On the Edge of an Empire | FULL EPISODE | Time Team

this is RHIB Chester in Lancashire it's a typical bit of tranquil peaceful English countryside isn't it but imagine what it would have been like to have been stuck up here in midwinter if you were an ordinary Roman foot soldier this place would have been the last outpost of the Empire a really barbarian place where the only thing that stood between you and instant death at the hands of some maniac Brit tribesman who'd been wound up into a frenzy by his local druid and sent herring down this hillside would have been your fighting skills and you fought and that little river over there so how did they protect themselves do they just march up here in 43 ad when Claudius invaded and build a big fort and then march out again 250 years later or did they constantly have to adapt their tactics depending on local conditions and local politics well we hope that part of the answer to that will be in someone's back garden a local resident has written a letter to this week's time team dear time team has retired history teacher I've always taken a keen interest in with Chester's past I'd like to know more about the Roman remains in my garden and about the earlier Roman defenses of the town war sincerely Jim rich red Chester [Music] this week's time team McCaslin whispered university landscape archaeologist Lorenzo Lewis Royal Commission on historic monuments tell Harding Wessex archaeological trust field archaeologist Robin Bush archivist and Victor Ambrose historical illustrator right two and a half days in which to unravel the roman defenses of rich Attica are we gonna do that well the early Roman defenses that mr. Reid refers to there there's been some work done already we know there's ditches out here and out here I think if we go for those perhaps with some geophysics and possibly even cut the odd trench across I think we should be able to take quite a lot about that but your your your mission the point of his garden he's got some Roman remains in his garden and as far as I can see it's just up here in the corner here I mean that's what he's asked us to have a look at I want to get render and have a look at it I don't know many people with Roman remains in variance with all these different bits we've been looking at they're all on different bits of paper they're all different excavations at different ones I think we need to make a map to get everything onto one piece of paper so we can see exactly what's going on reliable well it's just there's a lot of different bits and pieces and it's been sort of conjecture together I think we can everything carefully drawn one one sheet of paper will be able to give mr. Ridge a nice of a clear plan of what happened when right well we've got 72 hours in which to do that after which time we'll have to present our findings to the people of rube Chester rip Chester in Lancashire lies midway between Preston and clitoral situated on the banks of the river Ribble it's always been a major strategic site in Roman times it guarded both the river crossing and the main route to the north as Carranza said there's been a lot of archaeological work here over the years but most of it is concentrated on the stone fort and the later years of Roman occupation after about 150 AD time - in addition to exploring the stone fort in Jim ridges garden want to focus on the earlier period of Roman activity around 70 AD when reub Chester would have been a Roman frontier town yeah a long long way further than that because I first hope with a dig testa when I was 15 under the ground under the ground but the plan of the forts well no yeah and I knew when I bought this place that there was part of the fort here but we didn't know it was so well preserved marvellous obviously it'd be nice to be able to clean up and have a look at the floor and see what fixtures and fittings you see and obviously we could do with the professional team to answer them you know he's probably been notion then we can further conserve the remains let's get let's get on with it it's another one look Tony this this road again has got one of these sort of gentle curves on it we ought to have a look at these on the maps because if if we were come in here without knowing what has been done locally these are just the things that we're looking for as close to the corners of Roman forts you know this does a gentle curve round like as it's going round differences on on that side this isn't a question of an archaeologist looking for the smooth road to justify we do we do do that we look for small Wiggles of roads because the roads go more or less direct from A to B they do anything else they're not doing what they're supposed to do there's usually a good reason that the course them has been lost at some stage and it's often because they've gotten defenses you know they've gone around banks and ditches so if there was that if that corner really was part of the Roman defenses then they ought to find some sort of yeah foundations of a corner Tower that's right that's right if it was I mean it may be that it was I think so it's here they are hey Chris and John how you doing well we understand this is the area where actually wants us to do the first work yeah to try and locate this outer ditch yeah and which when they were doing the small excavations a few years ago and bunch of the residential home that's in this alignment to come here that outside the sort of veikkaus or village outside the main fort so if this already well we're bothering to poke around here well one thing they only found a little bit of it so we need to see where it's going and quite what course it's taking and without digging terraces of trenches all over the place a geophysical survey would hopefully get the conditions good oh well the the geological conditions are quite difficult yes techniques we use but there's still some hope [Music] so despite the conditions the geophysics team start to survey the field the hope is that their equipment will be able to detect the remains of the ditches hidden under the ground carrenza is busy surveying the key sites in order to plot them accurately on her new map and in Jim's garden the dig to expose the floor of the guard tower is now truly underway [Music] but why would these defense is necessary who are the Romans afraid of not these two this is Victor's idea to try to show what the local tribe would have looked like Thank You Victor the enemy if you like were the Brigantes they occupied more territory than any other single tribe or in their case group of people's so that's that's a huge area when you're thinking in terms of Roman Britain and Lib Chester was just one of those thoughts that they built in order to well keep the natives at bay keep the people under control and they built into a kind of pattern and here there is the the perfect outline of a Roman fort built according to the manual and we've got various descriptions I mean there's a a wonderful account in this bloke the GTS on how to build your Roman fort by numbers almost you get for instance the sorts of fortification of a camp there are three different sorts of fortification when there is no pressing danger terms are cut from the earth and from them a kind of wall is built three feet high above the ground even says it's advisable ways to have in readiness Mattox rakes baskets and other kinds of tools this is amazing isn't it this real Roman textbook that still exists today [Music] exposed well I think to the left here I think where Patrick is scraping down there that is the that the level from the inside there he's down to the youngest so they're everything this way you dug out yes means we've been has a lot of plans in the back and turaga winter in the entrance with regard for centuries people have been rooting through this material stealing the dress code for their houses just as my cottage there is [Music] one should find out how soldiers are feeling before battle yeah explore carefully how soldiers are feeling on the actual day that they're going to fight for confidence or fear may be discerned from their facial expression their language gate and gestures do not be fully confident if it's the recruits who want battle for war is sweet to the inexperienced honestly you just open any page yeah because I mean least these places are greater this a great quarrys you know when they're abandoned and it's almost certainly is I mean that's in the plinth look yeah I mean people pinching stuff you know the ruins are falling to pieces if helping themselves it probably is taking the mick no that's okay roman whole place is full of bits like that we've actually done some work in the field where we saw you earlier trying to find this early ditch and we've done a magnetic survey on a resistance survey and as we suggested at the time conditions aren't brilliant for the techniques but we've actually come up with some positive results quite exciting results we feel and i've got a couple of early field plots on one i've actually marked the line of the ditch where we've got a waterlogged ditch and low resistance readings this is partial line of the ditch having high readings inside the black areas so where we gonna do you reckon rather on the straight section across it yeah I mean I guess it might be a little bit more interested somewhere near the corner but pays your money in your tapes you know it's on a job like that didn't you you've drawn a purple curve but to my untutored eye this line seems to go straight on as well as curving yes you actually right I mean that there are hints of maybe a further ditch continuing a nascent direction another trench may be there to get an idea of the line that it sets off in well presumably are gonna do some more we're going to do some more survey work and we've got clear evidence of a curving dude that might be a place to dig but you've got the intersection of a straight line and I get both right end of day 1 2 digs to do tomorrow see you after the break oh and don't forget armies are more often destroyed by starvation than battle and hunger is more savage than the sword [Music] stated and we're excavating the Roman stone tower and the defensive ditch but why did the Romans need such a big ditch to protect them when they'd already got the River ripple and the big fort well I hazard a guess but I don't know if I'm right when the Romans invaded not all the Britons were their enemies just like the Americans in Vietnam the Romans set up a series of client states and the local chieftain drowned here the brig antion Queen Carter Mandurah was definitely pro Roman in fact she was so much on the Roman side that when the Celtic chief character 'kiss begged asylum from her she shocked him and turned him over to the Romans but her husband Vinicius led an anti-roman faction and although there was an uneasy truce between husband and wife eventually inevitably I suppose there was a messy divorce and to make matters worse queen carter Manjeera got off with her ex-husband's armor-bearer as you can imagine this meant that venetie skom pletely forgot all about the truce and immediately set up a full-scale uprising against the romans and it was this Briganti an uprising that completely changed roman attitudes towards their defense from the Britons up till now they've relied on small armies and temporary fortresses but from now on they're gonna be massive standing armies and big fortresses so I reckon if we can get a date on this ditch we'll find that it was dug round about the time of the Brigante an uprising anyway that's what I think it's a 832 on Saturday morning but there's still 36 hours to go so we just have to see if the archaeology bears me out [Music] [Music] oh you're not still eating your breakfast this is the Lancaster University archaeology unit then we talked about some work that was done when the sheltered housing was put up I even did that work but you'll probably get a shock when you look around because last night we talked about long trench across the corner over there and we've had a change of heart because we think if there's a tear on that corner it would be a shame to disturb it right it'd be better to leave it and conserve it and leave it intact I thought archeologists were supposed to dig up the most exciting things not ignore them and goes no no not at all so what we're trying to do now is to cut a trench across the line the geophysics chaps found it I've got that paper just showing up like that I'll show the camera all right we've got this trench out over there yep and this trench but nobody's at the moment out over there yep okay and we'll leave in the corner because if there's a tear on there be nice to just leave it for the future how about this is an idea that even this is the stone wards with the river cutting through Church in the middle Jim's tearing the corner we're up in this field here with these two ditches being dug but about this as part of what was a much bigger fort originally or even a much bigger fort with the road coming through like that I don't think it's necessarily a fort yeah because the the civil settlement around it might have a higher status by the virtue of having defenses rise so what we're saying is that it is some sort of ditch to protect something yeah we're not actually sure what it is but you think that it might be if you check this massive fall might be a fault yeah or it might be what we need is some dating it's really - and if it's around the civil settlement then it might mean that that settlement itself has a much higher status yeah more return yeah I've got this brilliant theory that this big ditch could have been dug round about the time of the big antion uprising something like that it's a great story and there's always a possibility what we thought as you as you can see we've got the problem coming up on the other so yeah which is probably the foundation for the main front of each other and again on the back side and then you'll notice on the back further corner we've got some clay rising up you can see distinct - Troy and edit it it appears in the base of the trench as well virtually wrote the way across yeah and that is almost certainly the original clay of the old wooden fort in other words the earlier tone hole the early gravestone wooden fort there into which the stone fort was superimposed I see and what we're hoping to do now what we want to do now is to take most of the diggers away from here now yes and take them over to the where we've been doing the geophysics survey yeah would do two excavations through that and try and pick up the loin of the ditch over there that's what this this clay a sort of subsoil infective Lee it's part of the rampart with the defense's that we think was demolished cut down at some points and then spread flat over the field how do you know it's not just ordinary clay lying under the earth because I saw it before it's right the other thing while we're here is a when you look at in that direction I wonder whether that wasn't pups Martian streams or something out there in the place it's possible although again in 1990 we did find traces of features going going off in that direction and I think certainly your idea that that before the fort there perhaps lots of other camps is a good idea whether how these defenses relate to so we've got three digs now these two and the one gyms yeah and it's and in fact I mean the sort of a turf construction that we're talking about here is exactly the same as the clay that you see in Jim's garden with the clay underneath the stone corner Tower is the plays of the earlier ramparts of the fort using the same techniques I haven't even seen this other dig in fact we we probably don't need to do any more in Jim's garden I think because we've come to the Rome and rampart under the tower and I think rather than hack all that out and again wreck it you know I think we will clean that up and stop at that point what's in what's in his Tower in fact he's the rampart on our turf well I think I'd like to see it before you so things are moving quickly almost too quickly for me but it's good news because we're actually answering the second part of Jim's letter his own garden has now produced further evidence of the earlier phase of Roman activity amazingly he's got two forts not just the work this is Victor's reconstruction of how the stone guard tower would have stood in Jim's garden now I suppose what would be useful is a picture of how the wooden fort might have looked I think it's amazing that you've got all these Roman stones there which I had something like this in my back garden yes you can see the width of the rampart and you can see how it follows a curve with these plinth stones in positions right underneath the house on the visa bike kitchen and 15 feet up exactly where you walk down to the bathroom that's where the Roman soldiers would patrol so you think about yes I do I have a meditation about ancient Rome every morning yes doesn't seem to be all that much activity going around here anymore well I think we've gone as far as we can go really and it's answered some very interesting questions for example we have the floor level here and this presumably down here is the the previous horse yes this clay seems to be associated with the earlier fort and I'm sure that we'll find out much more from these very interesting developments further north so as carrenza starts to transfer the survey information onto her map one of the first things to do is to highlight jim's garden and accurately position the remains of both the stone guard tower and the earlier wouldn't thought [Music] but the focus for the weekend now turns to this field will our two trenches locate the defensive ditch does it run across the field as the geophysics survey suggested and win it date to the same period as the wooden fort the geophysics team meanwhile are busy scanning adjacent fields hoping to find the ditch continuing along the same line down in the trench and I show you well you've got here with a couple sir it's a couple foundation for a rampart Roy a couple start starts here very side grey clay in the front and then all the loose material retained by it at the back burner so in fact everything here you would have had an enormous bang hey but look at that just right at the end of the trench and it always the same everybody didn't do better than Adrian I think we need to extend I think we buy can we go third not the time I think we can afford to do that yeah we need to get the other side of the ditch yeah this way that look invention you make things that a few people that you oughta meet if they look absolutely fantastic Wow Chris this is Tony and Robin hi and I thought they ought to meet some sort of genuine Roman soldiers Roman legionaries the thing about the Army Street guard is it they are authentic and archaeologists conventional archaeologists like may have a tremendous respect to them because the authenticity and is this Punk headdresses for real yeah it's totally correct the Centurions always wore them across the helmet as you can see not from front to back and that would made a horsehair it's great this look at a private little problem oh what a meal a Vegeta says let the adolescent who is to be selected for martial activity have alert eyes straight neck broad chest muscular shoulders strong arms long fingers let him be small in the stomach slender in the buttocks and feet that are not swollen by surplus fat but firm with hard muscle when you see these points in the recruit you needn't greatly regret the absence of tall stature what's this little bark this is basically a map marching on marching pack which each man would have carried it would have carried three days worth of corn in this bag a cloak probably in this bag along these own personal effects and cooking pots was it so it really is like a kit bag but yeah and then you don't overfill yet can you talk us through the armors well Kris because this is all based on excavated bits and pieces and so on and carving the equipment of the Legion II soldier by this time you've got this Imperial Gallic helmet is developed you can see with large cheek pieces to cover the sides of his face large neck guard at the rear of the helmet and here we got a reinforcement which would help to take stored loads if they came down at the front the body armors it's based on an exciting find it was made Corbridge on Hadrian's Wall it's called lorica segment Tata simply means you got segments of metal which are joined together internally if you can see with on leather strap and this makes the armor flexible it means that the soldier can can move about quite easily inside it he's got a military belt around the bottom of the armor at the front of the belt is this apron which everybody talks about which is perhaps more for decoration but maybe maybe psychological to it to protect the lower stomach and private parts are though we find that the protection is more psychological than kill the cameraman that means that you can keep your shield nice and tight to the body and not have to move the shield away to draw the sword it's an incredibly outlandish costumes actually must have felt as outlandish to the britons then as it does to us now I can imagine if you were just you know working away in your heart and you suddenly saw five blokes like this coming over the horizon you would be really freaked out wouldn't you certainly would have been intimidating [Laughter] okay djay certainly very impressive and it does really help to visualize things as they might have been but we thought we'd go one step further their equipment is as authentic as it can be but does it work we asked them to have a go at digging a defensive ditch using the same kind of tools that the Roman soldiers would have used in 70 AD [Music] [Music] exulting think from my point of view is that we are actually finding Roman stuff in our trench yes I think this is brilliant I know you're always so snippy about actual finds this isn't useless to get out the trench what is it well it's probably the top of a Roman burn that he's a hammer mill presumably get this sort of thing yeah common do idea made out of millstone grit so it's very local so it's obviously been broken it's not complete so presumably it got broken and then was just chucked away after they put in all this work they gave they gave underneath you and you found that yeah we can have it barrels up Phil's getting what Sam Ian you know we're getting a lot of this is the high quality Roman stuff at temperature and you must get a lot of yeah the museum's full of it yeah just love this stuff it's got this lovely red strip over the top of it and it's decorating dissipates a lot of e-teens this doesn't actually help us with Jim's letter which is about the defenses but the trenches aren't actually giving us the information which we hope they'd give last night we don't know that these two a similar yes until we look at the digit profiles and the finds from that we don't know that similar I mean I think what it looks as if we may have here is two parts of possibly two forts as well as the stone fort as well as the the fourth hang on yeah well that's not unusual because wherever these areas are dug you get marching camps temporary camps a demotion place they've relay another latte it was another lot of trouble Essen another lots of troops in the build another one and you wind up with these quotes sort of stack of sort of playing card shaped forts all over the place is a veritable second force at the moment it seems to me that what we've got is the possibility of little bits of the whole variety of forts all over the area that we've been looking at but at six o'clock tomorrow we've got to make a presentation to people and incidentally we're supposed to be making a television program so in the end of which hopefully we've got some coherent evidence well we can't work on all of these we just haven't got the resources so what can we do in order to to try and make sure that we've got something to we've talked about this and I think what we've decided is that we're going to carry on with this one and go down because we want some dating evidence probably do JGM is happy with that this one we think we should go for the stone layer and see if there's a ditch hundred will it'll either have a bank and a ditch what it won't all the way through think of use today to dig those two trenches if we continue digging both of them don't we run the risk of doing three-quarters of two jobs rather than simply doing one job well no I don't think so I think we have the capacity to do both and we need answers from both both questions but what I'm trying to prove and so obviously you've got official evidence around this hypothesis is that there was a big expansion of defenses at the time of the Brigante and revolt do you think you can help me out on that I think that's possible if we need the dating evidence from the bottom of there to see whether we're in the same sort of period and we you know we get that tomorrow we hope so just hang on really [Music] [Music] day three it's a beautiful morning but all our lovely theories of the last 48 hours have gone right out of the window that's archeology for youth if you remember in the pub the geophysics boys drew this purple line and we thought that that might mean that there were the remains of some Roman defense system going all the way around here so we dug a trench here which is that one there and sure enough we came to some remains of a Roman defense structure but when we dug round here in this trench which is sort of there we didn't find any such remains at all in fact probably this curve round here isn't anything to do with archaeological material it's probably play or something like that if you look on this magnetometry printout you can see but it looks as though the main line goes down like that that doesn't really seem to be much of a curve so what we're going to do is to dig a little test trench there to try and see whether this line of Defense's goes straight rather than curving round which is what I suggested it might do in the pub you might remember but I don't a crow about that do I it's like Spaghetti Junction here with all these trenches all over the place we've got this fourth one as well won't the ermine Street guard dog for us you've found any evidence of anything we relief in the way we've got so much conflicting evidence that setup found anything here I think would have been even more anybody heard themselves Andy's got a big bruise on his arm where these shoulder pieces have dug into my basket obviously things we're learning from from the only exercise that what it's like to work in armor when you're digging why did they work in their armor why don't they just look in the tunic obviously if it was in a peaceful environment if the practice accountant they might just be in the tunic but they were we're expected in hostile country to still keep their above the armor on do people take the mickey out of you much for dressing up in costumes and marching around the countryside initially there are some people who do think it's a bit of a weird thing to be doing but when they as soon as they realize it it's a serious study of the Roman army and that everything is made as authentically as possible this is stuff that you found what the village did down by the river right okay oh well that's her I think we know what that is that is almost certainly the top of a big M for a jar I draw it this would be the top like that and it would sort of go something like that sometimes with a big handle and sometimes with two handles on and the way to think of these is as a sort of packing crates of the Roman period because the the main things that came in in them were oil and wine an honorable smelly fish sauce called garam which needs to spread on bread rotten fish that was and then when it was empty of course they would use it for storage and what you've got there that bit there is is the top lip like that so it would have stood about yes looks just a paper road right placing because you've got a good loan I go straight the way down there so yeah we could good place to dig and well folks five hours you reckon we can get some it in five hours cat seems confident so fingers crossed and the Irma Street guard are making good progress but what about our other excavation trench to which failed to find the defenses there's at a waste of time well apparently not because what we have here are signs of occupation this is the trench where the quern was found but most significant of all is this post hole from a timber building this is clear evidence of a settlement and fits in with the theory that the ditch we're looking for might have been built to protect the area outside the fort I tell you what muddles me every time you talk about the ditch I think of this long trench here's a ditch isn't it well not really this is this is the limit of our excavation the rectangular box the Roman ditch you can see running across the excavation that's the top of the Roman ditch that guy's shoveling that's absolutely right yeah now what's happened here is we're looking effectively at the surviving bit of rampart that would have defended whatever was back here behind the ditch and they laid down the foundation of cobbles right the way across to give a firm footing then they cut the turf from off the top of the ditch and stacked them there and you can just see the bottom of the vertical face so the rampart would have risen like that and then the spoil from the ditch the soil would have been piled behind the rampart here so effectively you've got a ditch that people fall into and then they climb out of the ditch and they walk into a killing ground so your enemy is charging across the field and they have to drop down into this deep ditch which is obviously much deeper than it is now and then they scramble at the other side onto this bit that you've currently called the killing fields it's the berm we call it the berm yeah and then there are people standing on the rampart throwing nasty pointed things on they have to try and Scrabble out to the turf it's about this high originally so where you are as as far as as they would have got so then what would happen to world they'd be dead so fast they'd be looking fighting upwards like this yeah yeah I have a fairly good only advantage over you anyone already [Laughter] so we're depending on calf can she find the other end of this defensive ditch and can fill there's helping out in trench one find any dateable evidence by digging a bit deeper at least everyone now agrees that this should be the right line to dig even the geophysics lot whose survey of the next field showed signs of the line continuing in that direction the geophysics team have now turned their attention to tracing the outline of the early wooden fort these are the first tube grids and we've now actually done a large area and that's great isn't it and Robin finished me actually falls room villain is just not a you know one of these apps idle things on the back and no it's um it's a playing field this is this is this is no I can see now you tell me yeah I think it's the it's the consciousness period football codes I let it come over left surface opposition well it is it's a it's it's this it what we actually think it's an early phase it could be Italian in origin you're embarrassed about this and I'm guess the weekend is not getting any easier for the geophysics the constant application of lime when marking out the pitch has altered the structure of the soil but they are picking up traces of something else slightly deeper what they have to do now is suppress the pitch information and try and get a clearer picture of the archaeology underneath so how we gonna explain the fact that we've got this network of seemingly unconnected Roman trenches and earthworks and things but I think you've got to you've got who realize that we're talking about different stages of development and responding to possibly change situations so you've got people having second thoughts about how to deal with the problem that surrounded them and we're obviously hoping to get dating evidence for at least one of those stages this weekend so you'd have different fashions of military defense that's right that's right and modernly that you've got to remember that these stages are separated by what 20 30 sometimes 50 years and so it's a different bloke who's arrived to take charge and has different solutions to the problem that faces him they were always ready for disaster I suppose every Roman general bearing in mind disasters of the past was determined that it wasn't going to be put down to him if he got a surprise attack or a surprise ambush in the middle of the night he was gonna make Johnny sure that he didn't look bad on his CV yeah that's changed again I adjourn from what it was totally different shape yeah but this is the last time because I think we've just actually got the bottom now and what have you got well it's the same sort of sequence that we saw earlier I mean there are three there are three ditches or at least three phases to this ditch but what we've what we've just discovered by by cleaning back this section is that where we thought earlier on the something that it might be a military ditch and now I'm absolutely convinced because it's got a very distinctive profile if you if you look down the side here we have a virtually vertical edge down the face that's presented to the attackers and then a much more gentle slope or some asymmetrical profile and that's also in the Roman military manuals it's called the Punic profile ditch unique ditch yep and I'm absolutely convinced that this earliest phase of ditch therefore is a military ditch and what was different about a Punic ditch why did they dig it that way it's just the it's just to get another means of keeping people at bay and making life more difficult for them as they as they approach the Randi means they fall there in the sleep slow yeah and then they're wide open for attack off the ramp as if they're pinned against the back yeah is there any date connotation to that not really no I don't thinks I'm you know I mean I suppose I'd say they were earlier rather than later Yeah right I'm always optimistic what about any finds to help date it for us I'm afraid not I mean from the lower from this lower military ditch which this is what survives of it I'm afraid it's completely sterile in terms of finds if I've got a few pieces of undiagnosed ik Roman pottery Samian and course we're from the later recut which you see is completely different in character because it's a much broader and slightly shallower ditch with this primary sill thing in the bottom I mean I mean we can we can say that that's Roman but I'm afraid oh you are a misery we may not be able to date this Punic ditch but it's fantastic that we have some more evidence from the early period of Roman activity and we have the ditch dug by the ermine Street guard which is now finished it may be small but it's been a worthwhile exercise because it allows the archaeologists to see a ditch dug with authentic Roman tools and this will help them understand the rotted turf remains which they encountered during an excavation all we need to do now is to find out whether the Punic ditch carries on in a straight line was I right well I feel quite embarrassed here actually because both of you on independent occasions suggested this is where the ditch would be and we all wanted it to go across the field so now it's haircalf what have you got well we've got the the outer edge of the ditch sloping down there it was seen early a very very slight slope there's still some fill in the bottom underneath the black and white pole but now it's what nearly three o'clock it seems that time to pack in and record it and you'd have to take the trench a lot further back to get the bottom of the ditch to get the bottom you're confident this is the same as agents got on the other side absolutely confident I mean the material it's exactly over the moon then Jim we're nearly there just with the you know literally the last hour to go yeah we may well be just be able to give you some answer that letter now so just enough time to get ready for the presentation the line of the punic ditch can now be added to our archaeological map of rib Chester by examining the map it's clear to see that this line joins up with the others found by the geophysics team and carrenza during her survey so what we have is one big defensive ditch running around the town the punic ditch is contemporary with the wooden fort found under the stone fort engines garden this is Victor's picture of the stone fort which we've seen earlier but Victor has now prepared another sequence which helps to show how it would have looked [Music] brilliant stuff but Jim actually has two remains of two forts on his premises and this is Victor's reconstruction of the earlier wooden fort Jim will also be able to see Victor's impression of how this fort would have looked in his garden [Music] the geophysics team are hurrying to get ready their work at the playing field site hasn't been wasted they believe they've discovered Roman roads associated with the early fort all of these will then have to be included on this picture which will show the various phases of Roman activity at the punic ditch the line of the wooden fort discovered in 1989 the Roman bathhouse and the outline of the early wooden and later stone fort [Music] the line of the business became white and see how heavy it is [Music] well it's five past six all the local people are here so let's find out what the archaeologists are got to say this is a sum total in Jim of all that we've got your garden all the previous excavations geophysics areas and so on I wish they'd come due to my religion [Laughter] you're so excited about because for me as a layman we've just done two trenches in a ditch among didn't seem that much in any way well even even that's interesting but I mean we've actually been volunteer field we know very little about and it's everywhere we thought we found roaming features I mean that in itself is just brilliant we've looked at the defense's that you found the nineteen eighty again new information about them we've been able to expose a bit more of them and the idea that the first phase of them with this Punic ditch is military and then perhaps modified perhaps fifty years ten years we don't know later a civilian think that expands we were on a whole new track the force about Manchester we've got the network of Roman roads there's a Roman Road that goes right across here right down here this is that the approximate line of this curving around we then got the river coming right here so we've got the whole areas of naturally protected on the intersection of the two Roman roads there and the river which parent is navigable up to this point of probably walls of that debt so you know it's an ideal place to put it so easily defendable point now according to our archaeologists they've totally rewritten the history of the defenses of ancient rib Chester in just three days we haven't found anything to tie the archaeology into the Brigante and revolt but I think that was probably a bit too optimistic without having said that we have found the temporary fortress underneath the big stone fortress so there isn't such a bad start but more importantly up until today everyone thought that the big ancient ditch around rib Chester was a simple harmless civic ditch that had probably been put up to show or just to keep the cows in but we now know that it's a Roman Punic ditch that was put up probably in quite a hurry around a large irregular area for defense so whereas before our picture of the outskirts of rib Chester would have been simple farmers toiling away at their fields we must now start thinking about it as burly Roman guards looking nervously behind them looking a bit like the urban street guard terrified that they get a spear in their backs from some angry local warrior and I think you'll agree there's a pretty different proposition [Music] [Music]

Channel: Time Team Classics

Views: 238,679

Keywords: Team Team, Archaeology, History, Education, Educational, British TV, British History, Tony Robinson, Phil Harding, John Gater, Stewart Ainsworth, Mick Aston, archeological dig, Channel 4, Time Team Full Episodes, Full Episode, ribchester, lanacashire, roman, roman history, roman soldiers, roman military, roman history in britain, roman army, roman empire

Id: 7uGM0aVQHTw

Length: 49min 45sec (2985 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019