Rooting For The Romans | Time Team (Roman Documentary) | Timeline

welcome to Bedford Pearlie woods in Cambridge er it's the kind of place you think would be the enemy of our colleges because you can't see anything because of all these trees but take a look at this this stunning aerial picture was taken by firing lasers between the trees it shows all the lumps and bumps and you see this thing here it could that be a building and another one there and there and there and there so is this some kind of complex well back in the 1800s an antiquarian noted the remains of some Roman buildings in this wood and apparently some Roman statues nearby so could this high-tech picture be showing us those remains and a lot more besides maybe some kind of extensive Roman settlement over the next three days time team are going to risk being bitten to death by midges and small spiders as they attempt to solve the Roman mystery in the woods [Music] [Music] Bedford Pearlie would is in the NIEM Valley in Cambridgeshire about 15 miles from Peterborough 1,800 years ago this was one of the wealthiest areas of Roman Britain and our site would have been on the outskirts of dura breve the main trading centre in the region but while most Roman sites around here have been damaged by modern plowing it looks like whatever's hidden in these woods could be really well preserved our challenge is simple enough what were the Romans doing here but thanks to the trees finding out isn't going to be that easy it's a nightmare for geophys as you can see we've streamed a lot of the open areas but we can't string them all because the other problem is this is a National Nature Reserve and there's lots of protected plants here John you having a good day wonderful so once though we don't have to wait for GF is because in some places we can actually see Roman walls on the surface it's sticking above the ground under the ground no doubt this is why the site was first discovered by an antiquarian back in the early 1800s and it's because the remains are close to the surface that they've also shown up so well on this slide our picture the colors by the way represent height with green marking the low ground and white the highest and we know that some of these buildings are Roman because a few test pits have been dug but not enough to work out what was actually going on here so we're opening these two trenches to try and solve the mystery this change here is an extension of the test B to see more of what's left of the road so look at the condition of the Roman remains this one is right at the other end of the site to see if it's the same type of structure down there it's great to see the trenches started so soon especially for the local archaeologists who invited us here and is perplexed by this site I mean the first thing is it appears to be huge from the lidar I mean it's a massive site isn't it but there's a fairly distinct range of what appear to be buildings running roughly north-south here and you can possibly spot individual rooms within them and then there's a probable courtyard out here and then there's a whole load of pockmarked face pits here are these quarry pits from the from the iron working industry that we know was in this area alright then at first glance what do you reckon it might be is it a massive villa is it a massive industrial complex is it a military complex all of those all of them and then there's the iron worker that as you said all the pitting around it as well well if anyone can sort it out my money's on Phil who's now extending Ben's test pit and opening up a much bigger trench this should give us a far better chance of working out what type of buildings we have here we've also got this detailed plan of the earthworks drawn when the test pits were dug but I'm not sure it's any help to us there's a huge mismatch between the neatness of that map and what I can see on the ground but look at that is that an earthwork or is it part of this root system or just a tumble of stones or something I can't see any buildings here at all Phil you sure we're digging in the right place I mean we're digging in the right place well look at that lovely and neat look at that chaos but don't actually regard that as extremely chaotic there's a rather large archaeologists in my eyeline we've got a nice long straight row here it's all built of stone and look we've even got one stone on top of another stone no then what would you call that it's a wall thank you I eat my words that's really what you reckon we've got it well you see this is the problem you've got that plan which shows a series of earthworks yeah it is very very easy to assume that all the upstanding bits are walls now when they dug you're a little early wrong they know for a fact that well sometimes where the earthworks there weren't walls sometimes there were walls and they weren't earthwards it is not as clear-cut as that drawing suggests we don't also know whether or not it's the same phase so there was some sense in my point just looking at this tumble doesn't necessarily mean that you can interpret where the buildings are that is not your question your question was are we digging in the right place yes we're digging in the right place moving quickly on over in our second trench Matt is investigating an area that's never been dug before essentially we need to know if this earth work bank is part of the Roman settlement or is something else entirely I think we've actually got a stone wall coming here you can see it seems to be a face there and it follows the bank mind it's just a bit of tile isn't it it's just in the rubble seeks the line of the wall they're promising so match wall is Roman and I have to say it does look suspiciously like it belongs to the same range of structures that Phil's digging some 80 metres away the guys have gone off for a tea break now but I've got to admit Phil was right have a look at this war so crisp so well made so well defined it just goes on and on in that direction and maybe in that direction too and all the archaeology is just below the surface who knows what we'll find mind you the way Phil's going won't be long before we find out I just have to be very careful how I ask him questions in future [Music] welcome back to Bedford Pearlie woods in Cambridgeshire where thanks to laser technology we've been able to see through the trees to reveal evidence of a large complex of Roman buildings and so far we've opened up to trenches to try and find out what type of settlement this was it's early days yet but in Phil's trench we've got lots of Roman walls to puzzle over while in our second trench Matt's got his own Roman structure to make sense of I mean while I'm off to find out more about the person who first discovered this site Helen who was the antiquarian who came across this site a couple of hundred years ago he was a chap called Edmund artists we've got a photo of him amazingly and he was a kind of gentleman archaeologist antiquarian he was actually interested in most things he also was an expert on fossils and geology and in 1828 he made this completely fantastic map of the area and the bit we're interested in our wood is up here now you can see we've got this lovely red horseshoe shaped Roman building and he's also put these brown dots on which he codes as as Iron Works and I think these must be pits dug to remove iron ore did he actually do any digging well I have been trying to find that out and I can find no concrete evidence that he actually dug a hole he it may have been he just came past and sawed way it's reason standing buildings Stuart how does his map relate to what we can see on the ground well I like it I do because when I came up here this morning as I walked through I drew my sketch book a shape that looks exactly like that this thing would have been visible when he drew it it's still visible now isn't it a bit bizarre though that he's drawn this horseshoe building bits of which seem to go under the road well then it's possible that when he came here that he could still see remains of bumps going under the surfaces of the road as it were but whether they're carried on into this field we'll never know because if you look over there it's been quarried out and now it's being used as landfill so we'll never know whether these range is actually extended into [Music] unfortunately Edmund artists never published his written reports so I guess we'll be finishing the job for him over the next three days and it looks like Gaea fears may be able to help they've managed to survey this clearing and have picked up strong signals to the edge of it but annoyingly they can't go any further because of the trees it's really frustrating I mean we're actually getting some good results and you can see really strong responses like I think they're probably actually metalworking ironworking sort of responses but they're just I can't get that bigger picture well ironworking suggests some sort of industrial activity possibly a nearby furnace it could also help explain all these pits dotted around the site so using a different technique John's going to pinpoint the source of this potential metalworking 2200 and let's get this Roy this is telling you that there's increased magnetism in the grain caused by human activity that's right if there's a Roman furnace here this is the only way to find out that's Bob war is that your anomaly Oh Dorothy is that what you were detective ah clearly GF is have more to worry about than just trees I think I'll give up my job but at least we've got our high-tech picture of the lumps and bumps to guide us and Stuart's insisting that the only way to look at it properly is in black and white and in 3d this big regular horseshoe the building rage you said this is what artists do on the on these plant quite clearly this is where Phil is digging in this building cluster in here there's clearly other buildings and structures coming up along here and at the North End this is where Maps trench has gone along there I mean you can see the regular courtyard as it were as a range coming along the South here this has never been spotted before this clearly an area there which is another possible isolated building if you come away from the site there's a rectangular area showing up there which looks like either a building or a big compound very definitely a building sitting there well we can't just sit around speculating and watching a square spinning round thanks to these high-tech results and Stuart we're now looking at a site that's much bigger than we originally thought so we need to choose our targets carefully as over in Phil's trench we've already got plenty of Roman archaeology to deal with you're actually starting to get some at work I think I should Roland key in it you're quite right it's a key but it's quite a simple type of key but when there's a key it must have been a door and some are worth locking up so our moves really about that one but I don't know about that this is one of those things you know academics are tearing their hair out exactly what this sort of thing is it some people think it might have been a stylist for writing like you know old pens with nibs on the end but it's very crude for that the other possibility is that it goes on a piece of dowel for shovelling along an animal poking along a sheep to get it moving as well as bizarre sheep handling devices there's also more building evidence that's part the flooring that's a huge great floor tile it's much too thick to be a hypocaust tile or a wall tile it's probably a much bigger piece like that there's still lots of rubble to remove but already films discovered the walls survived to some depth and in places are built with fragments of stone and tile creating a herringbone pattern 80 metres away in our second trench Matt's finding that the walls he's unearthed are built in exactly the same way I think these were actually built into the wall and performed apart the structure good right because you get layers of tile in Roman walls yeah yes is a building yeah yeah and there's been a few bits of pottery as well oh that's good because there's very little from elsewhere so we got the local local way that's Roman Neen Valley yeah and which one other good and we also had a bit of iron ore as well ah that's good cuz we've got an Italian dish coming tomorrow so I can you can oh look at that yeah but as we approach the end of the day there's another intriguing aspect of this site that's got everyone talking and it's the Edmund artists recorded these two statues being found in the woods here in 1845 however guys a bit doubtful he's not sure they're actually Roman I'm always a little bit suspicious about very classical types of sculpture like that being found in this country are you skeptic of course these are Roman they were they were made of varna crag stone which wouldn't have been used in the medieval period or after the medieval period for this type of statue plus other ones have been found in this area as well as sips and just down the road but it's precisely because they are so unusual in this country that makes it very difficult for us to put them into automatically into a context to say oh we definitely know what that would have been from because we've got the other things that are found with them we've got the the pot with the bones in it and we've got a couple of other accessory vessels so we're pretty sure that it's some kind of funerary monument I think the most likely thing is a tomb or mausoleum and the crucial thing is that they're both so similar in spite of any misgivings Victor's had a bash at picturing how the statues looked complete were probably meant to represent charioteers and might have been part of a roadside tomb built for a wealthy landowner your point is that it would be really rare because you don't get much Roman statuary in England right ah there might have been a lot more it's just that very little survives but more could still be surviving in the woods presumably that is quite conceivable given the fact that this building seems to have been allowed to fall down in its own right rather than be demolished and cleared well it's not often you hear talk of possible Roman statues at the end of day one and given the preservation here who knows what we might turn up in these woods tomorrow day two looks like being a pretty wet Bedford Pearlie woods where we're investigating some Roman buildings which have been hidden here for the best part of 2,000 years me you love this wood stone here I do yeah when I started out in archaeology we used to think that the woodland was the bit left over beyond the settlements and the field no they were just bits that people hadn't got to yet to clear them and the actually was it was only with a lot more work was done that we've realized they were part of the picture of people in the earlier times cause needed wood much more than today all the constructional timber came from them the firewood wood for charcoal because that was the main fuel for metalworking and stuff like that so they were a very important part of the economy noticed you he's on the prowl as you gee I hope he's gonna find me one of these pits that we can overlook this woodland dates back to at least the 11th century but is protected the second to fourth century Roman settlement that's been hidden here by the trees incredibly this laser scan has revealed the stone structure spread across this area and in Phil's trench we're slowly starting to make sense of a collapsed building that could help us work out what was going on here in Roman times it's gone I mean you had a big stone in Eldon yeah yeah no that's come away you can see there's a nice clean clear cut edge there so it looks like there never was a wall in their doorway very nice to help us understand this long range of buildings we've overlaid this more detailed earth work plan and we're now opening up another trench here Stuart pointed out there's something very different going on here I think what we need to do is get into the interior what's going on inside that area well not really a problem so much is we've got a load of rubble coming up again just like Phil's trench and what I need to know is whether I can get the machine in take this down further or whether you want to stir it by hand well here problem is the route isn't it this is a National Nature Reserve and we've agreed that we won't cut any roots more than 1 centimeter thick good news for the trees bad news for Fay so we can take out all the the little rubbish but just leave the 1 all right all for the growth of the tree meanwhile Matt Strange has done its job it's shown that the Roman buildings extend along here and all part of one settlement so we're closing it down and packing Matt off to investigate this large earth work it appears to be a building that stands alone which might mean it's important but again gardening comes before archaeology do you want to save the buddleja here no we don't the butler is a species here we're trying to control by cutting and removing it so we're quite happy if you cut some of that but only a few metres away from here there is deadly night Jade which is a species what you want to conserve here is important we don't damage those plants so is it alright if we put a trench in here provided we don't put the spoil over where the deadly nightshade yes that's fine yes well that's perfect because we're right on this sort of mound they sort of tell like platform that looks like a building yeah I mean presumably it might be well preserved if it's a big mound like this one did yeah and right here I mean there's tile just under the surface so it looks like a a good place to start so as Matt gets his new trench started I'm wondering if all the walls and tiles were discovering means our mystery settlement is a Roman villa exactly as Edmund artists predicted back in 1828 so this is an original copy of the artists book I've been looking at photocopies that's right yes original coffee and artists certainly knew Roman this massive villa was dug by him at nearby castor the artist talks about castor as a major villa where he looks at Bedford pearlies as a second-order villa and that's a bit confusing really and I think probably the answer is that castor is such an enormous site and by comparison what he saw of the Roman remains at Bedford pearlies was not unimportant that lesser when compared with the villa at castor but in spite of artists his description of a villa here there may be a chance he got it wrong I'm in two minds actually it looks as if it could be a standard Roman villa but the plan is suspicious and I suspect the linking with ironworking is very intriguing John's persisted in his search for evidence of metalworking he's been using the mag sus that's a magnetic susceptibility machine to you and me and he now reckons he's getting very strong signals over here on the western edge of the site I've agreed to meet Mick out there and I shouldn't get lost if I just followed the signs two men and two signs oh I want to do this test Peter a couple of years ago we had a little test pit here it's been fertile too round by animals now but you can see there's a bit of walling here but very importantly this produced a couple of bits of slag it doesn't look much but slag is a byproduct of making iron and it could mean we've got a Roman iron smelting furnace nearby there's a big enclosure around here it's probably too big for a building Ben is new oh yeah I mean less it's a very big old barn or something like that I certainly very large John have you managed to cover most of this well we've done half the survey so far and what's really interesting just show you the results look the test pit is down here and that's where you've got a bit of walling but I'm getting really strong readings here in red and I've done half the survey so far and I'm sure that this is the concentration of the area of burning and just look at the soil look here it's really gray whereas in here in amongst the trees look in silly see the red clay this is the concentration of the burning but professional to the end John wants to finish the survey before we start digging I'm confident this isn't barbed wire fence good well fingers crossed but if we do find a Roman furnace this time it could completely change our view of what was happening here because there are also an awful lot of pit showing up on our lidar picture and quarry pits can be classic signs of Roman iron working so maybe we haven't got a villa here but a specialist industrial site so to help us find out we've invited an expert in Roman metalworking to join us and he's going to start by looking at one of the pits that seems to have a spoil heap around it you see the spoil that's been dug out dumped on that side and you can see this spoiled dumped out here Roger as well yeah you're absolutely right mean the thing we can say straight away here this sort of it sort of excludes one possibility and that's it's not geological yeah this is not natural this is man man you can sort of see the spoil some back-cast there and these these sort of stones here this is a waste material they didn't want as well there's not a problem with mining archaeology and like most archaeology would peel tend to sort of deposit stuff on top of each other in mines yeah you're taking stuff away your hope is that we can sort of find small amounts of what they did can you tell from this what well you can see here I mean if you look at this and the orange color tells us there's a little bit of iron in there but not enough to be worth smelting right this is some stuff we found down the road just in a cutting and you can see feel the difference in waste look at the colours I mean I could not spot that as iron straight away it's very different to that this will occur in bands underneath get this overburden off you've got to get through this potentially to get with so many pits to check it looks like Roger will have his work cut out but what I find most surprising is that we could have so much industry close to what we suspect is a villa interestingly we're getting evidence that people lived and cooked in the building's Phil's investigating cracking cracking don't sit like on the other side get some of that muck off the end of other side oh yeah that is some pot and it really I mean you didn't ask the good thing this Mort areum would have been used for grinding food like corn or maize to make bread and it suggests that we could be close to a kitchen in fact we do seem to be getting the sort of fines you'd associate with a Roman villa the problem is we're not finding very many of them everything we'd expect to find on a villa site is here both in terms of sort of range of material and dates but in really small quantities would you rate was going on Stephen the other way to look at it is to ask the question what are they doing they're rubbish in the first place I mean if for example we've got evidence of iron working here could they be digging pits to extract the ore and then chucking their rubbish down the pits to get rid of it and that would be a very simple explanation about why there isn't much material on the site full-stop which is another reason to start to give those piers exactly yeah but and this is typical just as I point out the shortage of fines news reaches me that Matt's trench is starting to look really exciting he's finding huge quantities of stuff and it's all much poorer than we've seen anywhere else look at all this brick and loads of tiles everything that this this is hypocaust heating flute our look with there with no marks on it where the plaster sticks on you've also got lots of roofing material these are these are the clay tiles off the roof one like that and the curb one over like that so you know it's all looking much more like a sort of high status building than we thought is that painted plaster yeah you actually got stuff with patterns on it look and red patches and there's even war coming out where Matty's you've got more of it the Arab knew that's me a piece there in the top of this rubble layer with a black painted line you've got the trenches of the day without any doubt good doesn't it so it looks like we could have found the first evidence of a fancy villa here in Matt's trench but it's clearly something very different to the much coarser buildings that Phil's digging it would seem life was better for some here than for others well we're starting to see a different sort of character zones in this complex we're starting to get a sense of the different activities that went on the different sort of lifestyles even in one great complex so what's the lifestyle here the lifestyle here is obviously not quite as good as the lifestyle just over there they had heating over there and painted walls and they don't have it here so servants quarters maybe maybe a little sort of compounds that will workshops something like that would I just don't get into groups with that aspect of it but if there are workshops here could they be connected with ironworking well there's some tantalizing evidence in faze trench that suggests they could be we could be thinking about we've got industrial activity here you know it's either some furnace or some others or something like that killing or something that's why we put the trench here we wanted to know what was going on on the inside of the building and you've nailed it you've got you've got something that's that's giving us activity inside the building as the end of the day draws near it looks like it's Phil's trench that's turned up the most intriguing fine so far yeah what appears to be possibly a bit of carved stone this is oh yeah but what you can't see Tony is it round here yeah it doesn't like an arm it really does I wouldn't mind if it's Roman and it's carve stone that would be a big one for us tonight yeah you were the one who was saying oh it's very rare to find things that is very rare I have occasional moments don't you wish at a moment like this we have a 19th century antiquarians you could just tip it out we'd actually find out what it is what rip it out without bothering about the archaeology can point out that thankfully we are not 19th century archaeologists we are responsible 21st century archaeologists we want to do this properly basically Phil's telling us to clear off and come back when he's ready to lift this piece of stone and crucially when we'll be able to see the other side of what he's uncovered meanwhile carefully placed in between the ants nest and the deadly nightshade bushes match trench is revealing the first glimpse of some sort of posh structure so this would form some kind of floor heating or something like that yeah if it's a hyper course yeah it sort of P lie within the room itself begins evermore structural and as the earthwork here is quite high there's a good chance that this building survives to some depth well you found it so yeah exactly but if uncovering posh buildings and heavy industry wasn't enough for the site we could be finishing day two with that rarest of discoveries a finely sculpted Roman statue there's this thing here it just seems very very strange and then there's this as well that that just didn't seem totally natural mmm could that just be weathering I think it probably could that's the problem isn't it the reality is that this stone is as much of an enigma as the rest of the site will we sort that out will we sort the site out we'll know tomorrow day three at Bedford Pearlie woods in Cambridgeshire where we're trying to make sense of a large Roman settlement that's been hidden here for nearly 2,000 years so far we've uncovered lots of Roman walls belonging to fairly low status structures which are part of this big range but then we've also got a much Pasha building here in Matt's trench to puzzle over thankfully this morning one of our experts now thinks he knows what it is Stephen you think it's a bathhouse tenían I do why it's a heated room start with it's got box tile and flute I'll as a piece of box tile here look and I mean the exciting thing is it even got ash on the inside look from the last or some of the fires that were being burnt here so this is the central heating system with a hot air going through that's right but is it just a heated room or is it a bath and there's one tangible bit of evidence this is rather scruffy piece of limestone rather crucially it's called twofer and it's a very lightweight limestone and almost always they're used in bath houses it's been cutlet with a flat surface there by saw and they would have cut these to form an arched vault over a bath house I think that the question still is if it's a bath house and you know your arguments are convincing is it in isolation because we haven't really seen anything to go with it of with wall plaster and tiles and all the rest no this is the high status end of the whole site yeah and what's it doing Stocki just wood well we've got one day left one of those questions so we're going to wide maps trench to find out more about this bathhouse but we also need to work out how the buildings fit in with the ironworking we suspect was going on all over the site so we're opening a trench here where GF is detected an area of burning that could be the site of a Roman furnace the spread was around it I can think the places where it's been Central where it's been on the periphery inside this red blob shows what GF is detected so Ben's decided to make a clean sweep of the site which should allow us to see the burnt ground surface and spot any clues to what was going on here we've got fragments of burnt all here so we've got slag we've got all it's melting oh that's fantastic that's good news it's not in vain I could be here some time the plan is now to open up a test pit to find out exactly what part of the metalworking process was going on here one person who knows all about the different processes involved is our own Phil Harding way back in 1998 a fresh-faced Phil took part in an experiment to try and smelt iron using genuine Roman techniques the iron ore was collected locally as was the clay used to make the furnace the same type of furnace we'd expect to find on this site we call it a shot furnace on typical type of furnace that's been in Britain since probably the later nature that the earliest so we based it on an archaeological excavation roughly the right size thickness walls the right sized diameter the height is something we've got a judge because that never survives archaeologically they also made and makeshift roasting hath again something we might find this is a process that dries out and cracks open the iron ore making it easier to extract the iron from the stone filling the smelting team had to get the temperature up to a thousand degrees whoa oh look at that now that's such the molten liquid running out is what's known as slag and contained silicon and other impurities that are separated from the iron watch at you work of a thirst on this job oh yeah well sort that out later right watch out pull that one out that's eventually filled got to see the end product a sponge of malleable iron known as bloom oh that's really and then we ended up that's it we just we ground it up eleven years later and Phil remembers how much work went into making just a small bar of iron [Music] [Applause] now I'm weathering pretty well weathering pretty well really you know our expert in metalworking is now starting to think that iron could be the main reason this settlements here because he suspects the raw iron ore from pits like this one is a very high quality what's actually doing well what it's doing now is showing x-rays on to the rock and the different elements in the rock will sort of reflect those x-rays back and if we look at the intensity of and we can say what's there and how much is there right so that's nearly 50% of their good solid iron that's almost pure iron oxide really if you look Hester look we've got almost two percent manganese what's significant about manganese well manganese is on those things which really helps slag form it helps like vomit helps it flow now I see a nice fatty it's not just about making iron if you can get your slag to flow nice it means your furnace keeps working doesn't get all clogged up so this is fantastic all not just for its iron condom which is very high but also the other bits and pieces in with it the other element some of that manganese fantastic or just well having established that the pits with the spoil heap around them are to do with mining for iron ore we now want to check one of the other shallower pits which could have been dug for a different purpose meanwhile over at the posh end of the site mats now extended his trench over the bathhouse and is making quick progress but ideas are changing there are several things actually I mean one is that this the orientation is wrong it doesn't look like a the plan of a villa that I recognized from elsewhere as its standard courtyard villa the new theory is that this bathhouse is not part of a Roman villa but built for a manager or overseer who was looking after the ironworks here is it possible that we're looking at some overseer here who was working on behalf of the state and the state of course I think have a very very large presence in the building underneath caster village oh yes and it could be some procurator there who is not any superintending finland estates but ironworking estates as well and how far is cursed Lester's fantastic as in it's only a few miles mother this was also excavated by our antiquarian artists spent many years excavating at caster where he found enormous building complexes underneath the modern village it's a good idea our site controlled from castor could have been one of several iron production centres situated on the outskirts of dura breve a the main trading centre in the region berman street DM one of its day literally ran through the town and with the river Neen close by iron could have been dispatched by road or river to almost anywhere in Roman Britain and if this bathhouse was for an overseer it looks like he lived in fine style judging by these chunks of painted plaster that show the color scheme of the walls of this building 1600 years ago it's a stark contrast to Phil's trench where there's no sign of painted plaster or luxuries like underfloor heating but we did find what looked like a carved stone here yesterday and now that our experts have had time to carefully examine it I'm curious to know what they think it is it's a stone a stone a stone but not just any random stone filled things it's been definitely shaped for some purpose or other take a look at this one here no that was found just outside in the angle of the walls there here look how that ordinary stone has been used as a whetstone to sharpen tools and he just goes to show that every stone you find on a site like this you have to look at it think about it to make sure it's not an artifact thanks I think that's a very good lesson to learn from someone who was sure that was a statue last night not very good at the time but at least Phil's trench and Faye's trench put in here have given us lots of useful detail about the actual buildings in this range basically we've got a collapsed building you just see where you are there you've got these collapsed stone a stone wall and beneath it we've got this tile layer which is our roof yeah and then here we've got more of this kind of collapsed roof building material it's very black isn't it it is I mean this buildings been burnt down although there's a lot more to learn about this range we now have some idea what these buildings looked like this is a reconstruction of the area where Phil was digging which we now know was a series of rooms based around a courtyard we think these were workshops or living accommodation for the people who worked here a work force probably of slaves which would explain why we didn't find any coins or I of real value here the question now is have we discovered the main iron smelting area up here on the slightly higher ground times ticking away and mick has called me urgently from over here somewhere because he desperately needs roger out a man with a suitcase what's the problem mick we've got some material down here that we're not quite sure what it is and we need you to look at it Roger and tell us because we think it might be blue Murray stuff in which case you know we're in a furnace but it may not be maybe just slag what can you see there well it's very very dense it's also quite porous it doesn't look like slag I mean could it be the bloom it's either that or roast it all this look see what you've got now this is what I call a real expert someone who'll look at a lump of crab like this and tell you what it is I would be thinking more towards roasting Arthur look sire so that means you can really take all that out there yeah so in get off yeah that's pretty efficient you didn't even use your soup I didn't even we'll keep digging to make sure but it looks like what we've found is remains of where they've been roasting the or like this to prepare it for smelting and the actual furnace won't have been far away it's a great result we now know this enclosure is a Roman iron smelting area and we can now identify what looks to be another similar enclosure just here but with time almost up how does our posh bath house fit into the story we know we have a building that collapsed when the site fell out of use in the fourth century but it's proving tricky to interpret sorry could I just um there's be another stone on top of this one which makes me think perhaps we might have a a robert wall as opposed to floor floor yeah so I'm sorry I'm on the wall now okay say you're on the wall yeah I'm inside but I'm still over the floor of another room possibly so you've actually got a wall running with that still means that could be a door jamb well that looks like the corner of where there was a door so there's a room there and there's a room there but no wall wall has gone robbed away a lot more works needed here but we can get some idea of the extent of the bath house from the size of this earthwork and if our theory is right about the link with caster then it's possible that our bath house was laid out like the one shown here in artists picture which means that we're talking about a building that would have looked something like this it was probably a standalone facility used by the official overseer on what would have been a state-controlled ironworking site our dig certainly given me a newfound respect for this man Edmund artists who was clearly a very good archaeologist for his time but died before he could publish his written reports his map of the archaeology drawn in 1828 has proved to be largely accurate and it's not just the buildings but also the pits he recorded that a key to understanding this site goodness me it's a journey to the center of the earth what we now know is that in Roman times a lot of the rubbish was being thrown in these pits so basically this pit was open at the same time that those buildings were being occupied and used and this looks a bit clay to me so is that what they're going for the clay yeah there's no sign of iron stone or any bands of iron in our iron stone in this it's also must be clay for some purpose and the the little sort of pock mark and things I can see in there is this sort of root activity or some of it is but some of it some of these dark patches your carefully clean and back you can actually see adds marks or picks marks where they've actually leave at the clay out from this pit fantastic we now know not all these pits were dug for iron ore many like this one would have been dug for clay to build and repair the iron smelting furnaces so at the end of three days we can now picture this long-lost Roman settlement as it must have looked in its heyday around 200 AD what's been hidden in these woods is a massive iron working site with the furnaces and or roasting pits on the slightly higher ground while the mining was going on here chasing the seam of natural iron ore the workshops and living quarters were not far away and were very much second-class as mentioned by Edmund artists but there was at least one fancy Roman building a bath house situated well away from the industry here on the eastern side of the site [Music] but our story's not quite over because for the next few hours our archaeologists will be measuring recording taking photographs and eventually they'll write a proper archeological report on this site which is really rather nice because we'll be finishing the job that Edmund artists for whatever reason didn't complete himself and then when we've all finally gone nature will take over this whole site again just as it did nearly 2,000 years ago when the Romans finally left this place [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 215,721

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, time team full episodes, time team specials full episodes, time team season 17, tony robinson documentary, tony robinsons romans, tony robinson worst jobs in history, tony robinson walking through history, roman documentary, roman documentary history channel

Id: FJwBWC7vqGk

Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 22 2019