The Buried Mysteries Of The Roman Cemetery Beneath Hadrian's Wall | Time Team | Odyssey

this channel is part of the history hit Network stick around to find out more [Music] this is Hadrian's Wall the 80 mile long barrier between Rome and Britain and the Barbarian North and this is bedoswald one of the forts that protected this far-flung corner of that Empire now we know a lot about the buildings from these remains but what about the soldiers who lived and died here what do we know about them this is bed Oswald cemetery and is under threat from the elements in fact some of it could have already fallen down that escarpment we've been given the Fantastic opportunity to excavate this site to find out what's here what's been lost and what's going to happen to it in the future this is the first time ever that a military cemetery has been excavated on Hadrian's Wall and it'll give us a rare insight into the lives and beliefs of the people who lived here 1700 years ago and as usual time team have got just three days to find out foreign [Music] wall was built between 122 and 138 A.D as the northern boundary of Concord Britain for the next 300 years soldiers from all over the Roman Empire manned the 17 forts along the wall one of their main bases being here at the Oswald the rectangular wall of the fort is still visible today as are some of the encampments remains but it's in the Ford's Visitors Center that we begin our investigation into the final resting place of padoswald's Roman soldiers well it's a very nice little model it's wonderful isn't it yeah but we don't actually know that it looked like that do we well I think we do because apart from the fact that some of it actually sort of surviving as well and so on we know a lot about the layout of Roman forts well in Britain don't we the evidence on which most of this model is based is geophysical every Roman Fort had the same buildings in it basically um not necessarily in the same order I said most of it's geophysics but this whole area here this whole quarter of the thought has been totally excavated over the last 12 years mainly by you mainly by me and where's the bit where we're going to do it's over there in the corner of the model here among the trees oh these little tombstones yeah because in fact we know a lot about the Forts and and the settlements but we know almost nothing about the cemeteries on the wall don't we no no cemetery on how these walls ever been excavated but do we actually know there's a cemetery here yes it was found as a result of plowing in 1959-1960. so why are we going to dig it up now it has been it has been damaged um first of all by plowing and subsequently by just the rotting of farm Vehicles going over when it's damp but we have had a recent episode of erosion uh piece of the edge of the cliff has gone over leaving a clean section so is there less of this now than there was in Romans considerably less the River Edge now is back to here and perhaps on the line from the trees there so in the same sort of curve around to here so it's sort of like this that's right around to here has gone I think we better start don't you this is a big sight for GFS but they do have some earlier results to help them concentrate their resources and help us plan our first trenches as well as the Roman burial ground we're interested in the field adjacent to the west gate of the fort and in particular this large elliptical area previous geophysics of this part of the site have suggested two roads joining just outside the west gate surrounded by anomalies now many roads out of major Roman settlements had roadside burials and monuments so these blobs could be tombs or more selear but we'll start up in the so-called Cemetery field to assess what's left of this burial site and whether or not it's damaged [Music] so we're slap bang in the middle of the cemetery now just here the river's over there and the forts down there do we yet know where we're going to put the trench in but I think we've got a very good every issue in this area really our first priority at the moment is to establish how well the remains are still preserved so we want to dig in the area that's least that's most damaged because everything else would be better than that and it looks like this sort of area but again we thought here because it's rotted and lumpy anyway you know it's where where machineries come into the field this tree hit is like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you our extensive catalog of documentaries covers everything from the rise of Hannibal Barker to the illustrious Treasures of King Tut so sign up today for broadcast quality documentaries uncovering the mysteries of the ancient world we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and odyssey fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Odyssey at checkout now although we keep referring to this field as a cemetery we don't expect to find coffins and skeletons here Roman soldiers tended to be cremated and their ashes then buried sometimes in a pot or an urn so we're going to be looking for telltale signs such as dark circles in the soil and bits of Ash port or charred bone but it's time-consuming work on such an important site as this everything has has to be done by hand this is a world heritage site right yeah so we haven't just turned up here and started digging oh no I mean we've done here what we have to do on all the sides which is to write a project design as as the archaeological jargon for is a document that says why you why you want to dig how it's going to be conducted you know what the reasons for coming and so on except here because it's a world heritage site it's it's a massive document this is our business plan for the next three days absolutely I don't think many people realize this but but in the end archeology is destruction you have to take the site apart to understand it and if people in future are going to understand it then you've got to leave a lot of good records so there's got to be good plans good sections notes about it or photographs so that in theory somebody could come back and at least mentally put the site back together well we seem to have got off to a good start we've just turned up some glass that could possibly have come from a Roman urn oh wow that's nice that looks that looks Roman doesn't it that's what Bluey green color obviously modern no no that's a really nice bit that's just our first bit of Roman artifact from it it burns wow as one of the reasons for this dig is to assess the threat of erosion Stewart's looking for Clues as to why the escarpment has moved almost 100 meters closer to the fort in the last 1700 years so that's quite impressive isn't it quite a drop isn't it it is absolutely is that being caused by the river do you think it may have been started by the river but uh the the main operation seems to be rainwater soaking into the boulder clay and uh seeping into fishes and taking plates of roller clay off and of course now um it's the erosion's got this far those fishes in the boulder clay are the archeology itself because they are the ditches of the fort yeah and the vallum ditch and all the other features the archaeologist causing the erosion the archeology causing the erosion which is destroying the archeology slowly and steadily yeah yeah so what have you got then it's wet yeah very wet oh our first human bone so Jeff is I don't know how you can tell Jackie yeah how can you tell that for instance I think it's probably a piece of tibia you run your finger down in front of your tibia it's very sharp you know the shin bone the bit that hurts when somebody cracks the bits are broken my leg well that's that you see I've got a very sharp edge to it there and that's that's what gives that particular piece of bone away the fact that we're finding this stuff coming up the top soil do you think that means most of our promotion is going to be disturbed we've got a little bit of we reckon this looks like the top of one here oh yes that's that black area there yeah yeah and there's a bit of tile there yeah yeah Tony was wondering if it was a sort of box type you know box yeah around it but if we're finding the bone in the top so does that mean most of them probably plowed away or does that always happen we may not just have burials The Cremation Burns can turn up in other types of deposit as well and for instance you didn't collect all the bone to bury it they only collect a certain amount yeah so you may have pie debris with bits of you know bits of the the pie that was left over with we've created bone in it and that's just been lying around on the surface and being sort of spread about during the plowing so we may or may not have found the site of our first cremation burial but our early optimism that trench one is a wash with Roman artifacts is beginning to fade that characteristically Roman Bluey Green Glass we found isn't as old as we thought this is the base ring of the bottle you know I'm not totally convinced it's Roman I thought she was going to say it's plucked from the neck of a Roman cortisone or something no no I am not totally sure about that I think it might be the bottom of 17th century bottle the Romans did have glasses oh yes they did and would they have been likely to have glass up here oh yes they certainly you find glass bottles um Square bottles and occasionally you find pieces of very elegant drinking vessels and painted glass and chipped glass and that sort of thing when do they arrive up here well they passed through in the first century um part of the original Advance up into Scotland they went through this area and then spent some time in Scotland and had to retreat back to here and when they were building Hadrian's Wall that's when they really started to settle because they were defeated well they obviously couldn't hold the Glens it was very difficult to rain and so under hadron they decided to to acidify where they were it's Romans a big buried here they're not Italian Romans are they such well where did the legion come from the the unit came originally from Dacia which is modern Romania that's right auditions a thousand strong Hadrian's own so they're not they're not they're not it's not even the the Romans and they're not from Rome they're not even from Italy no no it's in the Roman Empire which is normal isn't it absolutely normal yes we've actually got cohorts of Britain's in geisha with trench one well and truly underway it's time to check out the field beside the fort and its intriguing geophysics extraordinary thing out on this west side looks like a Village Green doesn't it yeah it really is odd so we've honed in on part of that okay and there you can see just part of that quiet area yeah with noise to the north Hadrian's Wall itself here yeah and then these blobs which we're not quite sure what they are would you think that's what you'd get from occupation from buildings and so on it looks a bit like that but it's just possible It's associated with some sort of burning now whether that's industrial burning or whether it's something now with this particular blob there's some high resistance anomalies that might just be a structure right so my feeling is roadside or something combing on there so trench 2 finally goes in to check this section of Our Mysterious elliptical area where we're going John my right foot uh and never let it be said that painting a straight line on grass is easy [Laughter] yeah I think we might have a little hobbler there are you joking really no I think so I'm sure that's what it is so it was a commercial with his boots on it looks that way to get an idea of what we may find in our burial field we've asked Jackie our cremations expert to build us a Roman funeral pyre this is much more than just building a bonfire in fact it's the first time anyone's recreated such a pyre these particular types are known as a Boston burials Boston and this is actually quite a large hole that we've got under here there it's about 70 centimeters wide about that wide and about a meter 20 long so about so long and the idea of these particular types of Pies was that the pie was constructed over something which was going to form the place of burial so the idea is that as the pyre burns down the body drops in but it burns straight into the what will be the Grays what did they think would happen to them after they'd been cremated the idea of cremating the body was that it would be an immediate release of the spirit yeah as opposed to just sort of burying it in the ground and the body having to decompose by cremating you would immediately free the spirit so it could go straight to heaven there was also a certain amount of cleansing the idea of cleansing fire as a cleanser is quite a common um idea cremation may be cleansing for the soul but it can be a dirty business building the fire Mack yeah have a listen to this oh yeah and there's this dress is yellow isn't it isn't it so War probably um I don't know about that three stones must be a wall one stone is a stone two stones a wall three stones of buildings four stones of Palace that's what that's that's what Frank rather taught me at University Stone there back in the cemetery field things are hotting up that doesn't let that route to me some very old looking wood has been uncovered in trench one it's obviously not the coffin somebody was cremated in because that wood hasn't been burned yeah I would I wouldn't thought wood would survive for that long we're wondering now if it's some kind of wood lined cremation thing we do occasionally get cremations in wooden boxes um it's quite rare because obviously would really survives and people don't know what the information was in but um intrigues at the burial site but it's so late in the day that Phil's only got time for a cursory inspection of his trench in the field beside the fort I just got another piece of pot out of here which it's still very very rounded look see that's plow in it yeah it just turns it round makes all these make sure these edges really really rounded so yeah we're still really near the surface oh God ah yeah but I mean this this is a totally sealed uh layer I mean she's right at the bottom bottom of the the actual soil and it was just the turf was just peeling off that was this wood then correct that you've got um well well oh yeah it's just under where we had that cremation yeah um so that's what it turned out to be is it well the correct cremated material in the section there yeah well you can see and again you can see it was sat right it's weird well it looks as if it's actually going under the yeah I think it's maybe a clay floor which has been laid on top of it and maybe that's just created very very good preservation conditions there's only Roman Pottery coming from this layer over the top of it so it seems to be completely sealed and it doesn't seem to have been burned itself but it's clearly very very closely associated with the commission the other possibility is it's a tree route but it's a it doesn't look like a tree but on the other hand for it to be Roman wood surviving is too much to Hope isn't it as the end of day one approaches there's just enough time left to finish our Boston cremation and to see what happens to a body during a cremation we've added some cuts of meat bought from a local butcher it may be too early to say what's going on in our trenches but if the gods are with us and the rain holds off there's at least one result we should get by the morning join us after the break foreign beginning of day two of our excavation of the Roman soldiers Cemetery at Bud Oswald this is trench two which as you can see we've hardly started and is still a bit of a mystery but Mick already wants to go ahead and dig a trench three what's your problem well we've decided not to pursue any more geophysical anomalies in this area here but to go back and look at the geophysics results for the area nearer the fort and the reason for that is we think that we might be dealing with a vicus on this side of the fourth as well as on the other side hang on Tony remind me what a vikas is the civilian settlement on the outside of the fort the the place where the wives dependents families pubs shops traders in various sort of knickknacks but in the beautiful model that you showed me yesterday morning there was the fort and then green fields and then a cemetery somewhere away yes well the model was made before we got the differences we've actually got weakest buildings on the other side on the model but not on this but you see what we were thinking is that perhaps the cemetery up there is up there because there was actually a weakest in that open space that's on the model so we're now searching for a large settlement of vikas in a field we originally thought contained just two roads and some tubes trench 3 will look at the area where geophys suggests these two roads meet what's not clear at the moment is why there might be Vegas buildings on this side of the fort when we know from previous excavations there's a large Village on the other side to get a broader picture mix gone up in the chopper with Stuart gets me every time that we're out in this field to the West now there's there's trench two look and you can see the Symmetry is actually somewhere away isn't it you see our white storage box and then currencies trains change one at the top it's actually quite a distance yeah that is a high spot of ground which the Romans like for the cemetery areas now if you look below you now the the line of the patrons wall would have been where the road is first Stitch line that you see is the earlier hadron's wall that was built in turf later on they replaced it with stone but around bird Oswald they didn't build on the same line they've got the Stone World on the separate line that's right right there's got to be a reason absolutely back at trench two we've Unearthed something of interest it's in really good condition yeah yeah that needs to be cleaned up quite a bit to be sure but you are going to be able to tell us what it is I've got a feeling as well not committing ourselves it's not just lovely dateable coins we're finding in trenched too there's also lots of evidence of habitation like flagstones and bits of wall but the weather conditions aren't helping us our amphibian friend may have enjoyed the overnight rains but our attempt as a Roman cremation has literally fizzled out we'll try again later but first of all our cremations and mysterious buried wood in trench one are looking decidedly damp so there's a lot of mopping up to be done we've been talking about you can see why we're sort of Fairly intrigued about it it's got all that cremated stuff straight on top of it yes straight under this clay here it seems they were thinking that clay might be a sort of clay floor or something I suppose it could be Roman I'm tempted to think it's just a piece of rubbish but it's um just have to look at more of it I guess it's not as bashed about as we thought it might be is it I'm glad you think it looks better than you you feared it was going to oh that's good well that was one of our aims up here is to see what the preservation was like if the preservation sufficiently good we've got word preserve that's right it can't be bad can it no back in the incident room Mick and Stewart are taking a closer look at possible reasons why the escarpment behind Bud Oswald has changed so dramatically over the last 1700 years what's actually happening here is that all this area here is bolder clay yeah this is this sort of mix of sand and silt and it's it's very unstable it's that orangey yellow stuff we've got in some of the trenches isn't it yeah let's say well all that eventually they get so much water they just flush themselves away slumps what happens is that once it finds a weakness yeah the whole thing gives way and it usually happens all at one go it's not just a tidy little bit falls off the end the whole lot goes presumably you're talking about heavy rainstorm and and erosion from the river is there any other possibility that yeah might cause it you've you've hit on one that's a very serious flood of the river and it really sweeps down yeah the other is an earthquake you do have earthquakes in this country and interestingly if you look at the geological map this is a major fault line running right across the edge of this escarpment yeah um and if you're on a earthquake or not it's time to see how the changes in the landscape have affected the site and most importantly to discover if any of the burial ground has disappeared over the edge of the escarpment down there Katie no not yet I'll give it a clean and see if I can see anything I mean if it's quite clean like you say it is presumably you'd be able to see anything like charcoal or Ash or stuff anyhow yeah I mean I can't see any skeletons or anything sticky outside it doesn't look from what you can see as if the cemetery extended this far not as far as I can see now so the burial field is still all on the top of the hill despite this good news I can't help but feel despondent as yet another wave of rain passes over our dig we're at this beautiful place world heritage site probably the most important site that we've ever dug at the longest single Roman monument in the world and look look what we've got we've got three monkey holes like this covered in soggy stones a hole here and these other finds whatever is going on yeah you really are a miserable devil what we've been able to show at the top yeah is that while we haven't got an individual cremation at the moment the whole air is covered in bits of cremated bone we're in the area of the cemetery we've been over the cliff and I say we I mean Katie's been over the cliff and she's found nothing but that's good that's good because it means the cliff isn't eroding back into the cemetery yeah we don't have to dig a trench along there to save that it's all within the site down here you remember we started out with the idea that there might be a cemetery here yeah on the model there's nothing at all because they didn't know what was here yeah the early geophysics had this peculiar shape and all this noise around it these two holes have shown us that we're in the middle of another bit of the weakest as soon as you came out of the west gate of the fort over there you'd have gone into it and when you went up in that direction you'd have got to the cemetery about where our white box is and so you've got this long linear settlement then the force and then a long linear settlement the other side so you know we didn't know this before we came here this isn't similar to this is settlement so while I'm moaning you're saying we might have found a small town exactly and I said I said to Tony before lunch I said where are the nearest big Roman settlements around here and he said well Carlisle that way and Corbridge that way I said so if you wanted a market in this part of the country this would be a very good candidate and he said yeah it's somewhere in the middle so I thought we hadn't got anything and we've got Milton Keynes yeah we've got a bigger things look at it like that yeah but I mean well this is something we hadn't expected and the good news doesn't stop there geophysics have finally finished their survey of the burial field I hear you think you've come up with something yeah we've we've just finished the uh the season Vapor measurements look at cesium Vapor season Vapor I said one of the ways we measure the Earth's magnetic field but in fact it's far more sensitive than the usual instruments that we use and can you see we've got some nice individual blobs which may actually be cremations not certain about this but these green things the green things yeah and can you see in here there's a semi-circle coming around there that's about three meters across now in fact that as far as I can work out we may find some cremations that are actually surrounded by a small ditch that could be a small day that's what happens with those promotions I did a little ditch around there well apparently so yes I mean I've never seen them before but I have something could be a small ditch about three meters across or so in the middle of what's meant to be a cemetery I think they should really have a look at that so trench 4 goes in the top field to look for geophys's burial the early results look good Tony's found cremation evidence although there's no sign yet of an urn down in our probable Vehicles Phil may have solved a mystery that's been puzzling us is there any Wonder we haven't found any bone on the site oh God I I've just said that we haven't got any bone no no well it's not really surprising it's not human though it's not human oh thank God look at the condition of it it just Falls to bits in your hand it just doesn't preserve up here yeah yeah so we don't need to worry really we're not going to see much in the way of diet or whatever what's this cow is it well apparently the the the the Roman Legions are up here just nothing else but bully beef oh right having answered the bone mystery another trench to Intrigue is about to be solved we've identified the coins that came out of it this morning coin turned out to be one one five to one one seven but the domission coin is cleaned up beautifully that really is clear isn't it it is so clear and you've got here Imperial Caesar domitian and then the vital bit is around here where you've got trp XV which means he was in his 15th year of tribunation power that pins it down to 96. and then if we turn it over you have imp there so you've got he's in his 22nd year as imperata as emperor he's in his 17th year as consul and his sensor in perpetuity and father of his country coin tells us a story a whole lot yes all his titles are there and then you have Minerva here with her round shield and brandishing her spear now it's not just the coins that come from the second Century A.D all the fines in the field beside the fort date before 200 which is rather mystifying given that we know but Oswald was occupied until the 400s how's our enigmatic trench going then karenza I think very enigmatic but at the moment why well we uncovered a bit more let's try and find the rest of this wood a piece of wood here which is curving on underneath that dark band there you can see a few bits of it we've now found a very sort of ashy patch there which we think might be a cremation there's another dark early patch there this wood is coming up all over the place now we've got another bit there there's another bit right over there that would Jackie looks remarkably like the size of wood that you and I were humping around yesterday late afternoon could it be anything to do with the cremation well what I would be unhappy about there is that one the piece of wood itself obviously hasn't been burnt I mean it's that it's a dark color but it is we can try again later so could it be a structure Tony it could be I mean I I'm still a bit worried by you know having wet Tim I know the top of this hill is very wet but you know wet Timber I think everything is being Roman on the top of the hill but I think it's also difficult to see what I see so it might not be that old anyway well the trouble is it's going underneath that clay deposit there yeah upon which there are there are various sort of none of you have got the slightest ideas we need I think we really need to get a move and we need to get more of these Timbers uncovered we've got to see if they make a path and I think we've we've really got to go into if you're happy with that Tony I think we've got to be done yeah pulling it apart while corenza and Tony attempt to solve the mystery of the wood in trench one it's time to relight our own bustam funeral pyre which has had a chance to dry out hi I won't get too close it's a little bit on the warm side you've done it you've got a delight from over there I thought it was another failure thank you see you should have had faith in me oh I always did because the others didn't just got to let that warm up a little bit now you can tell how incredibly hot it is really shimmering above it isn't it well it's actually cool on this side you can't get anywhere near the other side what sort of temperatures do they get up to well you can get up to a thousand degrees no problem certainly in the center of the pie when it's at its hottest and you can see why this kind of structure actually enables it to keep burning yeah well the idea of the structure is that it's quite an open lattice work and the Brushwood infill which we had was just to help it get going in the first place and that will maintain temp a good temperature for a long long time which is what you need really to get rid of all the the tissues in the body when you're cremating it how long do you think it'll burn for uh well it'll it'll probably start to collapse before too long I mean about three hours to get the main body down but it'll just keep going all night probably so success with our pyre but after so much optimism disappointment in trench one the wood that had promised so much for the last two days now seems to be at best a few hundred years old put there by a farmer to give easier access into this wet boggy field originally we thought it might be Roman wood because it was under Roman cremation debris but that now seems to be due to the soil being churned over by plowing what you got Mick well why don't you've seen these at Tony that's the a silver coin of the emperor domitian yeah and that's a Roman intaglio what's an antaglia that's the glass bit out of a fingering that's used as a seal and it's a sort of purple glass and these come off that big settlement down the bottom there how about you cringe have you got any fines well just about yeah we had a really frustrating afternoon well all day really chasing all this wooden structure we thought might be a Roman pyre or something for a while but it's not it's modern which is a bit depressing but um we've now started to hit cremations we've got a couple they're not very good condition we've got this wonderful bit of pot there that's just come up is this anything to do with promotions I think it's the base of a cremation then yeah um hopefully we'll find some more tomorrow when we try to find the extent of the cemetery going that way it's been a typical topsy-turvy time team day the rain's been tipping down the diggers have been struggling through it but around about lunchtime I think virtually all of us thought we weren't going to find anything at all in this wonderful site and then after lunch The Cremation started popping up and down over here it now seems that we might have the largest Roman settlement between Corbridge and Carlisle but the odd thing about it is that even though the Romans didn't leave here till about 400 A.D all the fines around here stop around 200 A.D so what was going on let's find out tomorrow join us after the parade beginning of day three and what looks like a completely empty field now seems to be the site of a big Roman settlement but the weird thing about it is that none of the fines coming out of it are later than second century this is a coin that we got out of the earth about five minutes ago with Roma sitting down the goddess Roma with the her Shield there looking very much like Britannia on the old penny so we're trying to sort out what was going on in that trench there and in that trench there and we've got two other trenches up there where we think we've got a Roman soldiers Cemetery so what's Mick doing he's putting in another trench Mick why do we need another hole in the ground because we're looking at the other side of this open elliptical area based on the geophysics this is where we are now Tony yeah in the middle here you've just come from trench two yeah and we decided to put a trench on the Northern side of this ellipse where we've got again all these strong responses what's so weird is that the whole project seems to have drifted away from what we originally thought we were going to get which was the Roman Cemetery I mean this is fantastically interesting but it's not what we were looking for well no it's not but at least we know that we haven't got high status burials and mausoleum in this area between the 40 and the cemetery explains possibly why the cemetery is so far away because it was servicing this side of town now we've got a you know a complete Roman settlement that's a sort of organized organized settlement around us fantastic Discovery isn't it it's a green yeah so yet another trench goes in in an effort to explain the complex archeology of our newly discovered vicus in the elliptical area Scottish gonna take forever and even that this right you're just being high Barney as one trench opens another closes in this case trench one Katie's just finishing Excavating the one decent in situ commission we've had we've had about four five six maybe other sort of concentrations of burnt material that I think are cremations but not that many were not doing an awful lot better over here at the moment we've got one decent cremation in that trench one in this trench we've got five or six other bits obviously work emotions it's all very disturbed no and I mean this this hasn't really worked has it Chris from what was on the Geo we thought we had a dead set here to be honest it's uh it's quite interesting actually given that we want to find the condition of the cemetery yeah I'm afraid Chris's dead cert was a medieval thorough this is genuinely a really difficult area there's not enough cremations since part of our brief is to find out if there are any cremation burials left intact we're going to continue searching using geophys's other results meanwhile our attempt at a Roman cremation called a bustam has survived the elements and been a success [Music] yeah this is brilliant this looks just right our first attempted to bust them in fact you know anyone who's attempted one before no no not really so think of anyone what have we learned then well the pie has collapsed down into it as we we thought and what you've got at the base is fine wood ash you've also got some of the larger bits of of charred wood which didn't completely burn away and then you can also see the bone still lying on top of the wood ash with a Boston cremation the pit was just filled in after the Flames had died down a more common form and the evidence we're finding on our site involves the ashes being taken and buried in an urn we do have debris turning up we've got pie Dave you remember the bits of charcoal and little bits of what looked like baked clay and that debris looks like this day that Dopey looks like that yeah back in the burial field Chris is now certain that he's onto something yeah we definitely have a Target here we've got a possible pet or cremation here it's shown on both the season vapor and the flux gate all right which that didn't didn't no that was only on the cesium Vape right so where is it well stand back about there how's that there all right okay two by two hopefully this new trench will yield that elusive intact cremation urn meanwhile trench two in the field beside the fort continues to support the theory that it once contained a busy settlement that ceased to operate sometime close to 200 A.D we have just had a bit of um samian out of here I don't know whether you can put a date on that date this basically it's adrienic so it's in the frame you know second century again um we got no real clue as to whether it's um domestic or industrial so we've got those bits of what look like sort of furnace lining earlier on yeah down down in here you've got a fairly discreet little feature in here haven't you the pick with the pink clay there which is only undefined on that side over there um you could get that defined and get it excavated it's right at the head of this um drain or flu thing you might have the um the business end of one of these industrial dryers or something of that sort have you had a chance to look at that coin that came up from trench two well this this is the coin yes this is the coin um it's a bonds coin this time um and I think it's underliners Pious one three eight two one six one although the coins are fantastic fines Lindsay's most excited by yesterday's discovery of an intaglio the inset from a ring that was used as a seal It's Made of Glass and the figure is carved out you can see on the screen here it's Achilles and you've got his helmet there and that's his cloak coming down here a spear coming up there now what he's doing is he's carrying the spear and round Shield fetus and he's holding outstretched the helmet the crested helmet that's the body of the helmet there's the crest coming down here of um paleos so this is a very nice scene for a soldier because Achilles of course was the ideal hero the sort of um hero that a soldier was trying to pretend to be you know it's just something he's aiming to be so it's a very nice one yes or is he is he naked apart from the club I've done these a lot on um well Heroes don't wear a lot of clothes on the whole they don't feel the cold so the entire aglio gives us an idea of what ideals the soldiers based here aspired to unlike all the finds from the elliptical area it's pre-200 A.D but the more intriguing these trenches get the more careful we have to be as first impressions aren't always what they seem have a look at this look these great big slabs of Roman root tile oh one of these with a legionary stamp on don't we look how sharp it is it's very fresh that has not actually been rolled around in the player I reckon that's coming up from from some depth and I reckon that probably the the explanation is it's been cut through by that land drain and it's coming up you know what this is don't you yeah I once had some pieces of this the Roman roof tile with nice lettering incised in them and one had an r in yeah and one had i n and they were a complete one said drain sorry but you've been fooled by this yeah oh yeah yeah thankfully Phil's disappointments short-lived you've got a fine for us wow we've been talking about nothing else but we've got this superb rosette there's molding on the side of a samian bowl this yeah and it's beautiful are these figures yeah it looks like two human figures both naked what are they doing can you see here what what do you think these things are these down here look like throwing sticks your bowlands is a posh name for them they're trying to wait it's a sticky throw at something to kill it you're calling us hold on we'll talk about that later on then we'll have to could that be pornographic it could be indeed yes we need to look at it carefully I think we want to make a decision on that but it's saying isn't it oh yeah definitely Roman look at this it's just the most amazing it's the biggest glass bead I've ever seen and it's beautiful oh it's fabulous oh it's lovely let me take some water yeah oh look at that that's wonderful what is it well it's a bead um but it probably wanted to be a pendant than a um a necklace bead worn by women or men could be either right something like this but oh look at inside you see the swirly design of the white and turquoise glass what sort of period do you think that might be um maybe it's your first century ad it's early so is that the sort of thing they'd be making here or are they importing that from oh my God I think this is likely to be something which is made in Britain but possibly further south in Britain it's something which has perhaps come up right from Somerset area something like that but you've got these Stripes here these are actually inlaid into the American Glass they make up strips of lots of little different colored stripes and then they inlay it and smooth it down afterwards it's called marveling right you call me over yes I thought you might wonder that's a bit better I mean that really doesn't look much more encouraging that's the rim of the the funeral it looks like we're the right way up doesn't it it does doesn't it and then it really encourages me because in the other trenches all we've had is a sort of scraped off moved around destroyed bottoms and stuff but this thing possibly is if we might have something that's intact and the content's inside so this really is looking good isn't it after all the fretting that this great site wasn't giving us the goods geophys's final suggestion for a trench has with only hours to go come up with what looks like an intact cremation burial and if this find wasn't enough what we've got here is is a big story about this section of Hadrian's Wall this is the only area where there's a two two sections of wall in fact one is a Turf wall which is earlier than the stone wall and bird Oswald is the only place where these are separate and there's got to be a reason for that so I'm trying to work trying to work out why that happened and I think it relates to the geological process as an erosion here what we've got is the escarpment this is before the Romans arriving effect you've gotten Scarborough with a tongue of land sticking out here River down below what happens next is the building of the turf wall in this section here later on they replaced this with a stone Fort here now what happens very quickly all this area is built over the problem they've got here is that they they're right close to the edge of this garment and what appears to happen at some time it goes just like that this huge great part of the escarpment just slumps away down to the riverbed at the bottom so the closeness of the escarpment could have forced the stone wall further north and if the Cliff face fell away in such a dramatic fashion that would certainly explain why the weakest west of the fort suddenly stopped being used Tony there is one piece of bad news of course which is that that beautiful model that you showed Mick and I on the first day is now wrong we'll have to get this Stanley what was that I don't know oh it's one of those like accessory vessels joking well that's what it looks like well it's a different little sort of yeah oh wonderful there's a rim on it here that's beautiful you any idea of dates for it uh well it's color-coded worth third Century well I think by the thickness of the rim I think it's probably from the zoo somewhere in France like that really so without have been quite expensive then yes it's an important part I mean this is this is a thing yes it's essentially as well but um with this one you see it's just it's very difficult to know whether this is part of the actual funeral right where the drinkers have been having a toast of The Departed and thrown the pot in afterwards or where this is part of sort of packed lunch to carry you from the grave to the underworld after finding lots of trashed burials we now have one that's fully intact I mean but how has this one survived and the others haven't and why in a cemetery that would have been very ordered is the burial evidence all over the place Mick has a theory it's all to do with plowing if you imagine the field surface originally this is a section right with the various cremations in the ground underneath like that yeah and then in the medieval period there's Ridge and Furrow and if I draw a section through it so it was like that with the ridges and furrows some of this would have been wrecked and plowed away whereas we've got the ridge with the greater depth of soil The Cremation is preserved on intact which is what that one in the corner was and then in the 20th century the farmer comes along and plows it all flat again and of course we're within you know centimeters or inches of wrecking the things that have survived for that length of time so it's entirely due to the medieval region Furrow that any of these things have so survived at all very very fragile if you I totally just let me slide it into the bag I think if you 've got it and we think that that would have contained some kind of ritual it could have been wine on the journey up here for people in funeral procession could have been wine for the dead person on their Journey underwear or it could have been oils or something for pouring to the Grave or quenching the Flames of the pie anything like that but it's a beautiful piece it's third Century it's French it's imported it's a really exotic item and it's absolutely beautiful it looks like we're only minutes away from lifting the first intact cremation urn found on Hadrian's Wall the delicate work continues it's time to close down the trenches in the field beside the fort and the results are more surprising than we could have thought possible we've got a flagstone floor yeah that's the stone here yeah and then it carries on underneath that wall over there over there yeah yeah then it's cut by probably a second century Rome rubbish pit right through here and the latest phase is this rather rubbishy stone wall and where we had a half oh this is the red hair yeah oh right and we're gonna go for domestic rather than industrial and look at this I think it's the most incredible thing and in tagliography oh Lord look at that it's a cry cake Chariot here driving four horses three days ago we thought this elliptical area contained a road from the fort to the cemetery lined with mausolea now with the evidence From The Trenches we think it must have been a busy Vegas crammed with shops houses and farmyards and with Victor's help we can envisage how this busy thoroughfare may have looked in its Heyday a settlement that went out of use around 200 A.D possibly because of some cataclysmic Earth slip outside the town's Edge the fines that allowed us to find this out have been spectacular but as we approach the end of the third day I never thought I'd be so close to the remains of someone who actually lived in this town this is the first complete excavation of a cremation at bird Oswald possibly of a Roman soldier who patrolled this distant Frontier 1700 years ago [Music]

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 170,362

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, Ancient Rome, Time Team, Tony Robinson, Roman, Cemetary, archeology

Id: OuIHDykgB-E

Length: 50min 3sec (3003 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2023