and flashier wall and you'd record the fact what we often find with these Town walls is they're thrown up using any materials to hand it looks a bit more panicky particularly with this kind of place it's much more business-like and it does include such a relatively small area I think people had to cook those up pretty fast oh look I know it it's the palette that's right there's the upper Jewel yeah there's the cheekbone the eye one eye is going to be in there and that is the corner of the nose I've never ever seen a skull from this angle before looking up although most of the attention in the cemetery field is now focused on Phil's Stone coffin the other finds are giving us a fascinating insight into the effect the third Century wall had on the sprawling town of Ancaster we've got a range of material really because we're running from the late Iron Age into the Roman period because these cream shirts are really from flagons and they're very thin Ward I would have said for a century but how far through the rainbow can we go with the pottery so far we can go to the about the mid third Century because this is a nean valley folded Beaker and the fabric is really going to be meant that and onwards but what we don't have is anything that's positively fourth Century but that's the date of the graves isn't it yeah so it would suggest that the main activity in terms of occupation or whatever was going on pre the graves had actually ceased within the third Century well I'm quite excited about the Iron Age stuff because I just wonder if there was indeed an Iron Age Shrine or an Iron Age settlement That's What attracted the Romans here in the first place maybe we've got a small town extending out across here but falling out of use entirely when the walls go at the end of the Roman period and then perhaps the buildings completely disappeared and that's why Cemetery ends up in the area the evidence from the two sites seems to be painting the same picture the massive defenses built in the third Century dramatically altered the town suburbs going any sign of that road yeah we've got it up here but unfortunately has been cut by walls we've got a wall here and I've got the road from here to here oh yeah worn away cobbles that's right and then it's been cut Again by another wall they're built on top of the road the road itself is too small to be a main road so we need to get underneath the cobbles to see if we can find some dating evidence Margaret you know that that stone with a Groove in it yeah which inscribed Lord can you make any sense well no no no just give me time there is there is a letter there's a vertical there and it goes around there it looks like maybe an R that looks best Beginning to Look almost like a v it is isn't it I don't know whether that's a big O this is beginning to look very similar to the inscription guy showed me yesterday and if it is Phil's got a major discovery on his hands Stone across d-i-o-v-r-i well I didn't expect that Margaret I hear Something's Happened that makes it worth my work this morning it's so exciting around this side look we've got this enormous slab of stone in here look and it's inscribed it's to the God viridius yeah it's our God for radius we've already got an inscription we've already looked at that Tony and I have looked at that it's really found 40 years ago he's only known from one inscription in the whole country and here he is again this is a great thing for time team the inscribe Stone from the churchyard is not very well carved that is top grade Roman inscribed lettering that's really classy early second century star do you see fabulous to the God viridius so here he is again he's the man God yeah we thought it was good but we didn't think it was that good did we right Top Class well this is a turn up for the books but despite the intense interest in our viridius grave we haven't forgotten the other trench in this field with another burial which is also Roman cut into an Iron Age ditch so we know the Roman Cemetery continues North this grave is also a form of kissed although much less refined instead of the slabs used on Phil's grave smaller Stones were placed on top and these seem to have eventually crushed the body we're also beginning to build a profile of the man buried with the viridius inscription he was a survivor a town Elder who probably lived into his late 70s but who'd suffered during his life this guy is is walking around with two broken legs yeah he's had two broken legs hopefully for his sake not at the same time good Lord you see you've got a lot of foreshortening there which would have actually meant quite a significant limp can you see yeah sort of lost about a centimeter on the right leg up in corenza's field we're finishing off our story of our suburb and the road trench dug this morning has now given us our final piece of dating evidence Maggie we've had a piece of pottery turn up either side of the road here can you tell me what date it is well it's one of these stories jars so really you're looking at first century running into the second century about 120 it should be about it right what seems to be happening I think is that we've got very soon after the Roman Conquest we've got settlements sprawling all along the road here possibly from right over there to our big enclosure which might have a shrine or a temple in it or something next point to which we've got any idea of what's going on in this field at all is mid late third because there's no later Pottery at all here so it's as if when the town defenses are built the settlements retreated behind there left this area unoccupied but the enclosure in the middle there is the focus activity at that date so that's still in use and by the later fourth Century it's being used for burial so it now seems the town wall killed off this suburb in its original form but how does that help us work out why the wall was built it's at times like this you turn to Stuart there's clearly a settlement of sorts in the late Iron Age around here which the Romans in effect reoccupy and use and we seem to have evidence from the excavation upon the trench the bad Rampart make of a possible road coming in down here as well over there now yeah so we have a picture of a of kind of a spread out settlement along concentrated alongside the road but by the time the world Town goes in you get a very different perspective on it if you switch over Neil the big earthwork ditches that were put around it they basically just chop away they dig out almost what a good half of the Town disappear there um so the red stuff is actually the area that was encased by the wall that's right and then the stuff between the red and the yellow is what it's just gone it's been dug away it's just ditched yeah but it's ditches yeah and the area that formerly was settled out down here it's disappeared that's gone that's in fact just used as a cemetery area it's cut off isn't it from the rest of the Town entirely yeah it's incredibly brutal oh it is I mean it shows just how determined they were to formalize this set now they must have had very very important reasons for doing this to book a decision from the top it does doesn't it yeah kind of bureaucracy type of thing it looks like the wall around Ancaster was built on the orders of Roman central government to defend this strategic Town irrespective of the effects on the local community and from his topographical research Stewart thinks he may have found the origins of the God viridius there's a very important spring site here now I think in relation to dedications and gods and so on we have a religious Center here in the Iron Age and with we know from many other sites such sites are used again and again in the Roman period and look at the proximity of it to this big Roman settlement here I think that we in essence we've got a major religious Shrine Center there so it might not be fanciful to think of viridius as a pre-roman god associated with that spring who just kind of lasted that's right I mean often the Romans take over Celtic gods and incorporate them into their own Pantheon [Music] we've done much more than find out why ancaster's wall was built we've discovered the grave of an elderly man who was a boy May well have witnessed its construction and this fantastic time team dig has culminated in this rare inscription to the god viridius the only one ever discovered inside a grave I mean every so often we find something on time team which you know is going to go straight into the textbooks and this is one of those occasions and what was the orientation of This Kiss it's East-West head to the West so does that mean he's Christian there well it's it seems to me we have two possibilities here either this chap is not sure whether it's Christian or Pagan and he's hedging his bets or the one I like better is that he's really a pagan but he's buried in in a Christian way but his friends know he's a pagan so they put this Stone in right next to his head with his God on it but isn't there possibility which is that it's just a coincidence that he's using recycled material that just happens to be the God's name I I think it's too obvious that the inscription is still there I think they would have turned it round and hidden it if he was really a Christian they were just re using the stone actually because I'm clearing away the bones here there's actually traces of a lower layer of lettering got it yep can you make anything at all from that I've got all the information I really need here because as well as the top line and the S and the a I can see the top of the letter n and on the top of the letter c and the little end there that probably is a t the word's going to be sanctuar it's to the god viridius the Holy One [Music]

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 415,592

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, roman britain documentary, roman britain the work of giants crumbled, roman britain documentary bbc, time team, tony robinson, roman sarcophagus, roman sarcophagi, roman sarcophagus gaza, ancient rome, roman empire, tony robinson documentary, tony robinson history of britain

Id: cRG9ObYjv-U

Length: 49min 5sec (2945 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2023