Remarkable Dark Age Treasure Found Beneath An Iron Age Village | Digging for Britain

we might be a small island but we've got an epic history and there's a wealth of Untold Secrets still to uncover so every year hundreds of archaeologists dig dive and sift to find Clues abolutely never seen anything anything like it before amazing in 2018 their discoveries have been more exciting than ever look at so that's from a tank then that's brilliant that's a nice find not bad for day two not bad at all each excavation has been filmed as it happened by the archaeologists themselves their dig Diaries mean that we can be there for every exciting moment of Discovery and you imagine him looking every shoulder trying to get away from the enemy acir through that I'll be in the lab where the teams will bring in their finds from pottery and metal work to human remains and we'll take a closer look to find out what these new digs can tell us about our ancestors look at that be very careful I will be careful oh my goodness while archaeologist rature Dave looks into the analysis that goes on long after a dig is finished somebody stabbed her in the back of the head what an awful way to go welcome to digging for Britain in this program I'm joining archaeologists in the North of the country to share in their biggest discoveries yes we go on a hunt for a lost Spitfire from the second world war instrument panel yeah that his new star find and we follow the excavation of a recently identified Anglo-Saxon Cemetery with some very unusual grave Goods that's quite some bling I've come to the national museum of Scotland to see how these discoveries are rewriting British history and I've been given behind the scene's access to explore parts of the collections rarely seen by the public I have the chance to get up close and personal with some of Britain's most intriguing Treasures our first dig takes us to dumre and Galloway in Southwest Scotland and the black lock of meron where a perfectly preserved 2,000 pron 500y Old Village is emerging from the mud moving back into prehistory it is very rare to find actual evidence of the houses our ancestors lived in Timber rots away and very often all that we have left are imprints in the ground but the amazing Wetland preservation at Blacklock means that we have a chance to see what village life in Britain was really like 2,500 years ago back in 2016 digging for Britain got privileged access as a team of archaeologists Unearthed a remarkable lost Village from out of the mud they revealed intriguing sections of wood that had been skillfully crafted into planks and they were in incredible condition wow that's amazing so this is the notch that's been cut to fit around the lower framework all right the finds were so spectacular that we're joining them again as they return to this prehistoric Pompei for their Fifth Season archaeologists Anne Crone and Graham cavers have been the site directors from the very beginning we've got lots of inh sites throughout Scotland but to have this level of preservation on an on a site of this date is very rare indeed and I would say say that it's probably a once in A- lifetime chance to excavate under these conditions using the remains of the round houses dug up over the last four seasons the archaeologists have built up a detailed picture of the village and they discovered that these homes once sat on the Petey edge of a lock that had been drained in the 19th century it's an extraordinary window into Iron Age life but so far they haven't found any personal possessions and this year they're going to dig where they think they're most likely to find them inside the houses they seen make a remarkable Discovery an intact floor made of woven rushes and withies this is ancient matting it looks like chipboard it's so fresh it it's just layer upon layer of brush sedges reads and things like this which have just been compacted down the discovery of the matting gives us an incredible opportunity to Glimpse the skills of our ancient ancestors and their efforts to insulate their homes and make them cozy in these inhospitable conditions and now they've got a floor surface there's a tantalizing prospect that they may find personal items [Music] they eventually make a breakthrough and what is it I have no idea it looks like it's a piece of spindle turned wood Anne has found an intriguing piece of clearly worked Wood Wow it got a hole it's got a hole there never seen anything anything like it before that's amazing we're just removing a very sort of thick layer of laminate Ed flooring materials I was about to start pickaxing and uh this is just lying on one of the surfaces within this house discovering what this artifact is could give the team valuable insights into daily life at blackl and then there's another extraordinary find in a rubbish pit located next to one of the houses oh wow I can see the squash extremely rare yeah yeah my heart actually skipped a bit when I saw it this exquisitely decorated wooden object was found deep in the pit that's the room here so you've got two pieces and then one piece that goes this way and then here is the rim on the other side although squashed flat and in several pieces the team knows what this is It's a beautiful and rare lathe turn wooden Bowl well this has to to be the star find of the entire 5 years of excavation so far the team's discoveries had given us an unprecedented new insight into the lives of the people who lived here at blackl it's been an extraordinary dig I've asked an Crone into the lab to discuss her findings and this s is just amazing I mean that preservation that you're getting and and being able to see not just how the hazes were constructed but starting to find some of the artifacts of everyday life as well most of the time it's been the preservation of the structural remains but that's really changed this year um when we um started finding wooden artifacts for the first time so yeah I know I know I mean it looks so modern I still find it hard to believe that this is a prehistoric artifact but you're you're quite sure about the data it oh absolutely it came out of um very closely Strat ifed deposits and we have um radiocarbon dat the deposit that it came from and it's 2 and a half thousand years old that is it's just crazy yeah it's made of U um which uh is a beautiful wood to carve it's a spindle turned object so it's been sort of mounted with mandrels on either end there it's very clearly designed for something but um I can only speculate as to what it is so these objects were just found in in the floor I mean do do you think that's just happened by accident no I think these um objects have been deliberately placed in the floor surfaces of this um structure possibly reflecting the function that the house has during its current phase so perhaps if this is to do with weaving um that it was a weaving Workshop during that phase and that's a beautiful Bowl uh so this is a this is a turned Bowl which has then been decorated y yeah it's lathe turned it's probably complete but flattened and so what you're looking at is a a reconstruction it's an absolutely beautiful object it seems to be unique in the UK at the moment I've not heard of any other um lathe turned bowls its shape and the decoration which is stunning is really unusual never seen anything like that before until we found this we didn't have very clear evidence for lathe turning in the Iron Age but it's very clear from this bowl that not only were they doing it but they've been doing it for a very long time because this is so accomplished yes so they're very good at it and similarly with the uh the Baton as well how extraordinary to to turn up for those two objects which are which as you say are utterly unique in Bri in one digging season you wonder what you know what else is out there we're going to be able to look much more carefully at what's going on inside the the houses what sort of activities are taking place and get closer to the people and and how wonderfully close you got this year with that bowl this whatever it is strange but very useful object on a postcard please the dig at this very special iron a site allows us to see that our prehistoric ancestors were perhaps more technologically advanced than we've previously thought our next investigation takes us on the hunt for an RAF Spitfire lost on a World War II reconnaissance assignment and it sheds light on a forgotten hero on the 5th of March 1942 flight left tenant Alistair gun took off from the RAF base at Wick in Northeast Scotland he was on a highly dangerous top secret mission ordered by Winston Churchill and it was a mission that he wouldn't return from alive gun was tasked with monitoring the activity around the German battleship turits which Hitler was using to intercept the Allied Forces Merchant Fleet but only a few hours in Alistair was shot down over the mountains near the Trondheim field in Norway the Spitfire is arguably our most iconic fighter plane famous of course for the role it played during the Airborne conflict that was the Battle of Britain but there is another another side to the Spitfires story reconnaissance Spitfires like the one flown by flight leftenant Alistair gun plays a vital role bringing key intelligence back to Britain but these planes are now extremely rare So finding this one would be a real coup nearly 80 years after it went down aircraft engineer Tony Hoskins is driving all the way from Britain to Norway to lead the surge it's the earliest model photo reconnaissance uh machine that was designed so we know we're on to something really quite special here so it is literally on the other side of that Hill I'm I'm very excited with a team of historians engineers and Aviation enthusiasts Tony hopes to find the exact spot where plane crashed bringing us close to the gritty realities faced by the raf's brave reconnaissance [Music] Pilots it's a daunting task and the team have only 3 days to find and recover the plane anxious definitely anxious it's 3 km and about 1,000 M climb and of course we're coming back down with a significant out of Spitfire Tony knows that gun's plane was shot down somewhere over these mountains and he's narrowed down the location using German accounts and local reports to find the crash site I've just stood on a piece there's more here there steel down there it's it's just everywhere luckily for the team there's more wreckage than they'd ever hoped for this is the radiator door and that's really lovely considering it sat here for 76 years that's in uh astonishingly good condition suddenly one of the team finds something that brings them even closer to flight leftenant gun's final moments before he bailed out so this is uh a piece of the canopy uh the perspect so this was last look through by gun 5th of March 1942 and imagine him looking every shoulder trying to get away from the enemy airra through that absolutely fantastic to find a bit of canopy every piece that they Salvage will help reveal how this particular Spitfire was stripped back and streamlined as a reconnaissance machine that's amazing very good yeah cuz that's almost the mount for his headrest you can't get more in the cockpit than that star item because that is a brilliant piece discover the past with exclusive ancient history documentaries and adree podcasts presented by world renowned historians from history hit watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device download the app now to explore everything from the wonders of Pompei to the rebellion of budika and the mysteries of prehistoric Scotland immerse yourself in the captivating stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description with nearly 19 hours of daylight in Norway's summer months Tony and his team could just keep digging but they know they've got to leave enough time to carry the recovered pieces back down the mountain the next morning they're back this looks like the O again bottle 1940 1940 dat on it these oxygen canisters allowed the reconnaissance Pilots to fly higher than their fighter counterparts the discovery of key reconnaissance items is a boost but Tony soon realizes that they need to widen the search area so we were hoping that a lot of it had gone Bang into here where it appears it's exploded and Scattered over a wide area although the team now have more ground to cover the new search area pays dividends see it there we go well done ped instrument panel yeah this is what we call the blind flying panel from the middle of the cockpit uh this is the Artificial Horizon with its casing so when you're flying in Cloud he would be able to know whether he's banking climbing or descending that is new star find Al the gun's blind flying panel very careful that's the airplane portion and that oh look artificial RIS artificial Rising what do you want to find say something directly relates to him the instrument panel and it's in one piece can't believe that I really can't believe that amazing is it they're clearly delighted to have found such a recognizable fragment the instrument panel and guns cockpit thank you very much we've had a fantastic day we've managed to get about 2third of what we found today off but we think the new areas that we found around are going to continue to give It's the final day of the Dig and the team have only hours left but what they want more than anything what for them is the Holy Grail is the reconnaissance [Music] camera wow this is uh maybe some electrical coil maybe on there this is interesting cameras could be here the writing on the top says heater front lens camera 14 and 20 in lenses that's right camera f24 so it carries 14in lens could you find the film please like to get it developed no problem finding the camera mount takes the team right to the heart of gun's Mission the photos taken by reconnaissance Spitfires played a key role in the Allies success but of course the photos from this camera as gun himself never made it back I've invited Tony Hoskins and colleague Mark hilia into the lab to take a closer look at this strategically important plane and to uncover the story of its Brave pilot Tony I think the first question to ask is how on Earth did you know where to start looking for this Spitfire well it was a long process we had the combat report from the German who shot him down so we knew a rough area to start looking in and then thankfully local knowledge uh proved to be the way forward although it's not a big airplane when you compare it to a mountain um it's going to be it's going to be all in the same kind of area it ends up being a bigger area than we thought but we we came away with 70% of the airplane so what do we what are we looking at here where which part of the aircraft is this from so this section is from the wing um so this is a wing skin on the top and what's interesting about this part is that you can see the pr blue so all the photographic reconnaissance aircraft at that time were painted in this for camouflage yeah and this is the round so the identity markings uh that he carried on the aircraft just so that you didn't get any friendly fire so obviously that's really important in terms of identifying it as British and the color is right as well for photographic reconnaissance Spitfire and with theyve been blue all over then the same color top surface and Underside were all blue exactly that some of the photographic reconnaissance aircraft later on were painted pink where were they pink uh desert mostly wasn't it yeah Sun rise in the morning and the Dust In The Sky becomes Pinky and it was it was stripped back in order to do this was it that's right I mean they only Built 220 of them so it's a very rare item yeah they were unsung heroes if you think that they were often flying 4 and 1/ half hours sometimes long sorties over water on their own 30,000 ft and unarmed so obviously when they got to the Target area there's always the risk of enemy aircraft and being shot down as ala found out to his cost yeah and and you found not the camera itself so this is this is a camera of another plane presumably so it carried three cameras it carried one that pointed out the side and two that pointed out the bottom and it was the very first um setup for making 3D photographs and that they these would be mounted in a frame and uh we've got the frame that's the frame at the front so that's that's part of the frame that mounted the camera yeah so that frame would have looped around the top up here and then alist would have set it in on a dial for the height that he was clear a cloud and could see the Target and then the cameras would have motored to to give two angles that would have focused at the ground at that point just how important was photo reconnaissance at this time I think people underestimate the importance of it if you think this was the intelligence gathering arm of all the armed forces and even the RAF today you know photographic reconnaissance is really key and massively important and then you've got this amazing insight into the cockpit that Alistair was sitting in and and this is the housing for his instruments really important piece of the cockpit and also the engine instruments around to the right but just to think that he was in the cockpit you know in 1942 the last person looking at those instruments this is um part of the fuse large uh and it's just from the cockpit section just about where aler was sat and the Machine Gun round has come through the cockpit and this is the exit point from the the fuse large it tells quite a grim story of the last few moments of of his struggle to get away from the Germans uh and then obviously he eventually he lost that fine had to bail out of the aircraft so he bails out he he parachutes he he survives this what happens to him eventually he spent a night in a Hut on the hill on the night of the fifth and then despite the help of the locals he took the decision it was best to hand himself in eventually was sent to stag of 3 which was the camp made famous in the film the greater SC yeah and he got involved with the tunneling committee and Doug first one tunnel which was discovered by the Germans and then embarked on a second rather famous tunnel which was the tunnel Harry but did he make it out he he did Escape in the tunnel but they got to within 25 km of the port they were going to use to get to Sweden when he was uh discovered he was writing letters home to his parents and sadly his last letter he wrote uh was on the 19th of March 44 of course he escaped on the night the 24th 25th and the letter arrived at his parents house on the 15th of May uh but sadly the next day on the 16th of May was the telegram from the war office saying that he'd been uh executed that's just horrendous I mean he astonishingly Brave they're often forgotten about so this this story is really important not just alist but all of the pru Pilots too that's fantastic that's the thing isn't it is it's not just about going and recovering pieces of metal from the side of a mountain it's about it's about recovering this story and remembering him the discovery of this Spitfire by Tony and his team has graphically underlined just how risky these vital reconnaissance missions were the fragments of Alistar gun's plane recovered from that Norwegian mountain side are a memorial to Just One of world war II's forgotten Heroes our next investigation takes us to the r Fort of vinder Landa in North umberland vindel Landa is near Hadrian's Wall the northernmost Frontier of the Roman Empire for almost 300 years its numerous fors were key to the stability of military rule in this inhospitable and dangerous No Man's Land Roman sites are invariably rich in fines but very few in Britain have delivered the sheer range of artifacts that we've found at vindel Landa from swords to sandals and even handwritten notes from the soldiers themselves now people have been digging at vindolanda for decades revealing the rich and layered history of the Romans in britan but can this year's dig uncover fresh insights about a particularly turbulent episode during those centuries of Roman rule this summer archaeologists have been digging into the ditches vindel Lander's Frontline defenses where the discoveries have been spectacular look at that beauty and it's all down to the anerobic conditions in this soil behind the scenes post excavation work is transforming our knowledge of one of the most turbulent times in the history of velanda the second century Civil War archaeologist Rea Dave is getting a privileged look at the conservation work taking place during this year's digging season every archaeologist dreams of working on a site like vinder Landa each object that's uncovered is so precious that it makes their post excavation Labs like the emergency rooms of archaeology each object needs conservation immediately or else its Secrets could be lost forever I'm going to follow the process of conservation from start to finish but while I wait for something to turn up in the trenches I've met up with site director Andrew Burley to find out more about this year's Mission Andrew what are you actually concentrating on this year well we're focusing at the end of the second century and the beginning of the third century when we have a Roman army in Britain trying to suppress Rebels but they're also fighting amongst themselves in the ditches we're getting the evidence some things that are tossed away during that very brief but intense period of time and it's a little sort of vindel Landa Pompei because it's only occupied for a few years but everything is sealed so it's giving us a lovely Slice of Life back in the trenches the digging team make a discovery in the second century antonine dig so Andrew and I head over to see what they found oh I can actually see it now so I can see see the soul cominging around that's it there it is another Roman shoe of inera there was a bit of a shoe the other day but this is the first complete one fantastic feeling thrown away by somebody 1900 years ago fabulous to find it now the shoe is out of the ground every second counts so I'm taking it over to Barbara Burley in the vindel Landa conservation lab she's going to show me what happens next shall we open it up and have a look yeah yeah I'm really excited to have a look at it actually uh probably a man's shoe by initial inspection wow look at that and you've even got the heel strengthener just here shall we get it washed up and have a look at it yeah I'd love to Barbara separates the very fragile shoe from its mud cocoon using a soft brush and water so you do this process almost immediately we try to do it as fast as we can because they will continue to degrade until we put them into some sort of chemical bath especially the organic objects like the leather Barbara has given me a Char shoe to clean I don't normally get a post excavation opportunity so I'm looking forward to this am I using just cold water or can I use hot as well we don't want it to be too hot because that could actually kind of shock leather right okay here it goes [Music] the next step is to put them in these mesh bags that we've got we use these bags in order to keep any sort of little bits that come off of it into the bucket here it is then preserved using a cocktail of chemicals including acetone which stabilizes the leather the whole process takes over 5 hours but once completed the shoe will be preserved for posterity and go on show in the museum with some of the other remarkable finds from the excavations back at the Fort I meet with Andrew to find out more about the recent shoe discoveries in the ditches so what do the shoes tell us about this particular period of conflict if we look at all of them together and there's almost a thousand of them now from this particular period 45% are non-adult male shoes in other words they children their women they teenagers and that just changes the whole nature and the complexion of of of what was going on what it was like to be part of this community it's really hard to imagine that those women and children would have seen exactly the same Horrors as the men that were stationed here some of the things they would have seen are horrendous we have evidence here of people who've had their heads cut often mounted on poles on the ramparts and if you're a little child running around that's the kind of thing that you're going to see the analysis of the shoes has given us a fresh understanding of the people who lived here at feranda during those turbulent years and it's given us a new take on the horrors endured by the inhabitants of this fort at the [Music] time our next dig takes us to scrii on the tip of the Lincolnshire wals and a discovery which could fill in some gaps about what we know about Britain after the Romans left a period sometimes known as the Dark Ages around 1500 years ago so history tells us Britain was invaded by wave upon wave of Germanic tribes the angal the Saxons the Judes and they transformed our country giving us the English language and the basis of our laws but actually there is very little in the way of written records from the time so if we want to understand Anglo-Saxon Society and its cultural connections we have to turn to archaeology and this next excavation gives us a chance to find out more last year local landowner and metal detectorist Jim Hoff was exploring Fields next to his home where he came across some rare and intriguing objects a small team of archaeologists from the University of Sheffield started to investigate and it wasn't long before they uncovered some grave leaves dating to the late fth early 6th centuries packed with jewelry and other precious Goods the discovery was so rich and so intriguing that this year they're returning for a full excavation led by Hugh Wilmot here we are at scrm B and let's go and look at the site so one of the questions we got here is the people who are buried here were they born here in Lincolnshire are they of second generation migrants or perhaps their ancestors have always lived here and they've just adopted new Styles and Fashions of the incoming Anglo Saxons and these are all questions we can hopefully answer from the grave Goods they've been buried with but also some of the science we can do back in the lab analyzing the skeletons and the objects buried with them should provide insights into whether these people were British natives or immigrants the team has stripped large area and have already identified a number of Graves in the ground possibly there's the fill of another grave coming through here after last year's dig they're expecting some great finds from the site and they're not disappointed it's the second day and we just started Excavating some of the gray and here we got one leg running down here quite a large FEMA there and lying right next to it here is a huge spearhead and it dates to about 525 to about 550 ad and this largest kind of spear you're going to see in the Anglo-Saxon world as the team targets some of the other Graves they are rewarded with even more exotic finds we have this pretty well preserved skeleton of an adult female down at her hip she's got the remains of an ivory bag ring and this went around the mouth of a sort of fabric bag that would have hung from a hip and inside it were all sorts of artifacts Ivory was a red commodity in Anglo Saxon Britain but this isn't the first ring to be uncovered here we found one elephant Ivory bag ring last year and already just over a week into the Dig we found two more so what stage are we at with this one Megan we're going to lift the copper rooch and this other tube bead and then the girdle hanger oh wow I think that's the nicest one we've got so far after 1500 years in the ground the ring is extremely delic beautiful good job team and now lifted it'll be sent to the lab for analysis so one of the things we can do which is quite simple is radiocarbon date the elephant Ivory to see how old it is now if it's sort of sixth Century in date it probably tells us it's coming from Africa but if it ends up being so 10,000 BC they must be reusing mammoth ivory so that that's quite an easy one to test out and pieces of exquisite jewelry are turning up in further female Graves now James has got a bead here a very very fine little Amber bead sources of Amber are rare in Britain but they're finding a surprising amount of this material here we've nearly finished Excavating this burial here um and it has a a young lady in it and on her forearm is the skeleton of a baby baby placed upon both the mother and the baby were a large quantity of beads so far we've got nearly 500 of them it's really quite extraordinary many of these female skeletons are buried with elaborate bead necklaces that's quite some bling it's been a successful excavation and with so many intriguing discoveries what can the archaeologists tell us about these people and their bling [Music] I've asked Hugh Wilmot into the lab to give me some answers Hugh this is an astonishing s it is completely knew nobody knew it was there oh absolutely um there hasn't been a cemetery in this location recorded before at first we thought it's just going to be a standard sort of sex and Cemetery but actually it's turned out to be rather more interesting and and just extraordinary finds amazing you've brought some of them in here together with one of the skeletons are these finds that were actually found associated with this skeleton yes these are some not all the finds that were found with this skeleton but here are some of the sort of the more diagnostic ones and some of the large ones they seem to be very richly furnished Graves they're extremely richly furnished of the 24 Graves we excavated only one had no artifacts in which is a very unusual uh proportion so she would have been placed in the grave fully clothed them with all her oh yes absolutely all her accessories what's that it looks like a little Buckle well these are these are where the finds start getting a bit more special yeah it's a very unusual design that you don't normally find in Lincolnshire where do you normally find it then well not many buckles like this have been found but where they have been they've been found in Kent or on the south coast of England oh really so yeah quite some way away absolutely is that one of the amber beads it is it's a small bead they're quite simple quite plain but this is just one example of them of which we had hundreds I mean there seem to be extraordinary numbers in in each grave or at least some of the graves were were just full of these beads absolutely it's clearly one of their sort of biggest fashion statements of these necklaces and certainly the most visible thing and do we know this Amber has come from CU obviously that's not local we do 20 years ago all these techniques for provenancing the Amber looking at the sort of ivory you know we we couldn't do that so you had to speculate but now we can actually put some hard answers to some of these questions and this comes from the Baltic which is perhaps not unsurprising because we know that the Baltic is a major supplier of Amber and now what about that Ivory is that likely to have come along a similar reach then from northern Europe into Northern Asia well that's an interesting question because in the past people have speculated that perhaps because you got an Amber trade coming from the Baltic that perhaps Ivory was coming in the form of mammoth ivory from Siberia where it's preserved in the permafrost and perhaps the same trade routs are bringing that Ivory but we've done radiocarbon dating on this Ivory and it's clearly contemporary to the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery so it must be an elephant yeah because mammoths weren't weren't there at this time' extinct for 10,000 years so um you know this has come from either Africa or maybe even India and what about the individuals themselves because you can Provence the Amber and the ivory there's a chance of provenancing these individuals so do you have any results from that yet we do and that's what's so exciting previously we've kind of speculated where these people may have come from whether they're perhaps you know locals who have adopted new fashions or have they actually migrated from you know Northern Germany from Denmark um and we've done IP analysis on this individual and we came up with quite a surprising result they're not from Lincoln but they're also they're not from further a field in terms of across the North Sea this individual grew up um on the south coast Kent perhaps around as far as Brighton that kind of a region really yeah so I isn't it extraordinary to have that level of biography of somebody absolutely that you that you know that as a young girl she was living down in the Southeast and then and then she she moved northwards and ended up in Lincolnshire yeah for me this is where she came from she's wearing things still which har back to her childhood in Kent absolutely absolutely so there's a memory that lingers yeah this new discovery at scramby is revealing some wonderful detail of life in the Dark Ages and it's allowing us to delve deeper into the cultural connections of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors across the British Isles and beyond our next dig diary takes us to the furthest reaches of Northern Scot SC and the remote island of Rousey in orne the islands of orne are home to an abundance of well-preserved archaeology and Rousey is no exception having been nicknamed the Egypt of the north but its sites are often troubled by more than their fair share of bad weather with aggressive Tides causing erosion along the coastline but sometimes with destruction comes dis Discovery in 2010 winter storms revealed a line of stones on a beach and archaeologist realized that they could be looking at the first signs of an ancient Monument dating right back to Britain's earliest civilization perhaps even a new Jewel in ory's [Music] Crown this summer the team is back on site for their eighth season and they're led by Steve doel and Julie Bond from the University of Bradford orne is peppered with Incredible prehistoric sites and the team already believed that they found something very special here on Ry a Neolithic tomb dating back more than 4,000 Years photos taken just a few years ago show the circular walls of the monument the way they built these tombs was to build up concentric walls of of stone so you end up with a kind of a big Mound and over the years you end up with something like a green hill but these rings have now been reduced to Rubble much of the monument has already been destroyed by the Sea it's heartbreaking that we're watching this thing disappear but it gives us an opportunity to excavate and to pick this apart and to really understand how these were built this golden opportunity should provide invaluable Clues Into The Monument's Construction and use over time before it is lost to the waves forever well this is the second day of uncovering the chambered tomb we are a little bit worried as to how much is still left mly this passage is still here it looks from the angle as if some of the lower parts might have disappeared once they've removed the protecting Stones laid over the site the team are down to the well-built walls of the Tomb the wall goes off down onto the beach curves around in a huge Ark and comes back again this seems to be the doorway and as they dig through into the passageway the archaeologists uncover some tantalizing Clues as to the tomb's internal construction my Lord wow look at that that is huge as they've gone back into this area here enormous great stones of a pit and they are absolutely massive we're talking about something before they broke that would be about this wide so that's got to be roof of something lenal from something which is really interesting these huge slabs would have spanned the width of the passageway and they remind us that our Neolithic ancestors were skilled Engineers the team team wants to locate the central area of the Tomb so this year they've been given an opportunity to move further landward but it's already thrown them a Monumental curve ball as the team excavate down through the Main's Central top layers they come across evidence that just doesn't add up someone seems to have made this tomb into a home but this is the surprise this year this is the thing we didn't quite expect it looks like we've got an Iron Age house right in the top of the Tomb you can see there's a series of bright Stones going around in an ark and then there's another wall quite a big wall coming around this way as well this new evidence suggests that the Neolithic tomb which housed the dead over 4,000 years ago then became a home to the living 2,000 years later the new circular feature indicates that this this is an Iron Age roundhouse constructed deep into the central parts of the monument the insertion of this younger building into the original structure is a revelation for the archaeologists who now believe that this wasn't the only new build in the area in another trench just yards from the tomb's entrance way the tomb have uncovered yet another stone-built structure and it has a surprising array of features look at yes this is architecturally very characteristic of a pictish building which is roughly 500 to 900 ad we've got a staircase that leads down and into the building we've got a central Hearth but crucially around it as well we've got really black layers filled with charcoal and other material and two Anvil Stones set next to the halfth remarkably what the archaeologists have discovered is a Scottish Iron Age or pictish blacksmith Workshop over a thousand years old and as they dig the final layers they uncover evidence of early and extremely rare industrial activity including copper working we would expect all settlement sites to have evidence of blacksmithing but to find a building that is a dedicated copper Smith work Workshop is exceptional we would normally only expect to find such a site in very very high status sites and in larger Urban settlements as the team records the final sections of the Smithy they get one more surprise there are greasy finger stains on one of the Anvil stains an incredible link straight back to the blacksmith who worked in this building over a thousand years ago I've asked Julie Bond and Steve dockrell into the lab to tell me more about this extraordinary place this is such an incredibly complicated site we have dug sites in the northern ises before so we knew they were complex but this is a an order above I think what is amazing about this site is that it was a real hot bed of activity I think it must have been a very busy place and the the the archaeology there is quite remarkable we get settlement build up for these long periods of time and what about the ReUse of this Neolithic tomb it seems very odd that Iron Age people should come along and I just want to build their houses into the side of it it may be because it's a ready source of of dressed Stone it may also be something to do with identity and ownership of that part of the of the landscape maybe they have an interest in what's gone before that it's not just about using the stone that they they're close to the ancestors perhaps close to the ancestors and then you've got evidence of metal work this is probably part of the twer which is basically usually a piece of stone or a block of clay that you put the Bellows through it to protect the Bellows from Catching Fire right so that you can pump air into your house to get the temperature up high yeah so we actually know where the Smith was sitting and where the person working the bellows was sitting in that little building yeah yeah see how they've lived their lives in those places which and see where people have kneeled I me that's right I was amazed by that that must be a very rare find indeed I mean you you can see those fingerprints there and you can can see these carbon splodges where we think the Smith was would have been kneeling up against it yeah uh this is a beach Cobble that's been used as a Hammerstone and they're incredibly strong so they they make ideal anvils yeah and we only found these finger marks when we cleaned it it was totally invisible when we were Excavating it how have they survived it would have been dark metal would have been glowing it would have been hot Smoky lots of carbon lots of sweat so kind of grease and so together staining the stone I don't think I've ever had quite such a a vivid understanding of how somebody used to building we can actually piece together exactly how people operated so that's quite an unusual thing for archaeology to be able to place people into it the sort of place that that people coming to Walky would have heard about would have known about would have known about it was a highway there's a gateway to the Atlantic going out go that way and that's all you have in front of you yes is the Atlantic turn left and you're heading towards the rest of Scotland and down through the islands towards Ireland turn right right you're heading to Scandinavia and of course that was so important in the Viking period this Gateway works both ways because the Vikings we know were certainly settled nearby possibly on this site because they first generation Vikings were buried close to this site and so it's a bit of a Temptation isn't it if you're sailing past this wonderful site with the you know with its own copper Smith and all these indications of wealth and you're a viking in a long ship are you going to leave that alone these new discoveries on Rousey show that far from being a remote group of islands orne was a vibrant and busy Hub which was occupied by wave after wave of people for thousands of years through prehistory at the national museum of Scotland they have further evidence of this activity The Collection Center hazes some 12 million objects and amongst them is an artifact that speaks of the in dur during importance of ory sitting right at the center of a maritime Network that continues into the Viking period the westest brooch was found in 1963 in a viking burial not far from the Neolithic tomb on Rousy I've met with early medieval expert Dr Adrien malardo who's going to tell me more about this Exquisite object so Adrian these these object all come from the same grave and and usually I'd be fascinated in these beautiful broaches but they're slightly eclipsed by this amazing object not only is this the best example of a brooch pin of its kind the entire grave is the richest female viking burial in Scotland the technology of filigree that sort of dotting of gold into beaded wire that's something that we're getting from Anglo-Saxon metal work at this time that is then adopted into Irish and Scottish metal working here you can see the head of a kind of beaked creature and then you have this amazing sort of wolf head of sort of ferocious creature yeah do we know anything else about her do we know uh where she came from I mean did she did she live in orne or was she from elsewhere now this is an interesting thing one of the things that they've been able to do is test the teeth of the females in the west Nest Cemetery to see whether they were local or not and what's come out of this is that they're not from orne but they're from somewhere in the British Isles either from Eastern Britain Loland Britain or Loland Ireland so they're not local with them people from outside ory are settling in orne at that time they're creating new settlements and sometimes sort of continuing older ones say orne was a a great place to be it was right at the center of this Viking World absolutely if you're involved in long-distance sea trade ory is where you want to be [Music] discoveries like this from the Viking age shows how archaeology can change the story of Britain and revise our understanding of life in the past our final dig takes us to the city of sufed where archaeologists are delving into the heartland of Britain's industrial revolution to uncover the largest jail in Georgian England the site of new Bailey prison sits on the edge of the river irwell in an area linked to the heavy industrialization of suf which began over 200 years ago as salford's industry boomed its population expanded and crime increased at its Zenith new Bailey prison was the largest in the country and it could hold 750 prisoners now an excavation provides an unprecedented opportunity to find out what the lives of those prisoners were like during the Industrial Revolution as part of a major regeneration of sulf archaeologists are getting a chance to scrape back the centuries and reveal evidence of a radical new approach to Crime and Punishment on site are a team from the University of sford headed by Rachel rer and Mike Nel they are currently in their Fifth and final year and and digging for Britain has been following them all the way the Dig is focusing on the later 1820s extension of the prison and preservation is looking good what we are seeing is how these buildings were actually built the foundations are surviving two even 3 m deep in places which is is brilliant and better yet is that these new discoveries aren't even documented on the plans all of this is below ground so we certainly had no idea that this was here we're finding those little bit of extras that kind of help tell the story about this site further exploration of the foundations has uncovered hints that the prisoners may have been allowed some surprising Creature Comforts oh blind me there it is so we found what looks like the remnants of a heating system which is very unusual completely unexpected not on the maps and Andy thinks he's discovered where the main boiler was positioned you have a staircase so the stairs came down here there's your access to your Boiler House this is probably part of the fire pit underneath the actual boiler itself the heat would have gone up that would have been flu going into the other cells and there's Coke it's a great indication what they're actually doing in there just further evidence that we've definitely got a heing system here and heating isn't what you'd expect to find in a prison of this age we know the really poorest working classes actually were being better fed and better looked after in this prison than they would be out in the industrialized slums in the 1840s but despite being heated some of the cells became increasingly cramped this is probably no more than two by two MERS more than one person would have had to have slept in here possibly up to three people at one point as the local population expanded and crime increased the number of prisoners eventually became overwhelming ultimately the prison has far more people in it than it was originally designed for this was recognized in the 1860s as being unworkable hemmed in by Urban developments the prison couldn't expand and it finally closed in 1868 making way for the larger prisons of an even more brutal Victorian age I've asked Rachel Rita and Mike Neville into the lab to discuss their discoveries and find out more about prison life at new Bailey during the Industrial Revolution this is an incredible opportunity to excavate a prison which starts in the gean period and goes all the way through into the Victorian period the prison was built at a time of improvement and Enlightenment this is a new type of prison building it's one of the first of its type in the UK and you discovered quite a lot that isn't on the plans what was the most surprising thing about it to you I think the discovery of a heating system in the cells which was completely unexpected not on the plans and that's part of the flu is it it absolutely is yeah yeah so there were several of these kind of built up into a wall and it would have basically directed the hot air from this boiler to the cells how effective it was we don't actually know but we've got we've got it which was which was fantastic and in terms of what life was like for the prisoners it can't have all been a Bed of Roses surely living in a prison like that it's not designed to be a Bed of Roses no absolutely not I mean we know we know from the records that some of those that were sentenced to hard labor had to work on the treadmill and we know that they were climbing around 20,000 ft a day that's 2/3 the height of Everest and now initially it was actually connected to um a mill that kind of ground up um wood for D which was kind of then then passed out and sold to the local Mills but then it was disconnected eventually so we know that they were climbing on that for absolutely no purpose whatsoever and what about the population in the prison who would have been there what kind of cross-section of society we would have had men women we would have even had children in here I think there record show that the youngest children we would have had would have been about 9 10 years old well you have to remember that these are minor offenders they're not mass murderers that that they're not they're not people who've committed a serious crime it's petty theft it's it's broading in the streets it's vagrancy now that means they're from the poorest part of the working population of sford and Manchester and we do have some comments from women bursting into tears when they are about to be released from the prison the face with going back to to those kind of Slum conditions yeah and and your excavations have shown that that at least they were in a place which was you know heated during during the winter this fascinating excavation has allowed us to go beyond the written record uncovering a revolutionary and more human approach to the criminal system in the 18th century that's often hidden from [Music] View from uncovering A Lost World War II plane and the tragic story of its Brave pilot to glimpsing an incredibly well-preserved Iron Age Village occupied over 2,500 years ago we've been able to reach back through the centuries and touch the lives of our ancestors [Music] [Music]

Channel: Unearthed History - Archaeology Documentaries

Views: 44,683

Keywords: Unearthed History, History, Ancient History, ancient, Archeology, Documentary, Archaeology, Digging for Britain

Id: GYhcbAo0Dyo

Length: 59min 20sec (3560 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024