The Race To Protect Priceless Ancient Artefacts From The British Army | Time Team | Odyssey

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] hi no I'm joined up I'm here with time team on Salisbury Plain which apart from being the Army's largest training ground is one of Europe's best preserved and most extensive areas of undisturbed archeology it's vast over 38 000 hectares of empty landscape that's the size of the Isle of Wight all given over to military Maneuvers and amazing archeology what we've heard is that buried around here there could be Iron Age houses and possibly a Roman villa but there are real problems when you've got an army rumbling over archaeological remains and right at the center of this conflict is Beaches Barn this plowed field may not look much but geoffers tell us it's stuffed full of archeology by working with the Army we're hoping to protect this site so they'll have to dig their holes somewhere else we've got just three days to make our case for saving beaches Barn [Music] thank you thank you foreign archaeologist working for the ministry of Defense that's right yes and I look after the Salisbury Plain training area for the Army on 94 000 Acres of it so what kind of problems can arise well ironically I mean the Army had been here for about 102 years now and we had two and a half thousand monuments and the army of have saved the area from being plowed and built on but as the as the sort of army activities got more more intense and the vehicles have got larger and it's possible that the the tanks can do damage and of course every time a sold just stops he wants to dig a hole so they might dig sort of Scoops or trenches in this lot and go straight through the archeology they might I mean we know there's something here from the past so what I do is when the the exercise planners come in I mark up a very large area so you know do not dig on this but what we want to do is is Define the area exactly yeah and give it the protection of being scheduled which gives us a bit more of a influence over it so how are we going to do that something well I think we're going to have to start with some geophysics because it's a it's an ideal site for that isn't it yeah let's go and check it out then we can start digging a few holes I think yeah history hit is like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you our extensive catalog of documentaries covers everything from the rise of Hannibal Barker to the illustrious Treasures of King Tut so sign up today for broadcast quality documentaries uncovering the mysteries of the ancient world we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and odyssey fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Odyssey at checkout so the pottery in the top soil suggests there were Romans here what we also want to know is whether there was an earlier community we'll get some help from these geophysics results from a survey done a few years ago they're not terribly clear but it appears we've got some sort of ditch that's the yellow line and various shapes inside it it's possible the circles are Iron Age and the rectangular shapes may be Roman and if so does that mean the Romans took over or did the Iron Age people become romanized what we actually want to pinpoint in the first instance is this large ditch yeah we want to know whether it's actually part of a big enclosure right that comes around like this yeah or whether it's just a sort of linear field system so our first task is to relocate that and some of the pits so we can look at those okay well it'd be nice to put a section across that wouldn't it oh yes it would yeah so how long would you'll be working that out how long is a piece of string in the meantime Stewart's gone Walkabout looking for Earthworks and field boundaries to see if there's a pattern that our ditch will fit into the reason we want to find the ditch is that it could Mark the perimeter of the settlement and therefore the edge of the area we need to protect from the Army and since our preparations for digging are clearly going to take some time we've let Phil loose to do some Iron Age carpentry what do we do if we'll if you grab a couple of bundles there all right I'll just show show everyone what you're going to be doing down at the far end of the site he's going to help guy apter and a team of army volunteers with one of the most ambitious projects time teams undertaken building an Iron Age roundhouse in three days this space here will be the doorway so obviously we don't really want to Waffle across the doorway having driven in a circle of stakes they've now got to wattle Hazelwood between them to make a wall thing to mention is we don't want um joins going all the way up in one place because if you have the joins in one place obviously that'll be a weak spot this will tie the whole thing together and give it the strength that we want can't see it taking three days myself it's taking ages to get those geophys results and we can't start digging until we've got them while we wait I've decided to accompany Stuart on his helicopter recce he's on the lookout for archaeological signs of habitation which might tell him how long people have been living in this area why would it have been a good place to build your houses well in this particular case you're on a slope you're actually sheltered by this slope below us it's just down enough to take the wind off from winds blowing in from the West actually so the choice of location is actually very practical as well can you see down below us here tell me these Rings yes those are a Bronze Age barrows so there are people around here what two thousand years even before that's right you've got the you've got Neolithic peoples we've got Bronze Age peoples we've got the evidence of Bronze Age burials so there's probably far less people on this land now than at almost any other time I think it'd be entirely different picture that you'd see in the Bronze Age in the Iron Age into the Roman period it almost looked like like the Cotswolds would look now lots of wheat Fields lots of green haters it'd be a very busy landscape yeah well it's lunchtime already and we haven't opened a single Trench it's been such a slow business trying to confirm the whereabouts of any of the ditches and shapes identified on the old gear Fizz sketch we're now getting closer but frankly we've lost a lot of valuable time have you managed to track this feature down here because I'm anxious to get cracking with it yeah I've got no problem on the boundary or whatever it is the big is through here see it yeah well the logic is to dig something across the ditch isn't it oh you've got to some date for that and uh just you know looking at it it looks as if we got round things and rectangular things well that's an interesting issue isn't it because it's quite possible that these round features belong to the Iron Age of activity dated to the Roman period producing these are actually linear features okay so having fixed that right we need you to carry on then yep sure so we're going to move on the further up the field over there yes see if you can Target some of that foreign [Music] not so fast before the Digger can start the Army have to make a sweep of the area to check for any unexploded Ordnance if there is anything it'll be Staff Sergeant John huss's job to make it safe but we're in luck we can get digging without fear of being blown up [Music] let's try and keep the bottom flat if you can I know it's difficult with the plowing but just so I can see it clearer foreign [Music] you are kidding this is the easy bit we um putting a few posts in the ground and modeling some sticks around doesn't take any time at all there's a lot more to do yet what exactly is it well this is an Iron Age well as far as we can surmise from the evidence this is an Iron Age roundhouse you nearly said hot and then veered away no no I did not say that or didn't even you're close um but from the evidence we know their size we tend to know the direction of the doorway from classical descriptions we know that they were thatched and if you thatch a roof it has to be at a certain angle about 45 degrees in order for the rain to run off the thatch and not through the thatch is that for the thatch over there absolutely we have um well about 250 bundles of water reed why does it need all that actually it probably needs a bit more but it's a case of getting it thick enough so that you stop the rain but thin enough so that when you have a fire in the center and the smoke goes up the Smoke's able to escape the thing that Strokes me about the roof is how much is it going to weigh I would say with the amount of Reed we've got about two or three tons so what's the next job after this well we put this on and once that's on we're actually ready to do the roof or dub the walls we haven't decided which way around to do it yet I'm going to be the muddy job and that is a very muddy job yes so who's going to say for you well I'm just going to slope off now I'll catch you later no one's moving quite as fast today as Victor he's already started work on a drawing of our Iron Age enclosure it'll be fascinating to see if the reality turns out as Victor's imagined it with a boundary trench enclosing farm buildings and a Roman villa now that we've eventually got going we're making good progress in trench one our boundary trench and it's starting to produce fines it's like a bit of goat horn I think very bulky for a goat isn't it could be yeah it's a bit yeah it's a dog dish it's black burnish work from Dorset or a lid in fact that's a lid so that Groove sit on the top of your pot and goes up and flat top of one actually lived for a black burnish weapon all right ideally we'd have started trench 2 by now to try and find out if the round shapes are ironing and the rectilinear Roman what we want to do is cut a trench here from a circle into a rectangle so that we can see what the relationship is between the two but the old geoffismat isn't a scale drawing so matching these results to what's actually on the ground it's going to take more time than we've really got so John do we know where this intersection point between the circular thing and the rectilinear one is now well it should be somewhere on this line that's the line Bernard set out based on the lab survey but unfortunately we've lost the key point from here so we're not exactly sure where we are so you can't tell me where to put a trench to get that intersection not at the moment we just need a bit more time to expand the survey so we can understand how it relates right so bad news is we can't get started but the good news is it's going to be worth waiting for give us 30 minutes and we'll see what we've got for you oh well I'm getting a cup of tea then I don't know karenza not gonna believe this if you just pick that up you're not no just as I walked away that's it's a little bracelet isn't it looks like like a child's bracelet tiny Twisted wives yeah and that the class because you know that's the end of it there with the possibly where it joined uh it's beautifully made isn't it foreign [Music] let's hope it is only half an hour because it's four o'clock already the weather's changing and there's not much of the day left thankfully trench one is coming on very rapidly not surprisingly the fines near the top have been late Roman particularly interesting is a hyper course tile a tile that would have been part of an underfloor heating system in a Roman house meanwhile Mark Corney has been getting to grips with the pots Massey's coming out the top of these ditches Tony it's mainly late Roman but there's a couple quite nice pieces this is a base of a fourth Century ID Beaker probably made in the Oxford region nice but I'm particularly excited and interested by this which is part of a jar with this rilled or sort of corrugated surface and a very distinctive room it's from a type of pot that's going to date from the end of the fourth or the early 5th Century AUD now why do you find that particularly exciting because there is a lot of other evidence from the Salisbury Plain area that Roman type activity carried on well into the fifth century so this is the kind of stuff we'd like to see a bit more of [Music] Roy how's our big ditch coming along hello Tony well the big ditch now has resolved itself into four ditches four yes we've got two here two small ditches here's two this is the one I'm kneeling in and a smaller ditch here what are they they're probably um part of a field system um associated with the settlement so they're not kind of residential as it was these are not directly residential well no this we we're coming on to the ditches which are associated with the enclosure but if we haven't got that in enormous dish that we thought we had does that mean that we haven't got the big Iron Age supplement oh not at all no well what we're looking at is a boundary feature belonging with the settlement which at some stage has been remodeled so that we've now got two ditches instead of the one so trench one is complicated what we do know is that we've got Iron Age field boundaries which separated Fields as Hedges do today and in closure ditches which should indicate that there was an Iron Age settlement in the vicinity and we've got our Roman hypercourse tile we'd be onto some kind of Roman building tomorrow we'll see of course we had hoped to open a second trench to look at those circular and rectangular shapes but geophys have spent the entire day testing the site and they've yet to say if they found anything definite John marching up and down Salisbury plane all day haven't you what have you found well look at the results now Tony we actually think this might be a banjo enclosure what it's a banjo enclosure they're called banjo enclosures because they look like banjos but they're incredibly important they're thought to be really high status Iron Age enclosures they're probably even more important than the hill thoughts they're very uncommon generally there's quite a few in this area but it's fantastic it's unbelievable it's classic it's got the circular bit there the entrance way coming up there and these curving sort of ditches coming around the outside it's absolutely classic excellent well we may not have found our Iron Age enclosure but it looks as though we might have a banjo join us after the break I'd be more confident of getting a wall if you give me another half hour in part two Geoff Fizz think they're on to something big the banjo comes up Trump this is classic very late I know and I get my hand started beginning of day two and it's crisis time in terms of Manpower it took us ages before we could start digging yesterday and once we did we found the ground was really hard and difficult to dig but we found what we think is a banjo-shaped Iron Age enclosure over there and we're still looking for our Iron Age settlement over here but first thing this morning we found evidence of what we think might be a third building what exactly is it it's a limestone roof tile off a Roman building complete nail hole there so what kind of Roman building might this be large rectangular High status I mean this has been brought what 40 or 50 miles to be put on this building and we've already found a hyper course Tower here haven't we so is that additional evidence it is indeed and there is a high status large Roman building somewhere between us and the woods here well presumably though it could have come from anywhere around here this hasn't moved very far I mean it's a complete the hypergostile the large pieces of pottery the building is within yards of us here can we not just Mark the fact that there's a Roman villa around here somewhere I know isn't that um I need to know exactly where it is when the military say where can we dig I need to know where it is I don't want a building this important to be accidentally damaged in the middle of the night so it looks like we've got three important buildings now yes two days left yeah after a sluggish day yesterday it's good that things are really speeding up and already this morning we've identified the exact position of the Iron Age banjo geophysics located yesterday evening we're going to go in that area there that's important oh that sounds good enough here to whereabouts in the corner there we'll take in the ditch the banjo and some of the pits inside that sounds ideal we're that's so that's here that's where we started today so where's the boundary I mean the whole thing curves behind us and we're going to do another arm over there yeah all right oh look at that done that do your art good I'll tell you what there is nothing to be a nice bit of chalk no that is the most gorgeous gorgeous natural raw material just peel the top you don't understand you don't understand you don't understand I've been I've been living on this wonderful white stuff all my life and it's gorgeous just to see it opinions vary about banjos the old theory was that they were stocking closures for keeping animals but recently it's been thought that they were definitely residential belonging to someone of high status within the community [Music] finding the banjo is great and a first for time team but the worrying thought is that the Army could be endangering our Roman building at this very moment we may be onto a major Discovery but we've not had glimpse of it so far once again we're dependent on geophys getting a move on [Applause] try and Shred the straw into it I don't suppose they had steel cap boots in the Iron Age but in other respects this is authentic guy and his team are making a mud and straw door to plaster the walls of our roundhouse experiment oh it's all fallen off push it push it in push it I'm push it push items off you push it in sort of slide your hands on okay when you when you use the term light Iron Age yeah what are you actually thinking of really talking about the period from the end of the second century BC beginning of the first century yeah there are a number of major changes in this area many of the Hill thoughts seem to go out of use there's a change in the settlement pattern yeah people are starting to use coinage coins are coming into this area yeah and there's increasing contact with the Roman world but the real change comes in the middle of the first century 55 and 54 BC you know Caesar has conquered gold yeah he plays those two brief visits from Britain yeah after that probably because of some kind of treaty we see a great flood of contacts so there's about nearly 100 years isn't it between that Caesar's visiting 54-55 and then the final Conquest that's right Claudius in 43. that's right and I mean this area is interesting as well because there's very little evidence of the Roman army stopping off in this area right as if this is an area that's pretty well used to sort of Roman ways there's probably fairly rapid assimilation into a Roman way of life so we shouldn't think of of large numbers of either Romans or Italians coming into this area no it's the local population who have already got some Roman tastes they become increasingly romanized and eventually build their Roman style house [Music] be that Roman style house and not getting very far at the moment all we know is that it must be somewhere in the northeastern part of the site some years ago royant whistle found a Roman corn dryer in the wood and since the tiles we found were in trench one we think the Roman structure might be on the higher ground in this corner but the big question remains where on Earth is it yeah we've already run it off into there we've got a run sections through there and see if we can actually pick up the sequence meanwhile Phil has been busy extending trench to our banjo enclosure it's already yielded some great finds and that means we can date it see look at that this looks like the most interesting stuff which is what we've got here is a really nice bead rimmed jar good Lord and this is classic very late Iron Age you're probably looking at the last century before the Roman Conquest about it because I would have guessed that but it would have been a guess good guess not bad for a medievalist so this is this is the sort of stuff that was kicking around at the time of the Roman concrete exactly and about a century before then about 50 BC down to about 80 50. yeah but I mean he's not really kicking about as you put it I mean he's going straight in into the hole that's right I mean this is a big shirt and it joins up with that shirt as well so we're just getting quite a substantial piece here oh it's always very satisfying yeah yeah it was good fresh stuff deposited in here so it can be interesting to see what comes up from deeper we've got an excellent little transcription very promising okay well bashons I think it is yep it's the same story over in trench three our second banjo Trench cool this is late Iron Age it looks like it to me some of it might be a little earlier but it looks pretty kosher as late Iron Age to me we need to get these cleaned up really and then see if we can piece more of them back together yeah yeah in there isn't there yeah holding on to it pushing this down and also tightening this string up at the same time down at our roundhouse Nick the Thatcher has arrived and not a minute too soon none of our army volunteers has ever thatched before and they've got a ton of it to put on the roof by tomorrow evening I make sure the reeds are pointing up to the top of the roof the next lot goes over the top so it stops the rain comes down yeah also well if you do it so you can see the bottoms of the bath the rafters that will give you a good guide for now yeah when we put a layer on top we will finish it off right okay so what we can see is that that's getting a little bit High yeah so if we pull that down okay and if we can pack this up we're all a bit frustrated about the Roman building so we've cornered John to tell us exactly where geophys have got to that's it Bernard's finally sorted out the the grid problems I think and it's actually really quite exciting here here's our banjo yeah and as we move through the data a clear suggestion of another one there but look even further towards the edge of the survey look at this oh that rectangular sort of shape looks like a building yeah I know this is a bizarre question but do you ever get two banjos close together you do and we're in exactly the right part of the world for this phenomenon they're not common but when you see them like this it's usually a very good sign of both a late Iron Age complex of probably fairly High status and then you always get a big Roman building complex in very close proximity as if you're seeing continuity from Iron Age land ownership into the Roman period so could this be the Roman building that we're chasing that we've got the roof tile off yeah I mean it's certainly substantial enough I think to have supported those Stone sleeves I mean obviously we ought to put a trench in this and we to check this out I knew you were going to say that well Ian's gonna want that is it oh yes we we need to let me press you if now you had to say where you thought it was most likely that it would be where would it be well look there's two possibilities one where John and Chris are at the moment they're sort of over yeah that sort of area but alternatively Tony on this sort of plateau here oh this is very much flatter isn't it you could choose either but I think it'd be better to wait why don't we stick a trench in one of these options now and then once we've got the geophys put something in the other one I'd be more confident of getting a wall if you give me another half hour half hour yeah it sounds fine half an hour Chris that's your maximum great so this is the situation we're definitely getting closer to our Roman building which has to be somewhere in this area and having found one banjo we now have two this must mean we're on to a settlement of some considerable importance but we won't dig the second banjo because finding the Roman structure has to be our top priority now in the meantime in trench 3 karenza has been turning up some cracking fines we've now come up with Iron Age pottery really nice bits like that so it does look like this ditch is part of the banjo enclosure the geophysics showed same sort of pottery that feels getting so that's great but even better yeah we've got this bone comb absolutely beautiful iron Edge so nice [Music] oh coming through there you go on dig in oh that's a bit wetter I'm now lending a hand with the doorbing this is where the really hard graft comes in dorb needs to fill the wall inside and out and it all takes time but if the Watling isn't thickly covered it won't keep the wind and rain out and it could easily fall down and how long would it take to dry well with this wind and settling the outside will dry very quickly the inside maybe a maybe a week maybe a bit more depends on the weather I mean it will stay dry once we get the roof on it certainly stops the wind coming in it's incredible insulation it's amazing up here it's really cold really drafty down here and of course that's really important I mean we're on Salisbury Plains here the wind is howling and um this would have been so important to be able to stay warm we need some more dog just come in Boss oh yeah look at that it's just trying to get which one which one's that oh this is stuff we were looking at this morning oh yeah we've got a nice reconstructed shape for now I'm off nasty and get from one piece like that to a drawing like that yeah and clearly you can see the diameter of the pot so you've got some idea of that and you can see the the sort of beginnings of the profile yeah but presumably the rest of its experience is it's partly experience but also the the shapes of these vessels the forms are fairly standardized at the period we're talking about it so I think the Reconstruction we could be 99 happy with right yeah what about the um the one with the ruling on the light oh this way we're over on well now it's been washed it it's what we thought it did yeah they're still making pots like this in the opening Decades of the fifth century so it's about as late as your ladies are fine for sort of proper Romano British parts so can we see that one on the screen racer no I honestly done it yet all right well let's let's make a start on it now then yeah I've got a sketches sort of a profile so you have this sort of Rim deep undercut they then have quite bulbous bodies which things come back in down to the base and then you've got these bands of horizontal ruling or like corrugations [Music] John's time's up and the geoffiz results have turned out brilliantly it looks like a Roman villa where about you think well if we put a trench right across hopefully we'd find walls the floor yeah that looks good can you show us where it is on the ground and we can we should be able to get that started tonight shouldn't we I think so yes well I'll go and spray the trench if you like I'm gonna get the machine oh yeah [Music] so we're ready for the Leggett now Phil's taking advantage of a short break while they get the Roman trench started to take a thatching list if it catches the ends of the reeds and you just hit the Reed like this you do the underneath first right to get the line and then you hit it up and what's Happening Here is the Reed will rot wherever it's exposed so the less the that is exposed the better and by legating it up you're left with just short bits sure you've really sort of chamfering it off then yeah all the way up and that will go all the way up the roof it's a really clever attack would you like to have a go with it yeah I mean I've seen you haven't used it I've seen if you take this arm and rested on the Reed that you're hitting it stops IT buckling up I've seen people do this on on facts rules I didn't really understand why but it all makes perfect sense now this I could get you're now a professional Adventure I can get attached to this yeah what I'm going to try and do is just take the rubbish off the top yeah have a look at it by hand and we're going to put the machine back in a bit later on yeah I think that's wise let's have a good look at this Rubble yeah but I mean you're getting all this Rubble at such a high level it's suggesting around the walls that have just gone in it's collapsed though that's true so yeah we're just trying to do it as gently as we can I think so so the good news is because it looks like we're on to our Roman building we're putting a large trench in just here next to the wood geoffiz results suggest this will give us our walls tomorrow and that's our chance to discover what it looked like and possibly even who lived there end of a fantastic day too not only have we got a duet of banjo enclosures but we've also found this building rubble and these two pieces of roofing tile could this be the first evidence of the Roman villa we've been looking for and if it is can we sort it out with just one day left join us after the break beginning of day three and the big question is have we got enough information to save Beach's Barn in order to get it scheduled we have to answer three questions how big is the site what condition is it in and what kind of people used to live here well quite frankly we haven't answered any of these satisfactorily yet and we've only got nine hours left I think I found another roof tile really yeah there's one most of our energies today are going to be devoted to the fascinating Roman building we located last night we don't know exactly what it is yet but the roof tiles on Pottery alone indicate that it must be of high status as we thought and talking of high status that's precisely what our banjo enclosure is turning out to be hello Tony let the Army do all the work well we're paying them aren't we no not only that we're incredibly excited why is that because overnight it's rained and that's exciting it is for us it really is because it's increased the contrast between the actual pitfills and the natural chalk and look what we can see this morning one there one there and one there those three patches of soil are they post holes almost certainly post holes and post holes mean internal fittings within the banjo which could include buildings so what do they tell you mark well this is what I was hoping to see because you can compare this with other examples we've got in Wessex you can see on air photographs and geophysics where you can see you've got pits post holes these are very densely packed um little enclosures which is a complete variance with the old idea that these things were stocking closures and you drove your livestock down the fun well if you did that here you'd have a lot of livestock with broken legs lying down the bottom of pits I mean these are clearly residential why would they be living in something which had got this extraordinary long Corridor down there I think these are best for you now is like formal entrances or approach ways almost sound like ceremonial your process along oh come on whatever you don't know what something is you always say you archaeologists no no we say it's Rich ceremonial or on slightly firmer grounds you know these are Grand approaches to what's going on inside it's a bit like the mall going up to Buckingham Palace isn't it yeah so what kind of things do you think we might find here well I think we need to look at all these structures inside this enclosure because we've got the boundary ditch around here we might have a storage pit here we've got post holes we might have the outline of the the actual house at the back yeah we need to just disentangle that it will take a lot of very very careful digging but I mean I'm sure we well we've got a day we'll see what we can do [Music] foreign [Music] we've been joined today by Peter Reynolds who's a leading expert on round houses and Iron Age agriculture this is a 14-foot roundhouse but in the Iron Age they had a huge range of sizes didn't they all they did ranging from this size 14 feet right the way through to maybe 60 feet in diamond and we've used a lot of materials in this little one oh yeah there's a ton of thatch on the top of that yeah and a ton of Timber just imagine how that's going to grow when you're looking at a huge house so what are the implications then for getting these materials together you know the you know there's a lot of straw there's a lot of Timber a lot of mud where you're looking at a huge acreage for the straw itself yeah you know you take a 50 foot diameter a house 16 ton of straw 16 Acres 0.1 Timber you've got 220 trees all Plantation grown you're now beginning to look from a circle of post holes if you like in the ground to a whole implication for landscape and I think what we're looking at in the Iron Age is a third arable third pastoral and a third manage Woodland you know we're not going to be able to keep this house here but how long did the original ones last well I I reckon the smaller ones which are based on a single ring of posts are going to last between 14 and 20 years let's say but the big ones the ones with the double ring with the great post holes in in the inner ring they're going to last 200 300 400 years yeah there was a sort of area that's very loose here there's a kind of mortary floral layer or something coming for so if you've got it over there yeah it looks like zinc does come through right we must be on top of the building there it looks as though we're coming down onto the walls of our Roman building and since the early evidence is that some of them may have collapsed we'll have to go carefully if we're to find intact structures and just a moment ago over at banjo trench 2 this was found it's a corn Stone used for grinding wheat in the Iron Age it seems to be so appropriate storage it seems mad for you to that I should dig a hole and fill it for the Grain and it didn't rot how will it not mad at all because in fact they're very Advanced scientifically yeah you know we know why it works they presumably did through experience and practice Yeah but if you fill a hole like this with green yeah you know and this is going to take somewhere in the region of 10 tons when you think putting it all back together yeah yeah that's a hello Mother grain what happens you fill it up seal it with a clay sealer hermetic seal right which you've got to keep down yeah now that means underneath the clay seal the the cereals are just in a perfect growing condition yeah so they grow but only that much depth so you've got a thin of growing grains that's it gives off carbon dioxide uses up carbs uses up the oxygen in the bed right carbon dioxide preserves everything inside yeah it's a perfect storage for big tunnels so he goes dormant as soon as it fills up with carbon dioxide exactly right and then and then you could actually if you want to use it for a series of her actual seed perfect it'd be germinated it's got over 98 germination after six months under the ground in a pit like this and not for the first time on this dig the weather's turned nasty come on get in here it works chipping down with rain outside but this works absolutely incredible do you have any doubt I did I never had any doubt in you oh you always say that's the end of those things it's not what you say in the hotel but there is still water coming through here isn't it but as soon as we finished that will be it no rain will come in here and you can see it's quite thinly put on yeah and yet you know it's perfectly waterproof what I would like to see though right at the end if we'd know early is a fire in the middle we're certainly going to give it a go as long as we finish because if you have a hole up there yeah you're creating a draft and it will take the fast straight you've got to see all that gap before you deal up down as long as we can finish it yeah we'll have a fun but one thing we know already it doesn't have to stop this bitter wind from freezing this doesn't it yeah should we do the next lot of stuff in here then after the rain Phil's moved to trench four where he's desperately needed and where carenza seems to be uncovering a floor Phil this is looking Alish complicated well it is but I I I mean I don't actually know what's going on here myself but look at this look oh the plaster surface of a wall Phil thinks he's found an outer wall plaster on a wall in the middle of the countryside is amazing and not what you'd expect this is clearly an important building but we really need dating evidence if we're going to understand what it was decompose so that's it look at this yeah here this is our first coin our first coin that's a ridiculously few that we found with that just come out the trench now they are Mark you're a man for this right yes well I think I think whatever you tell me I'm not going to believe you no no we're just going to need it well exactly yeah the size alone is enough to say it's it's Fourth Century so it's like same general date as the pots we've been getting meanwhile over at our banjo Rob spent hours gently cleaning the ground around the corn Stone and he's finally in a position to lift it this wonderfully preserved Stone was grinding wheat two thousand years ago that's a nice little jumble there isn't it we've got a nice stone wall here and a nice bit of plaster coming down onto a piece of pottery so does that mean that we can date the wall if we know how old the pottery was that's why that's why I've got Mark over yeah look I've got a paintbrush I can be a real archaeologist it's an averted room it looks like it's sort of later Roman third or fourth Century type just from seeing it in there Mark I've just found this coin out more coming up have you got any idea how old that coin might be that's actually a figure of a victory uh that's a head legs arm out holding a wreath and this type of coin was minted between 388 and 402 A.D it's the very last issue of bronze coins coming into Roman Britain so you'll probably have been dropped sometime early in the 5th Century OD so it really is looking as though this is a very late Roman site yes certainly all the material we've got here is looking very late and the coin just confirms it two miles away at our incident room it's time to bring together all the bits of information we've got about the site and the landscape what did happen to that boundary ditch if you look at the site itself you can see this ditch coming through here that's the ditch we were Excavating in trench one it continues in earthwork form along here up here you've got one banjo and another banjo and that's where the the Roman buildings are up there now if you look at these big major land boundaries that exist and if we add our information that we've found this map shows us the location of the Iron Age Farm estates that were already known about but with the evidence of our boundary ditch we can see a new estate centered on Beach's Barn big gap yeah it looks if it's another estate that's there in the inh period continuing through into the Roman period what does all this tell us about the people who actually lived here I think what it tells us the big picture is that we're looking at a very stable population that's probably been in this area since at least the Bronze Age they made the transition into the Iron Age then after the Roman invosion they adopted Roman ways but we're not looking at immigrants here coming in we're looking at the indigenous population have become romanized and they start to adopt Roman ways of building but the land units the Estates on which they make their living seem to remain largely unchanged beaches Barn has proved an intriguing excavation for time team what began as an investigation of a ditch surrounding some round things and some squarish things has produced astonishing evidence of a high status settlement here stretching from the Iron Age days of the boundary ditch and the banjo right through the entire Romano British period and all in the middle of the countryside miles from any town and the huge collection of fines covers the whole history not only have we got this 100 weight or so of dead animal but we've also got all of this fantastic and it's amazing what have we got Mark well I mean the really exciting thing to me Tony is we've we've got this late ionized material that we wanted to get from the banjo now but this isn't later in age no though this comes from the site behind us the the Roman building and we just put it here to show the range and what about this that was marvelous to see especially coming out one of those Iron Age pits because these things are probably not just thrown away as rubbish there seems to be a set pattern quite often that when a new pit is dug another one is backfilled and you can find things like human burials or little deposits of animal bone and in this case they appear to have put a perfectly good and serviceable quone stone into the pit this isn't quite what it seems is it pretty well we're not quite that that in fact is the Bottom Stone of Aquin Stone there's a top one that goes on top of that so it's a rotary corn but even then it's not a rotary corn because if you you look there that side is more worn than that one and so the handle went in the quarter movement rather than taking it all the way going all the way around an oscillatory business yeah and and that's beautiful but I think what we've got is basically lots of phases of Roman building and now as we come to the end of our dig karenza's got the job of explaining our Roman building to Ian Barnes we're pretty sure the building was a small Villa and probably the center of the farm estate which we identified in the incident room a few moments ago together with our banjos will that be enough to have the site scheduled it was I couldn't have asked for anymore we we know the extent of it the geophysics has shown it to be in this area here you've found that the date of it and the nature of it we could we can show the results to English Heritage we can get the monument scheduled and then it's a question of join up a management plan and will that enable you to keep the Army off it there's no so much keeping them off here I mean they've been they've run over this for the last 103 years and you can see it's I don't think it's affected it too much it's a question of really stopping them digging on it foreign and now we can see the full extent of our site as it might have been between about 400 BC and 400 A.D om dominating the estate in the late Iron Age would have been the banjo enclosures with a huge roundhouses for the upper ranks of society [Music] the romanization area eventually came out Roman villa with its Courtyard and its plastered walls it must have made an impressive sight overlooking this thriving agricultural landscape over the last three days we've given Ian a fantastic amount of information enough for him to get this area scheduled which means we've achieved what we set out to do we've helped save beaches Barn hey you've actually finished it yeah have you had a good time absolutely fantastic the best three days of my life and you've even got a little fire that's really nice doesn't it what happens to you next week Steve well I'm off to Bosnia Tony well I hope they've given you a few days to remember mate and you doubted whether they'd do it it was a huge undertaking but um I couldn't have done it without this team they were superb okay is it all finished now not quite Tony what have you got to do oh what did you say on the bottom there with resolution and Fidelity what does that mean all right

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 151,256

Keywords: Ancient Relic Recovery, Ancient Ruins Exploration, Archaeology Adventure, Battlefield Archaeology, Discovery Channel, Documentary Films, History Quests, Roman history, Rome's history, Time Team, Time Team Expedition, ancient ruins exploration, antique artifacts recovery, archaeological exploration, historical findings, history documentaries, military archaeology, military history, rare historical artifacts, significant historical sites

Id: j2msWcWqIOg

Length: 49min 0sec (2940 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023