The Iron Age Capital Hiding Under A Welsh Housing Estate | Time Team

[Music] this slope could once have been part of an ancient capital in a rather unlikely place the ele housing estate here in South Wales the hill is called kyai it's pretty mysterious and no one's ever dug it before but it may well once have been a vital Fortress for the Welsh tribes who lived here 2,000 years ago this Mighty Fort built on a Hill may have been the center of power for this entire region I'm really excited about it Untouched by Spade or tra for centuries will we be the first to unravel its secrets so I'm hoping whoa that's a little clearer for you oh I can't believe it it's down to our team of archaeologists to solve the mystery of this hill could this be the long lost capital of South Wales and if it is will we be able to find it in 3 days so the thing about long lost places is you never quite know what you're going to find do [Music] you well so here we are Phil this is our Hill Fort it's nothing quite like it is there walking up through the entrance of a hill fort with ramp Parts towering up on either side of it absolutely immense you know it's a big hill for it's one of the biggest in South Wales you know it's a major Center yeah but the thing is Neil it's big so we've got to get cracking Come Oh Come on Phil ordering ordering ordering also making their way up to the Fort are our geop physics team their task to survey this vast Hilltop in search of an ancient tribal Center that may hidden here oh wow you you wouldn't have thought it was this open up here when you're clambering up the ramp Parts no you wouldn't so this is about five hectares that's 10 football pitches an old man isn't it yeah kyai which means forts in Welsh overlooks Cardiff capital of modern Wales built a top this massive Hill trees Now cover the spectacular Earthworks that give our sight the classic profile of an Iron Age Hill fort but more than that its size and commanding position suggest that it could have been the old capital and busy hub for the Welsh clans of the area time team site director Francis prior has seen what he believes could be an Iron Age ditch and it's got him very excited I mean look you really see it's incredibly clear over there it's really nice your back FR you're the boss this week is this place really as m mysterious as it's cracked up today well I don't think it's mysterious Tony so much as unexplored we know it's a hill for it's a hill for so it is Iron Age then yes it's Iron Age that gives us a lot of time to play with you know is it starting at the beginning you know 600 500 BC or is it started much later 300 200 could be either one what's the thing are we expecting to find well what we're looking for Tony is where people actually live I mean that's our main objective but initially we want to find the earliest on the site and I think our best bet lies really just down there in that ditch I mean you can see it as clear as anything we're going to do the GE fist first though shall we don't need GE Francis 20 years of time team we GE fears and then we dig the trench we are going to be doing a trench here hang on a second you got a cane here yeah and and one right over there where you are this is a zoning great trench it's a zoning great ditch yeah the thing is Tony we got to get on and dig it yeah so would you mind please going somewhere else oh yeah blame me you you wandering around in the grass the temptation to dive straight in at kyri is too much for any red-blooded archaeologist to resist this huge site could date back to the beginning of the Iron Age in Wales as early as 800 Years BC if this wasn't n age Capital our ancestors would have lived here in large numbers and left evidence behind ditches are a good place to look for artifacts that have rolled in or been thrown away Francis is convinced the curving ditch he's digging is Iron Age the turf's barely off and it looks like he could be right very often what happens with iron age ditches you have collapse over the years coming in and and so I mean you're natural edge of that ditch is what twice as far back as we reckoned yeah very encouraging you know nice wide ditch natural appearing over there bank it's just what we expected Clues to the importance of this site lie all around us ramparts [Music] the massive Banks and ditches that surround this [Music] hill they're part of what's always drawn Iron Age specialist Neil sharles to kyri for years he's been dying to dig here we've been talking blly about this place being a hill Fort but we haven't actually said what a hill Fort is have we no it's uh well it's a difficult question that's why we're probably even avoiding it well it's a hill and it's a fort right well maybe it's definitely on a hill what do you mean by a fort well somewhere where there are soldiers somewhere where there are defensive structures we can see that there are ramp Parts here can't we so what were these ramp parts for well I think at a simple level they're creating a an enclosure that defines and gives identity to the people who live within it defining a community seems like a bit hippie dippy to me well no it's you you you people in the period before this in the Bron age people were living in small farmsteads in the fields in the landscape the end of the Bronze Age there's a major transformation and people gather together at these places probably quite special places and then they surround themselves in these ramparts and ditches but why would you define yourself in such an incredibly Military Way well it's it's not necessarily a military way that's the way you look at it i''d be very very surprised if we found a spear inside this hill for or any weapon you're making yourself like something built by Social Services not just because it took a lot of people to build it it doesn't mean that it was a community project does it it's a big statement of sense of belonging and it's a sense of Pride Community Pride we are a community who strong vibrant we've got lots of resources we've got lots of Manpower you know we can build a major impressive Monument that's going to really put all our neighbors into the shade they're going to look at our our rampants and see gosh that's impressive I don't want to tangle with them they are a really important group of people the geophysics team is using magnetometry to survey kyri it's a technique that uses magnetic waves to locate disturbances deep in the soil we're looking for circular features traces of Iron Age roundhouses that may have Lain buried for more than 2,000 years Francis has asked the team to survey a strip running across the middle of the Hill Fort If there really were lots of people living here in the is age there should be evidence in the geiz and the first set of results are already in this is what we've got now we did have a bit of a wish list this morning which was going to be lots of archaeology possibly some ring ditches yep so how many of your wishes have you fulfilled um not quite as many as you'd have hoped I'm afraid like none yeah we're verging on now it's Up For Debate Francis you wanted round OES yes yes I did um yes it's it's yeah it's it's not exactly Iron Age London is it not really I mean am I imagine in Summit or is that something there tell me there is Summit there tell me come on Jeffy tell me the summit there all right yes there is something curving through there well can you drop us in on that I think I can manage it yeah okay let's go for it it's not much to go on but then IR age archaeology isn't for the faint-hearted or or the shortsighted roundhouses the typical homes of the period were made of wood mud and thatch and after long centuries rotting in the ground there's not much left to see while Phil's opening up trench 2 back at our first trench Francis is hoping his archaeologist's gut instinct has been proved right if this really turns out to be an Iron Age ditch it'll help us Bae the hill Fort I think yes I think we've got a ditch there yep no problem so that's your ditch Matt it's not exactly defensive is it no um the the the gray silk that we thought was the ditch fill actually is the top of this natural Boulder clay here so we carried on back this way and you can see the dark ditch fill there oh it's really clear yeah lovely Edge there it goes all the way to here how deep do you think it's going to be I mean I've been nibbling away the edge along here and it's going at about 45 degrees so you may be talking maybe half a meter deep if it follows that and no no finds anything like that absolutely nothing I mean the fill of the Stitch is really solid it's almost the same as the clay there so I think it is very compacted and very old but um the proof is really going to be in the excavation isn't it yeah yeah it will get [Music] cracking at the base of this hill Fort is elely the biggest housing estate in Cardiff unaware that an ancient Capital might be in their backyard some of the eely residents have turned up hoping to find out something about this place so what's it like having this fantastic ancient SRO in your door room like didn't even know about it really I know it was quite like hidden cuz not like not many people knew about it being here and like after all this a lot of people know about it now over the next few days we're hoping to tell the local people if and where kyri was occupied and exactly what was going on up here so we better hurry up and find something one of the archaeologists just called me over and said there's a house in trench 2 a house in trench 2 so I came over here and look there's suedes of brown soil and a few Stones dotted around where's your flipping house mate actually I couldn't have put it better myself Tony there are SES of brown soil but it really takes the the eyes of a skill archaeologist to actually pick out what's in the trench we've only got you here well I'm going to have to do then a I look if you remember when you looked at the geophysics you remember there was that curving thing which we thought was probably the wall line of The Roundhouse well we think we've actually located that in this trench the giveaway is you've got one Edge coming along there you can see on this side it's somewhat grittier M and then it in here it's CLA and you've got the other Edge coming around here and swinging round in this direction and we think that that is either the foundation of a roundhouse or maybe a drip Gully we're looking for a huge Community aren't we yes but but huge communities live in houses if we're right in thinking that this is our house we are beginning to actually get a grip of that Community it is all a bit tenuous isn't it it is not tenous you old cynic if this was a capital packed with people we really need to find their houses and date them Francis thinks that dwellings next to the ramparts could be better preserved because over time soil tumbles down onto the houses protecting them from later plowing Jim afternoon got any more results for us uh certainly have um you'll remember Francis that after this morning's efforts we were sort of grasping it straws hopefully wa is that better is that more what you were after oh I can't believe it we got what 1 2 3 4 5 what six roundhouses I guess there optimistic but I'm with you yeah yeah I mean I can't tell you Jimmy I think and you may change your mind overnight but at first glance where do you reckon you'd want to dig tomorrow well obviously go for that round house it's obviously in such good condition 10 minutes ago we had drip tray and now we've got practically a whole civilization well we'll have to prove it to find out won't we and that means digging tomorrow beginning of day two here in South Wales and yesterday we spent the whole day searching for some signs of Iron Age life in this empty field and found virtually nothing at all until around about 5:30 p.m. Jimmy from geus came up with that isn't that beautiful lots of interesting linear and circles and mysterious shapes for archaeologist this is just about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on so how are you going to start your funfield day mate well we've got a dream site here Tony look the jiz has shown up a row of houses snuggled up against the back of the ramp Parts which is what you often find on hill fors and then look at that one that's the best preserved of them all so we're putting a trench in that from the front door which is here so we're going to do that half there but you think these aren't the only roundhouses here don't you yeah I think there's another R running along here and there's certainly one there there's another one in there another one there another one there I'm I'm quite happy I think that's a rule of hoses it's so funny because yesterday I was really taking the Mickey out of you for this idea that that this was an Iron Age Community rather than an actual military fort but if you've got two rows of houses like that that is the beginning of a communist getting a community I'm happy I think this it proves what I was seeing was right and you know we've got a community here I mean if you count them up I mean we've got at least five on this RW five or six in this Ro you know we've got at least 10 houses 8 to 10 people in a family yep so you know that's 800 people yeah and that's and that's one excellent so you know I'm really happy I think that's but we got to find something Tony we haven't found anything yet we found we found burnone okay burn Stone we're quite excited we're quite only an archaeologist could get that excited about this amount of burn Stone the burnt limestone together with our stunning geiz results have convinced Francis that he's found an area that was very densely populated by Iron Age standards it could be the first step to proving that kyri was a very important site but the minute the top soil's off disagreement follows geophysics head John Gator thinks he can see the marks of The Roundhouse in the ground but Francis is convinced that the jagged edges they're seeing were caused by Ice Age glassiers 10,000 years ago was a feature there at the very end that's showing up nice and clearly that's a proper feature it's got Pottery on it there's nothing in there which is archaeological honestly look at the edge of that JN you see the the way it waivers like that that's cut by Ice I think that is the the ditch of the The Roundhouse and it that's the break that's the entrance there so the green is the edge of the trench where we're standing yeah and that anomaly there yeah is that anomaly and you're saying that's glacial yeah and so it's pure coincidence that that is at the end of that ring yeah well I don't believe you you don't no well I'll take my hat off to you if it is no it is it is John it is there is no archaeology there take my word for it so we'll have to come back here then and then once we found it we can follow it if we want but I think the key thing now is to find it because we're we're we're lost until we do if Francis is right we haven't got our roundhouse yet but he's not giving up he's now extending the trench to try and find it wased my time [Music] [Applause] we know next to nothing about this site and very little about the Iron Age in this part of Wales except that it lasted for 800 years but there are clues about the nature of the people who lived in the area and perhaps on our Hill for itself it's a beautiful map isn't it looks like Middle Earth it's a crackl and it does a bit doesn't it what does it represent well what it's showing us is the the iron AG tribes of Wales or at least it shows us how the Romans describe the ion AG tribes of South Wales we have a wonderful account from the Roman historian tacitus and he he gives us this picture and this is a nice sort of representation of that where are we we're just here this is kyri so we're deep in the heart of these people the silures absolutely in the heart line with the silures that's right what do we know about the silures the Romans tell us quite a bit about them in some detail about the ferocious resistance that the silures mounted to the the the Roman Advance a 25-year Guerilla War what do you think is the relationship between our Hill Fort and the sy's defense of their own territory generally well it could be quite important because it's it's big uh in the scheme of things and in in the terms of of South Wales it's it's one of the bigger Hill fors and I think that we really should be thinking of the Silas as a sort of a a clan based tribal confederation so you will have had important Regional centers and it may well be that we stood in the middle of one of them here at [Music] KY we've now got three trenches up and running in our search for houses and fines so far Matt's ditch trench has given us nothing but help is now at hand some reinforcements mate thanks how many have you got huh how many you got oh a few right the kids from elely coming to dig in our trenches maybe they'll bring us good luck there's still a bit of cleaning to do in there on all that muddy clay and then we'll get into the features and see if we can find some really good stuff you are going to get so muddy is that a problem no not for you too great get stuck in then off you go so TRS on the ground facing that way press down and pull scrape scrape scra that's it Matt and rackshaw don't have any trouble putting them all to work nothing nothing like a bit of slave labor to move this excavation along yeah watch your toes but who were these ancestors that our kids are digging for we know they spoke an ancient Celtic language and we know that this language became modern Welsh and they've Left Behind colorful everyday objects some of which are kept in the national museum of Wales hi Ashley and Ka right we're taking two of our diggers Ashley and Ka both elely born and Brad to see them and stuff but you need to put your gloves on KY hasn't given us any finds yet but some of these Iron Age artifacts were found close to our thought this stuff is 2,000 years old these objects here are all from one horde they were all found together people have actually brought things together deposited them put them into the ground maybe as a sort of a a ritual act giving them to the gods and a lot of these hordes from from this part of the world they relate to horses so I think we can say horses were really important to these people and if you can imagine you know big CS chariots with those things mounted in the horse trappings you know would have been really colorful and that really does say something about how sophisticated they were and I think that's important for us to remember can you see this over here can what's this that's a Iron Age p in it big mug isn't it a tank it's the right idea yeah I think it's a little bit more than a pint yeah about four pints four Ps that's a lot and I think the idea is isn't it Ray that they used to share these I think I think you'd want to to share that round a bit uh yeah it might be a bit much otherwise yeah these precious objects tell us that the iron AG people from this area lived Lives full of ritual and color to get a sense of how challenging it was to make objects like this we're going to make our own communal drinking cup to discover a bit more about Iron Age Technology no Cassie is going to help metal worker Dave Chapman make a bronze handle for the cup and the process starts by getting metal from Stone this is going to sound like a bit of a stupid question but this is the Iron Age so why bronze well they're using the bronze uh quite extensively as a decorative metal CU a really beautiful metal that takes lovely shapes and you can cast bronze whereas you can't cast iron so you can get really nice decorative shapes so any any shape you can make in wax uh you can then cast cast in into bronze bronze is a alloy of copper and Tin locally mined malachite is a good source of copper ore but to extract or smelt the pure copper we need more than just heat it's actually about creating carbon monoxide which is bonding with the copper in the with the carbon in the in the stone uh creating carbon dioxide and copper metal so we're forcing chemical reaction to take place whether you're smelting now or 2 years ago extracting metal from ore is a complex process Dave's using raw material from the local environment in this case Turf from our trenches to control the gases inside the furnace the carbon monoxide reacts with the ore separating it into pure copper and the waste product slag oh there we go like we've got some on the bottom there oh is it this sort of that bit there yeah yeah that's looks like a copper it's very solid excellent so what we'll do we'll drop put it in the water at this stage the copper is still attached to the slag oh lovely really is it after cooling the copper can be knocked out there you go loads of solid stuff it's a big effort for a small amount of copper we've got a lot of work to do before we're ready to cast our bronze [Music] handle the cup is underway but it would be great to find a real Iron Age artifact and it looks like francis's first hunch about where to dig was a good call Francis the whole field is a buzz with archaeologists saying that at last we've got a significant fine is this it it is Tony and it is a cracker of a f i Am really excited about it it looks just like a piece of rock to me well it is a piece of rock to me it would have been a much larger piece of rock this is a qun it's a corn grinding stone one of the things about these qums right is they were quite sophisticated bits of kitchen equipment go on um this would have been part of a much larger thing so this is a top Stone and there been another one at the bottom on which it would have rested like that and then you pour this grain through that Groove there which is actually a hole oh you can really see that curve shape in there can't so that goes in there and it goes to meets The Bottom Stone and then you can see look there's another Groove there and then that distributes the grain as it grinds and then after after I don't know a couple of generations of use ples of weakness develop and then eventually the thing cracks and they say something rude in Iron Age and throw it into the ditch but why are you so excited about this I mean it is frankly just a broken thing in the bottom of a ditch I'll tell you why this tells us but there were people actually living here they were making flour in the houses which were probably just over there so it's very very important now Matt where exactly did you find it this is important to get this right it was just on the bottom of the ditch just about there and why is that so significant well as you can see it's a big thing and it was found right at the bottom of the ditch so I don't think it was something that was lying around but accidentally slipped in I think this was thrown in there with rubbish so so it has to date the ditch Matt you know why he's so try triumphant this is his trench that he stuck in before J fiz and it's turned up trunks you'll bang on the money yes it's really been good Tony I'm really excited about it Tony This brilliant late Iron Age find dates our ditch and it's proof that Iron Age people were grinding corn here at kyri and where people were grinding corn they were very likely to be living and even farming in the surrounding landscape but to proed that this place was some sort of Iron Age Capital we need evidence of large numbers of people living here and that means finding plenty of roundhouses yet halfway through our time here there's still no definitive evidence of a single one the pressure's on we're at KY Hil fort in South Wales a massive unexplored site we're looking for evidence that this place was once some sort of Iron Age Capital we're halfway through day two and even though we've got this fantastic GE Fizz quite frankly what's been coming out of some of our trenches has been less than inspiring so we're putting in trench four here over the oval enclosure which you could see on the G is and this is right at the entrance to the whole inh hill Fort so hopefully we'll get something here that's pretty exciting we've already put in three trenches to try and get a sense of how many people may have lived here and when with the help of the local kids from elely we found a single late Iron Age corn grinding qun which points to it being a domestic site but so far on this giant Hilltop we found no houses it's been a while since I've caught up with Phil he's always firmly believed he's got a roundhouse in his trench but is he any closer to proving it te about time too yeah tea up mate okay clear up your loose we'll have a cup of tea hey give me some good news mate I've been looking around the other trenches you can't see a thing you're so negative you want something positive yes please well I can positively tell you that that ring ditch that Foundation Gully or whatever it was is not a foundation Gully or a ring ditch I thought you were going to give me some good news but I am I'm going to be really really positive I can think I can say positively that we do have a building in this trench and where is the building well is actually in front of you where Cali is you see she's got digging a post hole there yeah now all about a foot behind her feet there is a a gray patch there's another post hoold there we've got another one look there's a gray patch there with another post hole and that all ties in with this feature that I'm digging here now I've measured them up the distances between them are the same the distances that way are the same they form a regular rectangle now whether or not that's a rectangular building or part of something round I don't really know is that positive enough for that's positive Francis yes sir we've got uh we've got a building here brilliant mind you is a struggle finding anything here is it is incredibly difficult to see any forms of features in this in this brown soil well it's that's not to be wondered at the thing is fil 10,000 years ago this was glaciated there were glaas down here Frozen and every time the ice froze it would open up wedges in the ground and and it would bring the clay up from below and it would mess around with the natural and that's why it's a dog's breakfast all right don't give us a lecture just drink drink your tea well where is my tea oh never mind Gordon Bennett where's my tea there's your tea sir oh look please take I'm so sorry positive thinking is all very well but the reality is that Phil's trench remains inconclusive our building could be round could be rectangular could be Iron Age but we've got no finds and no date it's game over at trench 2 but it's not time to give up on kyai just yet and we've also got a replica Iron Age drinking cup to make Dave has added a small amount of tin to The Copper we smelted earlier and is melting them in a crucible to make bronze it's almost ready to pour into molds which contain wax replicas of the handles at the Cardiff Museum is it ready Dave we getting there now uh it's good and hotter from over here I always think this is a very magical process it must have seemed so then mustn't it must have done wasn't it even after thousands of years you still get uh excited by it thousands of apps you can imagine that the people who did it must have had really high status in the community I should think so yeah and kept very quiet about how you actually did [Music] our bronze is now ready to pour into the molds to create classic Iron Age style handles fantastic color isn't it how long before it'll cool down about 10 minutes something like that you can see the the uh ronze has a consistency of chocolate in this uh at this temperature yeah good good there you go Tony perhaps You' like to do the honors and knock it out with this side gently yeah gently cuz it's a very pretty oh yeah it is fragile isn't it there's our casting yeah can can you see the the edge of the castings there let go let's go a quick wash and brush up and the handles are very nearly there here we are probably around 2,000 years since something like this was made on this [Music] side 2,000 years ago kyri would have looked very different tree cover is hiding its most dramatic features its ramp Parts can only be seen using modern liar techniques which involve firing laser Pulses from a plane at the site these allow us to see through the trees and reveal the giant Banks and ditches whether as Neil has always believed they were for showing off or were defensive the one thing these ramparts definitely do is ensure people enter through the front door Francis put trench 4 over the feature at the entrance to see if it's a part of our Iron Age story oh yeah you you you've nearly bottom that in haven't you oh yeah pris yeah what I've got I've got the sides now yeah and these stones are ly on the side and the Bottom's probably underneath these Stones down here fantastic I mean those stones strike me very much as if they're they're in sit you they're placed there almost oh yeah they're not tumbled in I mean these are definitely been placed on the sides of the ditch all the way around there's one behind me as well and what sort of datea is this well we got two bits of pot out of this we've got one which is almost certainly Roman that one there that's out on the top yeah this is Roman isn't it it's fairly fairly hard and fairly fresh and then we got this very delicate handmade piece there yeah yeah that's that looks our age and um the Roman one's nice and fresh and this is fairly weather that's been lying around on the surface is it almost almost certainly yes yeah well that leads me to think that this is almost certainly Roman wouldn't you agree it's looking that way and interestingly I mean we've got also what look like two post holes here either side of the entrance so they could be gate posts could be gate posts or maybe fence posts yep y it's looking more and more like a a Roman Farm but of course when we say Roman we actually mean the Romans would be actually the same people as we're here in the in the AR age just wearing Roman clothes yeah Romano Welsh Romano Welsh yeah smashing a Romano British cattle enclosure at the entrance to our Fort is not what we wanted when we say Romano no British we mean the period that follows the Iron Age when the Romans occupied Britain and our Welsh tribes had started to absorb Roman ways but at least we found more evidence that this site was primarily domestic to be honest we've all been a bit disappointed today at the lack of fines of course there have been some and what they've done is to prove that this is definitely a late Iron Age site but that's about it really the truth is that from this huge site this massive Hill Fort the closest we've got to the dense population hinted at by G Fizz are a few undatable post holes have we been digging in the wrong place for the last two days we've been searching for an iron AG Capital up here on this hill but we've been thwarted by the geology and the thick brown sticky clay the giz has been absolutely fantastic although it's offered us what seems like a a whole Mirage of little hearts and settlements and we've got a few finds which are pretty good too but what we haven't got is a date for the time when this place was at its Heyday and that's what we're going to try and nail down today [Music] prove them now if there were large numbers of people living on this fort they would surely have left evidence of their daily lives but we're simply not finding it so Francis has come up with a new plan that involves looking for Iron Age [Music] ovens I don't understand if we want to nail down the dating why is our last throw of the DI going to be looking at an oven ah because Tony we've done that end of a site we've done this side of a site what we haven't done is this huge area over here the middle the middle and that is covered as you can see on the geophys by these other KY things all right do you think that by the end of the day you can give us some robust dating we are employing the RO techniques to do it that's not an answer really is it yes it is it's very itical answer it's stank of politics get the Digger back on yeah okay whether they're ovens or kils these features showing up on the magnetometry could be a sign of a busy occupied part of the site so it's our last ditch effort to find more evidence of occupation at kyri and an exact [Music] date but when Matt actually dig some of these hot spots the anomalies turn out to be Romano British slag proving that lots of people were working up here during the Roman period but it doesn't help us in our search for our Iron Age people yet just when all seems lost kyri surprises us we think we may have finally found some promising features in The Roundhouse trench ditch ends features which would have formed the front door to a roundhouse Francis extended this trench yesterday and it seems to have paid off it's a real breakthrough and that's not all if we've got solid proof of one Roundhouse or the other circular shapes that showed up on the geiz are almost certainly roundhouses too but we still need dating [Music] evidence with time running out even site director Francis has picked up his trout he's got a post hole a feature you'd expect to find in a roundhouse and even better there's Pottery in it but is it enough to date the house but look what we're getting out of here right on the top yeah I mean it's only body shirts but that's Iron Age they've got to be Iron Age so if this Pottery matches the stuff that Mii is getting that's fantastic because it's a straight line going through the front door isn't it pretty much yeah I mean it's yeah getting over that way so I mean that would sort of indicate that these two features probably are part of the house righto I'm going to do a bit more digging because I want to make most of this but Francis reasons that his post hole and a pit outside the door that naam is digging line up with each other putting him right in the heart of our roundhouse the pot shirts he's finding have grit in them which means they're Iron Age but to give us an accurate date we need bigger pieces if we know the shape of the pot we can date it and date our roundhouse our Iron Age communal cup is almost finished we've made a wooden vessel the same size as the one in the museum of Wales and we're now fitting the bronze handles smelted from scratch on this hill okay okay hold it brilliant excellent does it hold it with four points of beer and if you're offering what you reckon right I it's cracking it's wonderful object congratulations to both of you it tells us something about these people doesn't it you know talks about uh communal activities and uh and feasting you'd hope it was communal because if you had that to yourself you'd be quite ill I think absolutely it it might be tempting to try but I think you probably want some help with it would you [Music] back at our roundhouse the fines are coming thick and fast and in the nick of time Naomi has found something we hope Paul blinkhorn our finds expert can date all right Naomi I hear rumors of pottery the rumors are true and it's not just any old Pottery I think it's the pottery that we're looking for oh I say yeah yeah that's what that is that's definitely Iron Age see the angle there so it's going to come around something like that's that's a big pot know a base of a storage jar or something it is a nice that's fairly hey and it's in good Nick and there's more of it so that's that's not stuff that's just and is in a feature yeah yeah I'm Excavating this post Hall here and we have got another large piece here in situ fantastic she's almost ready to come out oh great stuff I'll hang around then no has found a large section of pot from a post hole at the entrance to the roundhouse oh nice one there he goes oh wow look at that it's a proper little yeah yeah yeah it looks like I've got a teacup light it's tiny in it yeah it's a different pot I think almost certainly oh yeah I think you've got a full profile it's all the way up to the rim I hear you got something interesting oh you think you'll like this Neil hey know we're talking yeah this is this is good what we've basically got Noom Naomi's got a post all down there and so far we've had uh a little piece of a base what looks like a big storage show that's a big vessel by the look of it but we've also got this and these two bits join together it's a tiny little cup gorgeous isn't it and you know what I don't think that's middle to late you think that might be early I think that's early this is probably the only complete profile of an early High vessel that I've ever seen from South Wales you're joking not very many of them no they're what struck me about this is interesting as well is you've got this big Shir of this big jar and this little cup with it it's almost like a representation of a drinking kit you've got your big pot with your beer or whatever in and you've got your little cup for scooping out and it's right in the top let me have a look at this it's right in the top of a post more of it still in there yeah oh excellent It's all nicely fitting together isn't it so this unassuming piece of pottery this tiny cup with its distinctive profile from bottom to top turns out to be the key to the whole dig it's the most complete early Iron Age cup ever found in South Wales not only is it a truly spectacular find in its own right it conclusively dates our sight to the earliest part of the Iron Age a job well done we came here looking for an Iron Age capital in one tiny area of our site we found a Terrace of roundhouses is from the very early Iron Age around 800 BC that could have housed a 100 people glaciers later industry and plowing make kyri difficult to read but if the rest of the site was as heavily populated as this one little corner we could be looking at hundreds or even thousands of people living here at its height looks like our Hill Fort could be the ancient building Co-op of Neil's dreams it's a place where people had kitchen accidents and performed drinking rituals in the home our Romano British Farmstead proves that this hill continued to be occupied on into the Roman period before being abandoned it's time to celebrate the community of kyri past and present what has amazed me is the sheer length of time that this place has been occupied how long do you think Thousand Years Phil H for me it's it's the sheer fact that we've been able to find buildings we all need somewhere to live you only got to look down there and see the homes of so many people that to me is the important thing that there is a real live settlement on that hill all those thousands of years ago and here we have the time team tankered and by us all drinking from it we will bond together as a community Lely [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The World History Channel

Views: 35,822

Keywords: Ancient Civilizations, Archaeological Digs, Archaeological Insights, Archaeological Survey, Archeological Research, British History, Caerau Hillfort, Geophysics Exploration, Historic Preservation, Historical Discoveries, Historical Structures, History Uncovered, Housing Estate Discovery, Iron Age Culture, Iron Age Welsh Capital, Roundhouses Excavation, Secrets of the Past Revealed, The World History Channel, Time Team Adventures, Time Team Series, Tony Robinson Adventures

Id: OcgdIvDBtaQ

Length: 47min 16sec (2836 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024