The Mystery Of Glasgow's Dark Age Brittonic Graveyard | Time Team | Chronicle

foreign [Music] tortoise-shaped gravestones date back to the Dark Ages they were found in the graveyard of this 19th century Scottish Church along with these massive things there's nothing else like them anywhere in Scotland so they were obviously pretty important but who exactly was buried here and why can time team find the answer to this riddle or will the origin of these Stones always be hidden in the fog of Scotland's Celtic past [Music] thank you [Music] foreign day one and an early start so we can get a bird's eye view of what could be our most difficult site to date [Music] this is govern on the banks of the river Clyde and that's our site the pear-shaped graveyard of the Parish Church archeology in a graveyard even one like this which has been closed to burials for 80 years is a nightmare at least 11 successive Generations have been buried here and we must try to avoid digging up the grandparents of the present governites while research for the earliest occupants of the site occupants who marked their graves with elaborately carved Stones governed 19th century Minister recovered 30 stones from the graveyard the present incumbent wants us to Solve the Riddle that no one has been able to answer why are they here it's a particularly tall order for just three days because a week ago our lead archaeologist Mick Aston went and broke his leg looking for a holy well so he can't be here but we do have with us Anna Richie who's a leading expert on the Scottish Dark Ages Anna this looks such an inappropriate place for a historical site of any significance and we're really likely to find anything interesting here it has to be a really important site it's the only way to explain why there's such a very big collection of wonderful early Christian sculpture and it dates from between about the mid 9th century and the mid 11th century so what might we be looking for well aside from the sculpture the the other big clue that we've got is the fact that you see the boundary of the modern churchyard is rounded well now if that churchyard belonged to the present Church it ought to be square or rectangular that's the normal shape this sort of rounded enclosure is very much earlier and it's typical of early Christian graveyards and you see the way that the church juts out over the edge of the boundary yes well that I think proves that the boundary is older than the modern church and therefore there must have been an early church perhaps a little more Central to the enclosure which was exactly what carenza was looking for at the bottom of a trench dug here last year by Glasgow University they found this wall Steve that's part of the wall in section there isn't it yes we removed it in the hope that we would find some artifacts to help beat it but you didn't how do you know it's medieval well we think it's medieval because we think it's early medieval because there's no mortar built into it and it's really in the 12th century when they start building proper mortar churches in Scotland and we also know that it's reasonably old because we've gone through the foundation demolition Rubble of uh of earlier churches so for since here's slates from one of the post-medieval churches and there's quite likely to be a sequence of medieval ones we're under the path here as you can see the trench was deliberately put on the path because we know it's been there since the 18th century now for there aren't going to be any recent burials there yeah so hopefully we won't disturb any of that what we want to do is extend this trench back towards the church again hoping we won't hit any burials but hoping that um we may find the continuation of this wall maybe find a corner or something that would tell us what direction it was going in it's aligned East-West which of course is really encouraging possibly it might be an early church 10 o'clock and karenza starts her search for the evidence to prove Steve's theory that he's found the foundations of the earliest Church to stand in this ancient graveyard but I'm not sure what connection an early Christian site would have had with the carved stones at the center of our riddle you call these hogbacks don't you it's the curving shape of the back is why it's called Hogback so were they meant to be anything at all their tombstones which were meant to look like houses they were very popular in northern England amongst the Danish settlers so these were Vikings presumably yes so does that mean that these relate to Norse gods no because by this time they were Christians they'd been converted but the odd thing is that you don't get anything like this in the Scandinavian Homeland only in Britain it seems that once the Danish settlers were in northern England for some reason these were invented to suit their taste and then they moved up here and it was the fashion up here that's right and presumably they just signify the little houses that people would live in after they were dead yes yeah what about these ones here are these of the same sort of period these are probably a bit earlier Tony and what we have on this stone is a very simple uh linear cross and then at the bottom we have this image of the the figure on Horseback I believe that is the forces of nature demonstrated by the the hybrid Beast with man dominating the nature out in the forest the other side of the wooden fence do you think that's plausible why not and is this Danish work as well no this is local with the hogbacks we have influence coming up from northern England and the Christianity in this area was heavily influenced also by Irish Christianity and the west of Scotland and we've already seen the pictish influence coming in from the Northeast govern was almost the center of a small medieval world over this weekend we're going to copy the work of the stone masons who lived in this small medieval world and carved the ancient stones by the end of three days this piece of sandstone will hopefully be the latest addition to the collection in the church I'm told a thousand years ago there was a flourishing School of stone masons here but we're going to try and recreate their work with just the help of Phil and Victor meanwhile it's lunchtime and our first trench which we deliberately put on the path to avoid modern Graves has Unearthed a burial over here yep what can you tell about this body well we first thing is it's all it's all a jumble it's disarticulated uh got the skull here we've got the thigh bone here a lower leg there so it's just a jumble and they're not all that old you've got to always stand on the forehead of where a shroud pin has has uh has has been resting so it looks like we're looking at something which is you know two or three hundred years old not a thousand years old so do we have to stop um and tell somebody about the body but no I think as long as we record it properly and and understand the context it's coming from we can lift it and take it away it shouldn't hold us up too much so we can carry out we can carry on that's a relationship so what's this map this is blouse map it's the earliest map we've got of this area you can see here it shows govern and it's called metal govern what does it mean oh there's a bit of dispute about that but the latest opinion indicates that it it refers to a small hill or Hill that's interesting because because um General Roy's map of about 1750. here's Governor again so-called medical govern there's the church in its churchyard and you can see just here this little c-shaped smudge see what it is as a small Mound which would fit exactly with what you say the name was if in the 12th century it was called govern and that name comes from means a small Mound then that suggests this man which we know was here in the 17th 18th century was still there in the 12th century I mean I suspect they use the top of it as an open-air meeting place for administrational purposes and is there anything of it left not anymore it's been flattened unfortunately what we're hoping though is we might be able to find the ditch that would have gone round it simply because if you're going to build a mound you must have a ditch if we can prove there was an important law Hill here close to our Dark Age graveyard then we may well have a major ceremonial site but to find that out we have to dig our biggest trench ever and because we're digging it in Gavin's main car park it'll have to be fenced off the mound or moot Hill as it's known locally we 17 feet high and 150 feet in diameter our trench will be 14 meters wide and three meters deep but it doesn't matter whether you work in Imperial or metric this area has been built on for centuries so it will take at least a day before we get deep enough to reach even the later medieval layers still it'll be worth the wait finding a ditch in all of this will be a fantastic achievement this is a 18th century graving when the mound was still standing what's happened since then is the Mounds been leveled but the ditch with a bit of luck should still show where it was cut down and Below there it was just so where's the ground level now according to this well I think the grout the modern ground level is probably about across very high then it is it's probably been built up quite a lot and then but the ditch is still you can see the line of ditch shape if you draw that in that's why we have to go down so deep to get to the land surface that was left when the mound was leveled and hopefully that land surface will have the ditch cut into it history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanaga and Katz German not only that but with a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at checkout now if our moot Hill and our Dark Age Church were in use at the same time then the ceremonial sites would have been connected by a processional roadway and the more impressive the entrance to the graveyard of this road the more important the site so we got roads coming up the hill and they're coming through here and we've got this really big entrance with fancy buildings and a great entranceway is that how you see it this is the pointy end of the pair if you like it must be the Principal entrance it should have an impressive gate and uh for instance last year our dig which was right at the end of this pathway produced areas which we think which we interpret as as workshops that's something which we would expect to find around the perimeter so if you've got all that why the devil didn't you go on down in here well we just ran out of time is there any chance we can extend it back we're gonna have to take it back a couple meters up then so in the 9th and 10th centuries this may have been a grand entrance into an impressive enclosure filled with workshops clustered around a central church but who could warrant such a magnificent burial ground local Legend has it this was the final resting place of some constant time but it seems Robin and Anna are about to challenge that Legend what date would you put on it judging by the style of the carving its mid 9th century and that makes it the very earliest piece of sculpture on the site the only question is whether we're dealing with a saint and I notice there's no cross of any kind in the carving although I suppose one could have been on the missing lid or a kingly aristocratic figure and it's got to be pretty aristocratic to Merit this kind of Labor honestly because well you have you have images here of the aristocrats the image of hunting the man on horseback and for such an elaborate coffin I think it has to be a king a 9th century king of strathclyde but you're not that happy about that presumably it's one Theory and it's a very fine Theory but each of the images on the box can be interpreted in more than one way it could be the Christian preacher hunting for the unconverted soul represented as the Stag or the wild boar oh that sounds like special pleading doesn't it but I mean if it is a kingly burial and this is the earliest piece of carving that we've got on this site then we could very well be considering this area as the Royal burial place of the kings of Stratford if Robin and Anna are right then 900 years ago this was the final resting place of the ancient Kings of this region but so far nobody's been able to tell me why they were buried here in govern I was putting my hopes on the answers being several meters down in our big trench oh yes and I'm Stuart Stuart you've been very quiet and pensive all day what's going on I thought I got five minutes but I've got this there's so much happening in this area and so many ideas have been generated looking at all the history of the site and what's going on beginning to get some some ideas about what one might be going on I'm a little bit concerned about some of the suggestions for the site at the moment in my way well I begin to think that the the moot site here for instance it might have other explanations it might be a Norman mot which is the mound for a Norman Timber Castle which would have controlled a major crossing of the river here so it could be Motors in modern Bailey rather than moot meaning and meeting place yeah and that name often gets interchange in records and Maps over the years now clearly the Normans were here too late to be responsible for the stones and I still wanted to know who was buried here and why the Viking influence on the carvings is obviously fundamental to why we're here the way they operated was to penetrate in land in their boats this was possible the head of navigation in that period and the head of the Clyde Valley's Dunbarton Rock which was a citadel of the kings of strathclyde we know the Vikings raided it in 870. it's a very important strategic point so after they captured the rock they could have come up here in their boats this doesn't sit here in isolation it's not a cemetery by itself it's not a monastic enclosure by itself it's somehow leaked to that major political Center just up the road how far is Dumbarton Rock from here uh it's about 10-15 miles something like that yes I can just see the mouth of the river there six o'clock and karenza and I were back in the helicopter for a trip up the Clyde I wanted to see where the people who buried their dead in government had actually lived [Applause] so this is done gone wrong these impregnable citizen of the ancient Kings of strathclyde as long as you can hold on to this then you know that nothing could sail past you and get up into the land around Gavin and Glasgow and likewise if anybody was there they couldn't get party and back out to sea again but if it was so important and so impregnable how come they were burying important people just 10-15 miles upriver in Govan join us after the break and we'll try and find out Saturday's Market Day in Gavin and guess where they hold the market right on top of our big Trench now Robin and karenza tell me this is a good sign that our ancient hillock was a moot site and not a steward suggesting a Norman Castle they say a modern Market on the same spot shows continuity of use with the medieval meeting place but we still have a long way to go in our big trench before we can discover if our Dark Age Two makers bought their fruit and veg here 900 years ago and Stuart still thinks we've got it wrong you can see it's a Monumental piece of of earthwork isn't it and I've been looking at where it occurs in relation to the landscape there's a distribution map of mobs here and there's a whole lot of them in this region but interestingly there isn't one at govern and there should be because this is a major crossing of the Clyde and I'm beginning to wonder if what we've in fact got is a site that looking at that view I'm looking at this view of one called dinvin what not too far away the two are remarkably similar yes and if you take that which is a very substantial similar sized Castle site and look at the Reconstruction that we've built up here when you look at them together the three of them they're very very similar indeed aren't they it looks very very substantial and good doesn't it there's a lot of evidence that this is a major undocumented Castle site so do we have a Mot or a motel the only way to prove who's right is to find some archeology down there it's five to ten day two and the moot Hill trench is really getting somewhere it's a huge excavation job but they reckon they'll be down on the archeology in about 35 minutes this trench though the one that was trying to establish a link between the church and the moot Hill which is beyond this building here is more of a problem have you found anything at all in it not very much no nothing nothing new can't win them all can you this one's quite exciting though this is the trench where we found that body yesterday they've started pulling out evidence of more Graves that are old they're much older than the body but they're not as old as the big stones in the church and they're presenting corenza with a bit of a problem krenza hi Tony what exactly is the problem well basically we found three probable grave cuts in this trench and they seem to be laid out along the wall or along the same alignment as the wall well the dry stone wall that you found well the rubble on top of it yes and because what this is suggesting is that the graves may have been dug at a time when the wall was still standing but the graves are a lot later we've got 14th century Pottery has come from within the full of one of them of course you can't fill a grave with 14th century Pottery until the 14th century or much later of course um so we think that the wall is older than the 14th century it could have been built at the same time as the hogbacks for example but the wall could have kept standing the building could have continued in use up to a much later time when these grapes were cut I'll show you look this is the grave here another grave cut this is produced in the 14th century Pottery what we would really like to do is find a layer which this grave is cut which butts up against the wall and that will help us try and date the relationship between the wall and the graves was this grave cut when the wall on top of that pre-12th Century Foundation still standing I'll be asking questions at the end of the program but actually all that boils down to is this a 12th century church was still standing here in the 14th century when the grave was dug if our wall was still standing then it was part of that church that's the good news the bad news is that this may well mean it was built 200 years too late to be associated with our stones and speaking of stones we've started our crash course in medieval Stone carving step one get Victor to draw on your design are we going to get the picture and the audio is then we just simply put the charcoal on design and then we go over it with a paint and then is that it no well then I'll start screaming screaming yeah I'm just getting a sharp Implement and drawing it along just to break the surface of the stone so that lines in permanent yeah so that if the design gets washed off if it rains with the Impressions still there meanwhile geophys iCal we've got a 19th century map which shows all the post-medieval burial plots so hopefully any stone readings they produce in the gaps between the burials should be dark age in date 12 30 day 2 and back at trench one Steve's uncovered another burial that's not redeposited bones that's as it was buried yep that's a that's a recent burial well that's how we know it's a recent burial that's the the inside of a decorative panel that is against the handle for the coffin so that's actually handles you to have lifted the coffin with yeah I mean the wood's obviously gone but you can see traces yeah just just where it's kind of corroded onto the the metal so you've got the iron bits for the handle and then what sort of date is that well these are 19th century this this kind of thing lorenza yeah come have a look at this emptying more of the fill of this grave from which the pottery came from yesterday this is the 14th century Potter that's the one and I've just Unearthed I think more of the same vessel which appears to have a face on it if we've gradually smooth away some of the there's an eye and a nose and I think a mouth underneath that's wonderful so we got more of this up here if you want to clean that up shove it in there and give it a scrub off clean it up that's it that's it off it's about 14th century so it's about 600 years old this looks like it's the edge of the handle of it maybe so you've got a big Bell like that you would lift it up and use sort of under his mouth it's the handle you can see it's all the same same sort of greenish glaze on it so it may have one big bow here that may be the same stuff that's been needed people because it's all green and that's been fitted well done from the great job these local boys have done piecing together the various bits of this face we can now reconstruct what it would have looked like right well this is the geophysics from the churchyard now we've actually done the whole Loop of the area so the very light areas are the paths going around the perimeter the white blocks are where we can't actually get the probes in the ground because of the the graves that are there at the moment I think there's two things of interest one is a sort of really strange Vector linear shape and I'm writer going to the eastern boundary wall there's three quite distinct blobs the song talking lost Stones I think that would be a good Target um let's actually find one of the missing stones that would be wonderful for this weekend let's do it you're trying to break you're looking at the maps excited by what John's just started to find out because excited by geophysics one of the last day or so we've been starting to look at the river and the maps and one of the things that came out this morning looking at the 1750 survey by Major General Roy when you blow the map up around the area of the church is a rectilinear enclosure you're suggesting that map actually means that the churchyard in 1750 was rectilinear therefore this curving boundary is not that old I'm beginning to wonder if it might have appeared after 1750 and listening very peculiar gone on here which which we haven't been able to to get to yet I'm still worried we're taking this Rose map too literally here do you feel the your maps and your geophysics is going to be accurate enough that you could drop us down somewhere but we're not going to find Graves well that they're in the problem I I think that area is going to be full of graves realistic we have already hit upon three or four Graves I mean we we're not going to be terribly precious about this are we we're not Graves not snatchers I mean it is it is our archeology we've got a trillion make the most of the archeology within the the the the graveyard yes but there's a difference between that and saying oh we we can't dig a trench anywhere because we might come across a body no no Tony the point is that if we come across above it it slows us up the idea that we could dig confidently around the perimeter and not hit any bodies therefore we could get through it quite quickly is not proving necessarily true it's not that we have a terrible problem with the bodies it's just they have to be excavated properly and treated with respect we can't just hack on through them we thought that if we went back this afternoon so if we start looking for those stones now yeah give John an hour hour and a half to do that work and process it yeah and provided that we've got some clear evidence start work on another trench this afternoon I think so yes well I'm glad we got that sorted so clear fits a bigger probe to the geophys equipment so she can look deeper into the soil for any traces of Stuart Square boundary and we set out in search of those missing stones so you're just going to prod for it well it's a good way to check never go you feel that oh there's definitely something there isn't it six feet long we're off it there whole row of stones were put up against the churchyard wall yeah and although some of them were taken into the church some went missing oh yes look it's definitely 19th much deeper we may have drawn a blank with our first stone but we'll have one more go before we give up oh there is some shapes on that it's definitely a shake doesn't it I mean there's only one anymore we can do make the old bigger well this is definitely very smart it looks like another 18th 19th century Tombstone and you get all sorts of emblems carved on there so we draw on another blank then I really felt good about this I was sure that we were going to find some of those early Christian Stones even if they were fragmented but yeah that's it you don't want to build your hopes up too high all the time if now it's three o'clock on Saturday when England are playing Scotland in Euro 96. and the inevitable has happened are you getting on in there where are all your diggers they lasted until 18 minutes into the match and off down the pub they ran we're hoping to find the ditch should be you know appearing as we speak where about should it come here I'll show you see where I jump down yeah I've got a very dark sanding material here very dark right with sandy soil here and outside the trenches over here I've got a very lighter oh there you go can you see the difference in that so basically what do you reckon you've got here you've got a feature going across it across the trench if you've got something that looks like a ditch what I seem to have is a ditch going this way into the corner of the trench sort of going off in that direction we're off there and curving that then going around here around so do you think this curving Edge could be the base of the mound I'm not sure yet if that is the edge of the mound you might have the ditch further down could be I think it's going to take you before you've got anything different so can I give the others to say that we found a mound not just yet I'll phone you oh I'll ring you do you think you'll be able to get some results at the end of the day of the day yes definitely brilliant okay back at the churchyard Victor has now finished painting his design on our Stone and with some help from professional Stone Carver Barry Grove Phil was about to swap his trowel for a Chisholm the Mallet the Chisel is there a right wedding wrong way to hold yes just Soldier you're right-handed yeah I'm right-handed yeah wrap your fingers around and lock it with your thumb okay and that is just a conventional chisel yeah well that's your basic designer which hasn't changed since Roman times they used to have a whole crew of blacksmiths which follow the Masons around and it's a building site and they'd constantly be sharpening and pre-edging the tools and ladies tops in 299. come on ladies how do we do it does near how to fill up one of your ladies five o'clock and it's fair to say the market Traders have had a much more successful day than we've had despite mix earlier optimism and the return of the diggers we haven't yet excavated enough in our big trench to be sure we found the mound and ditch 1.9 and in the churchyard our so-called entrance trench is well down to the medieval players but still seems empty so maybe Stuart right about the square boundary we've tried to do the the deeper survey we still can't find any evidence for either a curving ditch a straight ditch any sort of boundary now it's difficult conditions I mean we always knew it was going to be it's not easy for geophysics to see through where there's been lots of graves but I can't actually come up with any evidence to say go and dig there and you'll find something we can't just sort of randomly pop a trench in here and there in a graveyard having enough trouble getting through the graves as it is um have we had any decent results today well no we have made some progress in this trench in fact we've come if that possibly three structures evidence of turning up in here we've got there's a big mortar lump here which may be on top of an earlier unlawed structure below it and also this Cutler we looked at this morning which we thought might have been a grave looks like it may possibly be a post hole if it's a post hole then it's a structure so it's all to play for I think yeah but time team is so full of highs and lows and today it's one of being those really frustrating days where really nothing seems to have gone right that geophys has been inconclusive a lot of the trenches have been empty and I honestly don't feel that I know anything more about the kings of strathclyde or the carvings in the church than I did at the beginning of yesterday but at least it looks like we might have found a post hole which could indicate I don't know 9th 10th Century structure maybe and inside it we did find what I think is one of my most favorite finds on any of our programs I think he's laughing at us a bit of day three and maybe this is the ultimate revenge for our win in the football we've got a flat tire on the JCB meanwhile Stewart's at it again this time he's convinced Steve's been looking for our entrance in the wrong place this is the 1809 yeah survey well this this is the enclosure world going around here isn't it and that's where your trench yeah is positioned in relation to this to the modern wall yeah so we've got the two you can we can say where your trench is now in relation to this it it's probably about there yeah and it looks as if you're a little bit South and to test your supposition of an entrance through there um I think you probably would need to go about another meter and a half further north you may just have missed it I think that's about it all you have to go with it's the only way you can go I think is is that direction at the moment it's okay yeah well that's all it is right it's five to ten day three and we were gonna have another cracker trying to find the entrance way to the cemetery because if there's a king or a saint buried here then that entrance way is going to be very elaborate and also if there's a direct alignment between the moot Hill beyond that building there and the church over here then that's going to imply some significant relationship between the two places so that's what we were going to do because that entrance way could be the key to understanding the whole site but we can't do it because it's going to be at least another two hours before we can get a new tire for the JCB so instead Plan B I'm gonna go to church okay you're ready but while we seek divine inspiration and pray for better luck there is some activity on the side we're still carving away at our Stone it has to be ready to paint this afternoon we're still Excavating the bodies and post hole in trench one and the man's arrived earlier than expected to mend the flat tire on the JCB back in church the lesson for today is archeology archaeologists are digging up the past sometimes things pop up quite quickly and you can see what's there it's that excitement of Discovery that's made me as you know very keen in archeology long before I became a minister and that's why I'm so very glad that things are being dug up around us but the important thing about govern old and our stones and our archeology is that it's for sharing so that other people in our community can ReDiscover how terribly special and how terribly exciting our community is midday and just as the service ends the JCB complete with new tire starts work on our second entranceway trench at the pointed end of our pear-shaped graveyard are we down to anything yet are you finding archeology I think so down here starting to get gravel which just might be the meddling for this road we're looking for right so we might actually possibly have the road for the entranceway yeah so we really pretty much need to stop here with the machine and get some archaeologists in here right so if we stop here clean this up do you think we're going to have time when we at lunch time on the last day do you think we're going to have time to get I don't want to take much time to to to clean this up I mean so look at it she should be able to just determine whether we have something here quarter past one and it was worth the wait we found a ditch in our big trench but how old is it hello Tony what you got what do you always come when I got some exciting phones look at that enormous chunks of pot big old slice of the body there and then there's a stack of three bits there as a big body piece there and this bit here is the base but we've already got some rather nice bits already these are the bits we hit when we when we discovered it what do you think it is Bob I think it's part of our 14th century storage door or cooking vessel and presumably if we don't find anything much earlier than about the 13th century then that adds fuel to Stewart's idea that this might just be the base of a Norman Castle whereas if we find Dark Ages stuff then it's much more likely to be associated with the church side well unless we can get earlier material we're not going to resolve it one way or the other unfortunately I mean the rest of the trench is going superbly well what does that mean well according to plan I mean you see here we've got the the edge of the ditch really really clearly defined this really really yellow sand that's totally different from the earth way down in there God only knows where it's going but you see in in behind you the Sun is awful for seeing this one that when this comes under the shade make a bit of shade on there you see these tip line you call them tip lines you see this little yellow line there yeah one there there's another one there and here we think might be the edge of the mound coming down so these are sort of stretch marks they're literally each layer of soil as it's tipped on tipped on tipped on and then gradually the thing gets bigger and bigger and wider and wider and as you build that mound up so you get these tip lines and then as you push it out you're never ever going to be able to totally remove the base of the mound and uh I mean since I've been working here and certainly since I realized the the the what the natural is I mean it's just got to be the biggest sand castle in Scotland we now have less than half a day left and while we're making great progress with our carving we're still no nearer answering the riddle of the ancient governed stones in trench one we've uncovered yet more burials and others will have to struggle to excavate and record these new graves in the time left it looks like we'll need to abandon our search for the early church we do have a gravel entrance way in our new trench but so far we've got no Pottery or other finds to give us a date for it still it seems geophys have come up with something new big black Splash big black sponge that's the strongest anomalies we've got it is awesome this is the resistivity so that's a hard lump of stone or something like that yes it was actually stood on top of it I'll show shorter of time aren't we when it's 4 you want to know what that is yes please I think we should go for it it's not very substantial is it this is not what's giving you a signal is it you're especially much bigger and stronger I mean there's going to be dozens of these sort of small double concentrations throughout the graveyard and let's take that off and go down shall we meanwhile over in the marketplace we've got to the bottom of our ditch whoa Bob that hell of a hole you've got there well you're nearly finished just about we've a bit deeper than we talked it is it is yeah remember when you hear the last time we're just getting the edge coming down but you see we've dug out a lot more but it just got too deep wow you still haven't got the other side we've not got the side we're just getting down presumably the bottom of it now but no sign of it going up so what you've got then is is probably a very deep wide u-shaped u-shaped you're right and ditch that's what it is and most importantly you've got any fines out of it got more Pottery yeah I think more of what you saw the last time right the 13th a 14th century stuff and some other a little bit deeper down Much More abraded Much thinner much more abraded much more worn but how old well could we reckon it's more earlier than the 14th just the condition it's in but is it going to go back 10th no no no 12 Fleet 12 something so are we looking at a Mot could be could be massive ditch with Pottery so we found it is that good for govern I think so Stuart was right about our Mound being a Norman mot for a wooden Bailey quite a big find for a weekend's work but what about his theory of a square graveyard Stuart the archaeologists here and the vicar and everything that I read like this Gavin Heritage Trail pamphlet says it's important that the graveyard was round from Early Times the round shaped graveyard of Governor Parish Church would suggest there was a community here long before the Romans arrived the past 24 hours you've been saying that you think everyone's got it wrong why is that well I've been trying to look at the evidence for what date this circular round churchyard appears we don't find anything curvil India until 1843 so we're still left with this Enigma in 1750 we've got a regular square enclosure around the church and then suddenly 90 years later part of it becomes curvilinear feature when you transfer these linear alignments onto the modern map these red lines are a rice survey what you see is that these straight alignments actually are very similar to the alignment of the west side of the churchyard and I'm wondering if somewhere between 1750 and 1843 the curved boundary has just been added to one side I don't think anybody's really sat back and tried to find out when does this curve feature appear it tends to just been accepted what all I've done is use the evidence to question it I can't provide any real answers but this evidence is is pretty good you could get a conviction on this I think anyway and over in the graveyard they were still searching for our geophysical big black splodge this is really thick sand yeah is that that's not natural is it well we do I mean we there are deposits of sand in and around here but not really I haven't seen too much no I wonder whether we got it filled in sort of burial Vault or something but I filled it and that wouldn't give us that reading would it John it could will do when you asked earlier where we're definitely looking at Stones my immediate response was yes I was ignoring the fact that we could have sand filled trenches because sand is in our terms as like a rock it really is dry well it says carry on where the only way do you like the current fund it's difficult to go through Dry Sands they do walls so it's just a small section of a much bigger anomaly that stretches five meters that way any point in doing anymore if you think this is the reading you had the reason we dug the hole is because you found something that we wanted to know what it was if this explains what it was then I don't think there is no well Steve we've nearly finished here do you want us to back Phillip and while corenza backfills I had a phone call to make hello yeah it's Tony oh Tony oh not too bad mate anybody have you got on well it's been a funny old weekend really you know we've got this old moot Hill yeah and the feeling at the moment is that it's probably a modern Bailey Castle yeah it's useful but it's it's sort of frustrating in that we wanted to find evidence of of an earlier time I know you're laughing as you always say you find what you find yes we've dug three trenches here in the graveyard yeah um in one of them just adjacent to the church we found three or four Stones uh put together is the building definitely because the mortar isn't there they're pretty certain it's pre-12th Century the one thing that fascinates me is that surveyors seem to think that this circular graveyard is actually something that's very recent how do you feel about that well it's possibility I mean I know we all get excited about circular graveyards and we think they're early but I mean some recent working in Wales and corn all the shown that there's actually a terrific variety of shapes but basically you don't mind if we started off with a mootil and a circular graveyard and ended up with a mutton Bailey and a square graveyard life's just like that in archeology it's eight o'clock and time to go we may not have solved the riddle of the stones this weekend but at least we're leaving govern our version of their ancient grave markers really it's beautiful it's Lovely Isn't it nice it painted superb what do you think we've got out of this weekend well I think we've actually done quite well considering it was always going to be difficult it's been made twice as difficult without make but the trench in the churchyard we have got some early archeology that is earlier than the medieval Pottery we're finding so we've uncovered the oldest remains yet to be found on this site the unmorted foundations of an ancient Church wall it's well below the 19th century grave we found on Saturday and although we can't link it to our ancient burial Stones The Wooden wall that sat on top of these foundations has to date back to well before the medieval Stone Church was built here so what do you reckon was going on at that period what's your bet I've got something pretty important going on here maybe a religious site may be a Rob Robin what I reckon happened was that this became the burial place of the sub Kings of strathclyde and The Aristocrats of this Kingdom again a very very important site we might not have solved the riddle of what was going on here but we have got lots of little stories about it lots of hypotheses lots of theories and I like to think that it means that the vicar can hold on to his idea that it was a religious site and that Anna can hold on to her idea that it was essentially a kingly site and as for the people of Gavin well they can listen to all the stories and decide which one they want to adopt [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 185,671

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, the dark ages

Id: fqV4XaItl9g

Length: 51min 31sec (3091 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023