The Buried Roman Villa Hidden In The Blacklands | Time Team | Odyssey

[Music] in 43 a.d the romans invaded britain with their shining armor and their mediterranean suntans and their imperial army but they were deeply resented by the iron age brits and it was centuries before the country was well and truly romanized at least that's the story we know and love [Music] but here in an idyllic part of somerset is a site that tells a very different story the local archaeological society have uncovered a villa built within decades of the roman invasion what's more it seems to have been occupied by brits so were the locals as hostile as we think what was going on here can we sort out the strange story of black lands we've only got a limited amount of time just three days [Music] [Music] just years after their arrival the romans had constructed bath in the southwest a major roman centre of grand stone buildings the defeated brits meanwhile were living in wooden round houses and sticking with their tribal culture or were they [Music] the blackland site 10 miles from bath has been partially excavated and deer fist by the bath and camerton archaeological society they believe they have an iron age site with a very early roman villa built on it including a substantial gatehouse so they've called us in to untangle this complex site guys this is a fool's errand seriously it is look the geophys has already been done yeah the trenches have been put in the villa's been excavated job done let's go home but all the questions about the site haven't been answered there's still a lot more to do i mean on the villa site for example we we don't know the exact dating of this we don't know the phasing of it and we don't know there isn't an earlier timber structure underneath so there's a lot more to do on that to start with and this gatehouse has got loads still to tell us look at those amazing linear features coming out of there they don't go anywhere what's going on there i'm far more interested in all these tantalizing geophysics down here now the first thing i think we ought to do is resurvey that because john has got state-of-the-art equipment we should be able to get much clearer results down here and to test all that you see so far they've only been able to put in one trench to actually find out about this earlier iron age material so much more potential so what are we going to do first we're going to clean up and open up an area in the northeast part that villa area there and we're going to redo the geophysics here and then move on south [Music] while geophys gets underway matt sets off the local team on the partially excavated villa hoping to find out just how early it is [Music] the british summer doesn't hold for long as the heavens open mick's enjoying a dry moment of collaboration with the local society look into that weather out there johan i'm really glad that we're in here what do you think we can help you with in the time that we're here well i think the big question really is is the data the the the photovillain whatever we want to call it farmstead um you know when we first came here several years ago we looked at this this building yeah and we assumed it was a late roman village which most of them someone said aren't they absolutely and began to realize that we were dealing with something very different and started getting very early dates from the fines and you've done fantastic geophysics on the site hello i think we could probably help with the the new kit that we've got a lot of that looks like iron age stuff doesn't it and presumably that's of great interest to you if you're thinking the things early we assume that we've got a very long phase occupation here right from the iron age and to the wrong period and it's that intersection between the rome pood and the iron age is of great interest to us so that's something that we really want to look at the society believe the villa looks like this and early finds suggest it dates to the first century a.d they also believe that the villa complex was built by britons already living at blacklands at the time of conquest britons who were quick to adopt roman ways but are they right can this site point us to the day the romans arrived we're facing some soggy work down a hole that may hide key evidence to understanding the site bridge is that a well it is why are we digging it well i mean the hole is just a hole isn't it well it is this but this is quite a significant one because this is meant to be dated to the very very early roman period about first century a.d and it's significantly over top of an late iron age ditch and of course at the bottom of where you get lots of fines we just want to see what those fines are and get some more dating evidence that kind of thing kerry you're our health and safety bloke how are we going to dig that without killing ourselves what we're going to do we're going to put a machine slot in front of the well get down as far as we can safely and then we're going to board it and shore it so we can work from the outside of the well and we'll half section it as we go [Music] as we prepare for the next storm matt gets stuck into the villa trench i guess this probably came from the villa do you reckon i would have thought so yeah it seems like the explanation that we've got the demolition dump in the top of the villa so interesting to see what date that that is our own gfiz results are also giving us plenty to get our teeth into so is your survey better than theirs john they're both really good right so they didn't do too bad then not at all i mean we've managed to add some detail and sharpen things up right but the main ditches look the big curving ditch there we've got the same feature showing so does this affect what what we do do you think in terms of excavation i think it does here i mean this this ditch that's running down it's beginning to look now as if it carries on here or or possibly it might be part of this square enclosure so this is obviously a lot more complicated around here see moyo is is drawn still to this area here where they add the the iron age material and now that john has re-surveyed it and really sharpened it up you can see clearly this circle which does look like an iron age roundhouse my instinct would be to say let's open up maybe an area go for the southeast area because we're more likely to get an entrance there aren't we yeah i mean it's about 15 meters in diameter wow that's a big one so phil opens his trench over what appears to be a roundhouse [Music] his mission to approach the moment the romans arrived from the iron age side bridge having left the local diggers to go down her well opens a trench where there seems to be an undated rubbish pit suggesting an occupation site that looks pretty good helen opens her trench where the geophys results show a mysterious crossing of ditches that may hold fines within minutes a new find emerges stone tile it's got that reddish kind of purpley look isn't it it's got a point to it yeah i think it's worth that that could be a rooftop worth asking because if it is a roof tile isn't that the first one when the romans arrived southwest britain was divided up into tribes such as the de bonnie while there were brits who were hostile to roman imperial expansion others particularly those who were already trading with rome were more welcoming and more likely to build a romanized building you've got this iron age landscape and suddenly plonked into the middle of it you get this super modern villa how did they know what to build where did they get the ideas and the craftsmen from well you've got a lot of things happening very close to here go 10 miles to the north and you've got the roman town of bath now this is somewhere where a huge investment is taking place in the 60s and 70s there are probably masons coming across from gaul probably roman engineers building this massive monumental temple and everything that goes with it and i think what john says is correct but i think you've also got to accept that there are people here in the later nature who are probably already important already perhaps high status and what they're doing and that's before the conquest and after the conquest what they do is develop a roman villa perhaps referring to sites in southeastern england to show off their allegiance to the new authority perhaps and their links to the south east of england and their knowledge of building structures so what would the people around here have felt who couldn't afford this lovely swanky new roman villa i think intimidated to start with why it's like thinking about medieval cathedrals sort of peasant going and suddenly seeing this huge sparring tower this is that'd be an awe of it and that's what they feel when they go to see bath okay a small little villa like this is not quite the same but it's very alien architecture yeah most people in the region at the time are still living in round houses so somebody who builds a villa like this is showing off their links to the new political authority or it could be seen as huge faux pas like someone putting up stone cladding on their building i'll go with that [Music] as well as villas the romans introduced another alien feature to our landscape yes the romans brought the garden to britain [Music] gardens were standard parts of villa life so we're going to create our very own hortus under the watchful eye of hillary and monica and we're keeping a close eye on authenticity do we actually know what plants and flowers the romans used we've got a pretty good idea because various plant remains have been found particularly in a herb shop in colchester and they've been analyzed so we know they had things like dill and chervil and various other things so we're going to try and select plants which which fit in with that evidence why don't we ever dig up anything like that we've got your eyes on clay we're going to go for this urn here it's a nice simple shape and we've got the acanthus leaves at the base which has been just right for our garden i'll tell you what we can stick this on top of bridget's world i don't think she'd be very happy about that [Laughter] [Music] back on site we're getting dating evidence for the occupation of the villa you found our villa yet matt just pulled a bit out here actually with a box flew tile so i think we found it but it wasn't here i think what we have here is the demolition from it um and it's sitting in this ditch here and i've just got to the top of it and we're already getting loads of pottery out here so what kind of days kind of early early second century second century stuff so does that mean it was demolished in the early section yeah if that if this demolition came from there the top layer over here is second century pottery mixed up with the demolition so matt's finding walls that were torn down in the second century so tom does that mean that the villa itself could have been built in the first century yeah i think it could be late first century a.d in which case that would be what we're looking for wouldn't it that would make it really really early much earlier than anything that's ever been found around here yeah exceptional the only other site we have nearby is one in gloucestershire which dates to that period so it's an exceptional structure in the area all this means we know that there were people here in the roman period by the second century but we don't know for sure there were people here when the romans first arrived or that they built the villa then but we've got great evidence from the iron age in phil's marquee here phil you're getting married married i thought you'd put this up for your reception well you're invited to the party oh that looks nice that is an exceptional find i am really really pleased with that what we've got is is a well it is a complete red deer antler the deer has not shed it it's died because that is actually part of the skull of the deer so the head is down this end and weird about the the all the points at that end but you see what is what they've done to it look here look how they've chopped through the back of the antler and they've snapped that off but they've also removed that tine that time and if you see there there's more cut marks in there where they've removed those times so what does a fine like that tell us about the lives of the iron age people who lived here absolutely loads tony first of all it tells us something about their diet they may not have been eaten venison all the day but you can bet your life on it because the head was attached to it probably the rest of it was they were eating venison but also it tells you that it's so much raw material for so many other associated trades it's it's raw material for the handle maker for the knives and for the foils and for the chisels so it just gives you so much more information about their lives just by having one red deer antler [Music] by the end of the day we're beginning to understand more about everyday life here in the iron age but we haven't got closer to the very moment the lives of iron age britons were turned upside down by the romans this morning you were so up about this idea of digging a villa that's already been dug but after a whole day i can't see that we've advanced our understanding of this site one job yeah but we have i mean just to take the villa itself we've now got second century pottery and second century demolition material in the top of the ditch which rather suggests the house went out of use and they moved and went somewhere else that's useful otherwise we've done what we do on a normal site not just because it's anybody else's site we've looked at the geophysics we've targeted a number of things on the geophysics and beginning to get results where phil's digging we've got iron age material you know we've probably got an iron age round house or something like that there the other holes here are producing roman material but only in the top of the tops of the features we need to give the archaeologist time to get down into those to give us the full story what about this jiff is well if you look at the geophase the thing that stands out is it's very very noisy all across here and then that line there stops just because that's the end of the field and that's as far as they went as far as they went there's no reason to believe that it doesn't go on through that gate down there and straight down that field fines and something really exciting tomorrow for sure absolutely certain you really sure yeah yeah beginning of day two here in somerset where we're looking at the time when the romans first arrived and under that green tent we think we've got a roman villa under the white tent is a possible iron age roundhouse the whole field seems to be dotted with fines so what's mick doing he's gazing out at the next field what are you bothering with all that for well we're doing some geophysics across that field there because the geophysics in this field all the signals stop at this boundary and it's unlikely to be true that i mean this boundary is probably i don't know 18th century something like that so i think he goes off into this field what do you think might be here well this way may be the equivalent of the village where the peasants live so we do a strip of geophysics along there and see what we're getting here so what kind of clues might you be looking for in the gfs here i think i would hope to see lots and lots of small round houses smaller than that one perhaps not within their own enclosures perhaps an enclosure around the whole lot you know rather more like ordinary peasant houses and we'll pop a trench and have a look if we get signals like that [Applause] on the villa site matt's been having trouble finding a definite date for the villa's construction demolition rubble's been dated to the second century so it's definitely a very early villa but it could have been built as much as 50 years after the romans arrived so were there people living here at the time of conquest we're adding to the pottery finds that paint an unexpected picture so what sort of date range of roman material have we got here mark well we just got a small selection here and we've been really starting with the later part of the first century ied right and the second century aed but we've also got some late romans some fourth century a.d but it's predominantly late first and second century but we've got a bit of a gap with the earliest roman pottery we have not yet been able to recognize any pottery that dates from the period of the roman conquest through to about 80 75 or thereabouts so that's about 30 years missing at the beginning of the roman thing right right that's right yeah that's what i would say does that indicate that there are gaps in the sort of buildings and occupation on the cycling well it's looking increasingly to me from the pottery that we ought to have another building somewhere right well that's a bit of a conundrum yes i mean you're presumably not thinking of a villa type structure at all are you no i wouldn't expect a villa at that date you're probably thinking about a timber building a farmstead it could conceivably still be a roundhouse at this phase and just making the transition to a more rectilinear romanized timber building right well we better have a look at the geophysics of anything else where that might be yeah if we find a missing building it may reveal romanization no longer wooden and round but rectangular or stone built then in helen's trench we find hints of just such a structure helen put a trench in here because she thought there might be a big ditch here and sure enough you can see that against the clay there but it's this side of the trench that you started getting really excited about yeah look we seem to have found a wall it's got these great big stones in it and the fines that are coming off are interesting we've got a piece of samian wear and a lovely rim of black burnished wear good roman stuff but then we've also got a piece of clay pigeon so we're really not sure what the date might be yet i mean the thing is we didn't know it was here because we'd only done a magnetic survey we got the ditched enclosure but we didn't see this wall i mean if this is a building then it puts a whole different perspective on it where is the ditched enclosure well you say ditch the enclosure but hang on i'm standing on the corner it's 30 meters long that way it's 10 meters long that way could it actually be a huge great big timber building this enclosure and if that's possible could that stonewall be the replacement in stone so we could maybe have a sequence how do we find out well we're just about ready to extend the trench we're going to go exactly that way where you are so i think you better move but the west country weather is proving a challenge [Music] in past excavations the local society have uncovered what seems to be a major gatehouse designed for the villa the two supporting towers had massive footings and they're bothering stuart i mean what's real news about that gatehouse is the scale i mean that's a substantial building that scale at six meters by three meter street tower something of that order you'd expect either on the fort or a big villa it seems totally out of context in relationship to that very small building it seems half the size of the actual villa which it must warf it really in respect that would make it really unique and unusual i i i it puzzles me when i'd have something so big with that i think it just needs a little bit more work to see if you can get to the bottom of what this structure really is but at least we've already solved one mystery yesterday in this trench we planned a major excavation it looked like there was going to be a 20 or 30 foot deep well in here didn't it though and and you were going to shore it up around the outside it was gonna half section it was make sure that none of us were hurt because you're our health and safety man i was yes look what we've ended up with it's pathetic it is pathetic what's happened is they've taken out their backfill from the last time they excavated it and it bottomed out to about three inches three inches i can't tell you how excited he was about this how long have you been planning it for weeks and i've had generators scaffolding across everything in for this and this is what we've ended up with it is but my primary concern is my tent which is in that hedge over there [Music] what are you what are you on in terms of light yesterday phil's trench gave us a worked iron age antler he's now convinced he's digging within an iron age roundhouse but could his iron age site be much bigger and run into our second field below what's the news then we've got our village i could not have been more wrong about this tony what i said this morning i i have this vision in my mind that this would be full around houses and it's absolutely fantastic but it's nothing like what i predicted at all what have we got instead i mean we've got a massive ditch continuing round i mean it circles around for 40 meters it seems to be a really large enclosure so that means that before the romans came there was this huge presumably one building well with this enclosure i think that's what we don't know because i mean you know we assume this is iron age going with this but actually we don't know that do we we need to look no we've got to dig this really yeah but what we really need to do is get some dating evidence from this field and we think go for this entrance it's very exciting it is yeah [Music] so matt opens a trench in the second field inside a ditched enclosure if it is iron age it would have been built to enclose the iron aged roundhouse in phil's tent [Music] well phil sorry i got mark for you where he comes up trump's let's see this i'm all of a quiver i really am i know what i found but i don't know what the detail is you i've never found anything like this before oh my word it's an iron age question i know that's what give me detail right well it certainly belongs to the group that we call debunk or southwestern british you've got a lovely head there with a see the nose chin eyes and hair and there should be a horse on the other side and there's the horse with the triple tail so this is before the romans have arrived yeah almost up to a century before the romans arrived i didn't realize they were making coins there yes coinage appears in britain towards the very beginning of the first century bc or the end of the second century bc and reaches this area by about 60 70 bc what would that horse signify well the horse is a very common symbol on iron age coins it may be a symbol of luck and also perhaps power and authority so phil what does this coin tell us about what was happening in your trench i mean presumably it's it's a high status object where these things don't turn up on every eye i've just never found anything like that before i've seen pictures of them but we've got to also place in our mind that that we do have this big roundhouse this 15 meter diameter roundhouse now that is a high status building and i think you know the high status building is going to go with a man of power it's the sort of guy who would have that coin possibly so you're mildly pleased to have found i am just over the moon literally all of a quiver i just can't believe it the most fun that phil could have without a stone tool in his hands the first iron age coin ever excavated on time team and it begins a flood of fines from all over the site i don't think we've had window glass no jane said we haven't found any on the site before yeah what a lovely color the technique in making it is to blow a great big bubble and then snip it down the middle and open it out flat this is a beautiful thing we've gone down into another layer a lower layer in the pit here and we're coming up with these really lovely fine whiz and i just would like your opinion on their date yeah well we'll start with the samian because it's always the easiest that's south gaulis from southern france yeah and i think that's from a sort of shallow plate or platter known as a form 18. but it's a title probably dates i think you're probably looking at the last 30 years of the first century id which is interesting oh great bridges fines are just some 40 years from the time of conquest but we still lack evidence of occupation from the actual transition point from the iron age to the roman period lovely there's the let's keep it on the trail actually until we can get it in the tray oh lovely so what are you looking for i'm just first of all just looking at the profile it's the first chance to get it it is a classic sort of mid first century aed cordon jar profile i think this is probably going to belong to somewhere towards the middle of the first century a.d it is in fact right on that transition say that date again the middle of the first century a.d middle of the first sanctuary show just either side of the conquest i was gonna say that's sort of 50 a.d which is about the time of the conquest right at last we've got firm evidence of people living somewhere around here at the time of the roman conquest a pot imported from the roman empire for wealthy britons of course it doesn't give us the exact location of the conquest period building but it's a big step with a glimpse of our goal work hots up and we've got some unexpected visitors um if you just head down that straight down okay so you back to it and then come down it's a punk rock invasion from the men in black the stranglers halfway through day two and the whole site's becoming frenzied [Music] even the gardeners in our roman hortus are on a roll [Music] [Applause] well this has come on well we put a lot of hard work into this today so all different things in all the different beds yeah yeah we've got four different beds we've got the bed here on the right hand side which is the medicinal bed on the left hand side we've got a herb bed over here we've got a veg patch with lots of different things coming along there and this bed is the decorative and sacred bed in a way sacred plant bed and a very foxy statue yes we've got venus here and venus was actually the goddess of the horses or the garden so she's in charge of all this lot and it's actually the most commonly found statue in roman gardens is of venus she's got her her dolphin alongside which refers to her marine birth um keeping her virtue absolutely very important that the tail is in the right position and in fact in this the bed here we've got two plants which are actually sacred to her we've got the rose bush here and we've got myrtle here um and often brides still have these flowers in their bouquets back in the tent and fills a quiver again we've got another coin but i think it might be iron age again too have a look at that oh excellent two coins from the same trench it is iron age that's definitely iron age and i can tell you that it's it's definitely dabunick see what you can make out look you can see the horse oh that's yeah on that side there yeah see what's on the other side ah we've got this wheat sheath type arrangement so this one hasn't got a head on it doesn't have a head on it but it's a classic the bunny coinage and i think you can just make out there on the top some inscription and it looks to me like that's the name anted are you sure yeah can you see it let's see that there's the ed on the end there and that's the name of it that's the name of a dubunic ruler minting coinage probably in the late first century bc very early first century a.d and we really do not have any demonic coinages from a pre-conquest context so if this is iron age it really is very rare everything from this trench with the exception of a few stray bits of roman pottery everything from this trench has been iron age the first iron age coin on time team and now the first bubonic coin ever found in context in britain and it shows we've got really wealthy britons living here in the iron age a type who could have been quickly romanized we've also got fines giving us the scent of a conquest period building but there's still a fly in the ointment all day the archaeologists have been obsessing about the villa and the iron age roundhouse but stuart you've got to be in your bonnet about something else haven't you well the gatehouse yeah i just don't understand it at all what's your problem well it's a scale of it seems inordinately large for what is really not much more than a farmstead rather than a big villa its axis doesn't actually look onto the villa at all the two were associated you'd expect it to be square on so you could see the villa as you came through it yeah it just seems wrong roman towers and gateways tend to have the larger projection from where the gate is on the inside of an enclosure and here that's this direction this is the inside and this is the outside and looking at the plan that implies that the inside of whatever this gateway leads to is this side and not this side where the villa is so it's not a gateway going into the villa at all it's going into something else well that that's a 64 000 question is there another villa in here no not in that enclosure well hang on a minute i mean it's possible there's something on this side to which this gateway relates can you expand on your no john it's just we've done more detailed work now there's the gateway there's this avenue that stuart's talking about and the responses inside just don't go with a villa building i can't tell you what they are so i mean the only way to solve the problem is to put another trench in i'm afraid just selecting some of these anomalies here but if stuart's right and the gateway is pointing in that direction but there's not a villa there what could there be there well villar enclosures aren't the only kind which will have a monumental entranceway occasionally you might find something like a romano celtic temple or a ritual site of some sort will have a massive monumental entranceway john it's nearly the end of day two everyone's really soggy it's pouring with rain again are we gonna start now um why not well you can i'll mark it out somebody else can do it and true to his word going to stuart you could be in the middle of a temple stewart yeah i think it's a load of rubbish but well i do as well mind you if it is a temple it's based on the geophysics so while kerry is left out in the cold the rest of us find several excuses to keep dry good day eh fantastic particularly the coins from phil strange you like your coins oh just absolutely stunning exactly what's so great about this what i think it's showing us is the people in that roundhouse are living there in the centuries immediately before the roman conquest this is what 10 20 a.d something like that yeah and back into the first century bc the main thing is that is pre-wronged yeah but it's pre-roman and what we're looking for is that magic moment round about 43 a.d when the romans arrived that you see in bridget's trench the further she goes down that trench the earlier the pottery gets and she's back to about 70 a.d now so we got phil coming one way going forward bridget going backwards you know sooner or later we've got to meet at the conquest in 43 a.d aren't we are we gonna meet in the middle i hope so tomorrow if we keep going and lots more fines i'll dream to that yeah take a look at this this is not only the rarest coin we've ever found on time team it's unique in british archaeology [Music] the roman invasion of 43 a.d was one of the most important moments in british history imagine the transformation in trade and transport and culture that it must have meant for the people who lived here and we're now honing in on those very years when the romans first arrived here in somerset yesterday we had a cornucopia of fines coming out of the ground by the end of the day stewart was also convinced that there was a roman villa or temple on the other side of the roman gatehouse [Music] please don't tell me you've got a villa or a temple well i'd like to say yes just to see your face but no i haven't what it is is we've got a simple drainage ditch someone's cut through one layer of stone so yeah gone down onto this layer so you've got a nice smooth bottom ditch and the water just runs away off the hill so this is all bedrock this is all bedrock just different layers of bedrock no fines no fines whatsoever so my intention is just to clean this up and then record it and there's nothing else in the trench nothing at all i'll have to break the news to stewart yeah can i come with you not only is stewart for once wrong but we're still driving to understand how blacklands became romanized we've had some great finds from around the conquest but still no building to go with them but then mark stands back to look at the bigger picture mark it amazes me that mick can ask you to go off and look at all these manky bits of pot which look virtually identical and you can make a coherent story out of them what do they tell you about the people who lived on this site well this stuff tony is really focusing on this transition we've been looking for from the end of the iron age and into the early roman period and in fact we can sort of relay this stuff out these pieces here which you can see are noticeably cruder if you like are actually late iron age and then we've got this range of material it's more romanized but following on from some known late iron age forms but they're now making it a clay or fabric that's romanized basically it's much finer you're going in for mass production overall we're looking at a range here that would take us from about 50 bc down to about 80 a.d and the stuff that comes from around the time of the transition between the iron age and the romans is that from the villa side oddly enough there is none of it from around the villa site it's all coming from down the slope from an area between where phil and bridget have been digging nothing that early from our villa so does that imply mick that this was the area of activity when the romans arrived i think it does if that's where it's all coming from well we've seen the iron age stuff out of phil's trick yes so it looks as if it's actually nowhere near the villa but much further down the slope but we haven't got any walls or houses haven't we well no but on the geophys there are some sort of circles you see here which we haven't excavated which could be roundhouses of that period because the other possibilities there are timber frame structures in there which aren't showing up on the geophysics but at least we know that they are actually in that area rather than anywhere else the pottery tells us that very very clearly yeah so the story's shifted isn't it from when we arrived yeah yeah so we've worked out that the villa wasn't the earliest romanized building on the site after all there should be a different building from just after the romans arrived and it should be somewhere down here while phil and bridge dig for the time of the conquest our roman garden is blooming you finished we finished it's fantastic i think i'm really pleased with what we've done here i tell you after working in all those muddy trenches for two and a half days it's just great to sit here in the sun it is absolute bliss and everything's all done wonderful do you think the romans would have done something similar to us right now absolutely they would have done gardens are for relaxation aren't they they like outdoor rooms we talk about nowadays so you'd bring your work out here women would bring out their spinning they'd bring the children to come to play they'd pick the herbs how do we know all that well we find things like children broken children's toys we find spindle whirls in the ground on sites and that's very good evidence and of course we've got the goddess of love we have and i'm sure assignations were made in roman gardens just as it would be nowadays if we'd had time to put a water feature in we could have had a pool here what we could have done after dinner tony is we could have actually floated love letters to each other across the water feature we know that they used to do that get your spade out girl back in the second field max at the bottom of what we think is the entrance to a huge enclosure located by geophys so how are you getting on with this stitch then matt well i think i've just about got to the moment now finally it's a little deeper than i thought it was going to be yeah it's enormous isn't it yeah and at the bottom it's kind of claggy clay deposit with bits of charcoal and i found one bit of pot out of it i just wanna have a look at it oh that looks good well it's definitely late iron age that's excellent so that confirms that the ditch was dug in the late iron age then and backfilled in their own period yeah excellent all that was roaming down to about there yeah but the initial digging is his later iron age brilliant let's get the rest of it out and find you some more great so matt ditch is a massive iron age enclosure around phil's and bridges trench the pottery has shown that the living area at the time of conquest is also within this enclosure from the geophys and huge curve of her trench bridge suspects her rubbish pit may cover another round house and she's found a fixture what's that thing there well this is really neat this looks like it's a pivot stone from a door so you've had the frame coming out of here and the door pivoting back and forth like that yeah look at that there we go yeah all right that's very nice got that triangular shape there and look you can see the groove mark in the side there where the where the um pivot of the door frame would have come up there you can see where it's been wearing away so it's quite a sophisticated building what might it have been well potentially we have a stone-built roundhouse possibly built after the roman conquest by people using roman pottery so if we've got a romanised round house that's a completely different part of the story isn't it it is but we knew we were lacking a building at that pier because we've got the pots we haven't got a structure to go with it it looks if bridge might have found it and the reason we haven't found it before is it's been demolished so is it that when the romans arrived here the high status locals didn't just go oh well we better move into uh classic roman house they just used some roman technology and incorporated it into their own round houses and only built a romanised house later yeah they continue sometimes to live into roundhouses until they build the villa perhaps bridget this could be the missing link it could be but i'm going to go down and find that for you with just a few hours to go helen's rectangular feature has given way to another structure entirely one of stone and so romanized this is looking a lot better anyhow looks like a proper excavation it certainly does it's looking absolutely gorgeous but we've still got a few problems like well everybody agrees that this is an iron age roundhouse well this sort of area in the middle yeah yeah with these stones coming round in an art yeah and it's got eve strip gully thing and all the things that you'd expect from an iron age roundhouse except it's only got one solitary single piece of iron aged pottery so there is a possibility that it could actually be a roman roundhouse so we've got matt digging a trench across the wall to try to find out and tom is working away at a post hole which could also be associated to try to find something that's earlier so what about this wall then well the wall is a real enigma because it did seem to turn at that end certain and then peter out but then at this end it just kind of gets a bit lumpy and and stops it just seems to be a wall in the middle of nowhere and that's really odd it doesn't relate to a building as far as you can see it's all then does it no absolutely not as she runs out of time helen's roman walls remain a mystery she thinks she's got a romanised round house but the date remains elusive bridge though has found an even more impressive building hi bridge what's go what on earth is that are you impressed i mean it looks as though we've got massive foundations got a dust doesn't it i mean that's clearly been carefully laid yeah and look we've got a construction cut running around that side and it's curving up in that direction through there we've got good levels on all of these yeah and this pit's cut through the top of it yeah and actually what's really nice about it is you can see where they've actually put the pit in they've been digging away digging away and then gone bang against these and realized oh blow that why move them out the way and just win over the top yes it looks like a massive footing yeah have you had any material from around it or within it all of this here in front of you is from around this foundation let's have a look you've got some decorated sailing well that looks to me as if that alter date to about 60 to 80 aud that's good that's earlier than what we were having yeah it is and i mean looking at this this this looks like good sort of late iron age bead room but it's also appearing with the sort of earliest romanized forms as well so we're definitely looking i think at that period about 60 to 80. so this really is filling the gap in time that we've had for structures and occupations indeed can you imagine how what the size of this building must have been like it's truly astonishing and yeah unusual in any context in roman britain i'd say to seek foundations on this scale in the countryside this early in the last minutes of the day bridge has revealed what we've been looking for a stone roundhouse a romanised building constructed by brits within a few decades of the romans arrival over the last three days you've got more and more excited about this site yeah i have yeah i think it's been a fantastic site why it well it's that junction between pre-history and the roman period and you know we're right on it i think we're right on it more or less where we're standing actually in the three days we found the site where romanization first took hold at blacklands we've uncovered three roundhouses and while helens remains undated the heart of the story is in phil's high status iron age one and bridge's massive stone one from those critical years after the romans arrived and our finds paint a picture of the people at blacklands who adopted roman ways so quickly pottery revealing trade with the continent rare coins belonging to the powerful and wealthy pretty good few days absolutely this site promised so much and it delivered even more not only did we extend the roman life of this place by about 200 years not only did we get right into the heart of an iron age round house but we got very close to the people who were living here at that extraordinary moment in time when the romans arrived here in somerset on one other thing i think we've probably given the local archaeologists a few more years work to do don't worry about 30 years i think [Music] you

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 94,110

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, ancient britain, roman britain, archaeology, time team, tony robinson, roman history, ancient rome, british history, archaeolgical dig, team team

Id: h4B2e1DoPVg

Length: 47min 30sec (2850 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021