This Mysterious Dark Age Skeleton Was Brutally Murdered | Time Team | Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] this is Norfolk over there's the Sea The Ground Round Here is pretty flat and exposed except for this little Hill here on the top of which is this deserted church now we know that it's Norman but all around here in the fields people have been coming across pieces of metal that go back as far as the Iron Age in fact this is probably the richest site we've yet come across in time team so what was this place what was going on here was it a settlement in which case what kind of people settled here and can we find out in just three days to make matters worse we're covering this whole dig live in fact some of you may have seen the live shows that went out last August but as yet I haven't got a clue what's going to happen all I can tell you is that this weekend is going to be pretty exciting thank you [Music] foreign [Music] it's huge it's half a kilometer from one end to the other this hill has never been excavated but over the years people have come across an enormous number of finds here many of them dating from the Saxon period at the far end we have the ruined church that we also have a remarkable aerial photograph together with the fines it suggests that at one time there was an enormous settlement here it's a pretty good snap isn't it it's amazing information you can look at this for weeks but what really shows up well is this enclosure yes a huge ditch so what are we gonna do with it well I think we want one or more sections across that to start with to find out what date it is several trenches and try and track them it's quite clear here but it gets increasingly confused there we can try and track it round I think that confused earlier there we've got to come in with the geophysics but also do some field walking and some metal detector surveying and try and sort that what sort of you know material we get I mean that that confused area as you put it I mean that's the one that goes for me I mean I I think there's something really exciting going on what sort of periods are we looking at Andrew well we've had fines from this hill ranging from Neolithic Bronze Age Iron Age Roman period yeah that's pretty comprehensive is there any one period that looks like it's going to be particularly promising the really exciting bit I think is going to be the Middlesex and that's the seventh eighth ninth centuries where we have some wonderful finds what about the Norman Church uh well the northern church is the one bit you can actually see above ground obviously a nice little ruin there and there was an excavation there in the 1930s but there are almost no records of what they found they apparently got a an e-stand a rounded East End of apps and we would like to have that re-excavated and see if we can find out what was actually there our first job is to try to find the boundary of the settlement so we open trench one over part of the crop mark on the aerial photograph if this is the boundary corenzo will then start to look for dating evidence within it [Music] so the wall will come along straight for a little bit straight for a bit and then it'll turn we also open a trench at the church Neil Holbrook and Andrew are trying to work out where it should go okay let's go they're looking for the Eastern apps and any earlier parts of the structure this church is an impressive building with the tower in the center which makes it rare it suggests that it was very important and the material already found here suggests a high status site this is a stylus a mid-saxon pen largely used by monks it suggests that there was a monastery of some sort here and we ought to find burials close to the church if we do we may find evidence of very early occupation Stewart's already out and about doing something strange [Music] geophysics have also started the sandy soil here is difficult for them to read but they've adjusted their equipment and are doing what they can [Music] helping us on the site is an army of field walkers and we have a large number of metal detectorists [Music] I take a drive down to the incident room to find out what's happening down there history hitters like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you with familiar faces such as Dan Jones and Dr Eleanor janega we've got hundreds of documentaries covering the greatest figures and events of medieval history 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 Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at I want to ask you about Metal detecting Mick because yeah you said rather enthusiastically that you thought that we were going to start doing some metal detecting but you used to loathe metal detectors the great robbers of archaeologists right and and that's still true to some extent I mean I think we have to we have to say there's two swords there's there's metal detectories who work with archaeologists on projects and it's just another piece of equipment to record as much evidence as possible and then there's that very very small minority of what a really robber treasure Hunters who are busy you know pinching bits of our heritages and flogging them off we can work with the people who are going to work as part of the project how do you do user metal detector well what does that mean well when you're field walking and you're collecting bits of Potter and so on you use metal detectors to get your metal at the same time yeah so it's part and parcel of the collection head for that door down there look that's the back of the incident past our enormous scanner trust yeah yeah that's my lunch I hope well and we can do a lot with that then that's useful information you see hope so right here we are in the incident room we're already busy Sue's working on some maps for Stuart to try to put the area into some sort of perspective well what I've been doing is trying to work out the relationship of the site to the coastline you can see here that we're trapped in land the Red Dot marks the the site and the the coastline's about seven kilometers to the North West the coastline looked very different in from the prehistoric period onwards you can see here that that was the coastline and that our site is actually on on a site Peninsula if you look at it in more detail the island where our churches is actually physically separate from the from the landscape around it it is a very unique piece of topography compared to the rest of the coastline where you can see on the the next slide again just how very easy accessible it is to the coastline and still Steve's building up a 3D model to help us try and add all bits onto it where the archeology was and so I just finished rendering you see we've got the digital terrain information in we've got that skin we've got OS map on top of it and if we come around there see our place is highlighted in yellow In The Middle come in there and see more of the lumps and bumps Along Comes The Flood level so that's going to be a good base to put anything that we find on top of we're also joined by Sandy toxvig who's helping the field Walkers and we have our first find amazingly it's Saxon it's a little Anglo-Saxon silver coin known as a skeet or shatter eight Century wonderful and was that a a field Walker that is thrilling can I hold it yeah sure there you are so what's it made of what is it silver oh and what would have been worse Andrew in Anglo-Saxon times there's a lot or a little bit of money well it would have been called a penny right uh but we're talking about a time when there wasn't in our sense of the word a really developed monetary economy and it would have had quite a specialized use probably most likely for his tribute to the king so not worth a great huge amount not a huge amount but something very much more than the sort of pennies that we're used to well worth spending a penny in Anglo-Saxon town probably absolutely right okay well look I'm going to give that to your safe care and leave you to plot it exactly on the ground so we know we found it we'll do that right now I got over excited I'm gonna go and look for another one and in fact across the site we found a second at around the same time it's an Anglo-Saxon coin for a start and on on this size there's a rounded bit of ear on the other side yes there's an angular bit of nose sorry flattering um no huge nose with a bit of work could we get a more accurate date on that yeah I think so we could get a date to within 10 years and uh we could probably get a king and a Monier how valuable would it have been I mean this is something that would have been it's not your loose change in fact this coin dates from 700 to 715 A.D it was minted in the lower Rhineland by a coin maker called EPA the sand is coined dates from the same time from 700 to 710. both these coins are very rare finds and they firmly place our site in the middle Saxon period karenzo what have we got here over at trench one corenza's making good progress we found the ditch that was showing up in the air photograph in the geophysics we've got one edge of it here see the change from the sort of light chalky soil to the darker brown stuff and then the other side it's about five meters wide the other side of it's coming through here I mean it feels sort of Iron Age to me at the moment just by the sort of size of it really um we can find out what what date it is and what shape it is and then we can see if that feature that's over there is the same thing and then maybe we'll travel to track it all around yeah I think that seems quite reasonable a trenched too by the church forensic archaeologist Margaret Cox has a find that requires some care I can tell you found something yes we've got a well we've got a human skull which may be part of uh something bigger maybe a whole body so it could be a test but you can't tell at the moment no we need to excavate a bit more of this uh fill away in order to see whether it is a complete body or just uh disarticulated and it's the suit to protect you from it or it's from you it from me so that we can do the DNA analysis and what we won't get is my DNA coming up loud and clear right so and is it a Christian burial do you think well it's it's not going in the right direction for a normal Christian burial um but that's assuming this is a grave in the first place so we shall see crack on good luck at the far end of the trench we have the beginning of something exciting and the more we dig the better it begins to look off to one side of the site we've built a Saxon Village here we've got people recreating various aspects of life in Saxon times minting coins weaving and some cooking what's the next three days Hugh Fernley wittingstall will join them in an effort to recreate this piece of jewelry found on the site Russell you're our expert Saxon Craftsman what are we looking at here we're looking at some Anglo-Saxon strap ends that possibly hung from a belt it's been made by Master Crescent himself is this something we could possibly attempt to have a go at in our Cameo Village in our Cameo Village it'll be difficult we'd have to cast the bronze we'd have to mate in the yellow we'd have to inlay the silver wire be difficult but we could have a Go okie doke so we're going to take this over here and I believe Victor you're attempting to reproduce this in wax it's had a bit of a challenge that's right it's going to be very tough the technique is called The Lost wax process and what Victor's doing he's going to make a master out of wax which in turn will be pressed into clay the clay will then be fired to bake the clay mold remove the wax and then into the void in the mold will be poured bronze and hopefully when we crack it open we'll find a similar basic Master to that which has been cast that's quite a big hopefully there well let's have a go but complicated as it is he's got two days to do it then geophysics throws another Target our way they've just done this corner of the site over a crop Mark that looks like it could be some sort of entrance way or a harbor the results look pretty clear so the church is here Tony we've got the modern track we've got a clear ditch and then this clear curving uh second ditch which may be the harbor as you say well yeah we're right down on the edge of the marsh there so we might have a harbor or all sorts of things it might be the entrance so the digi turning round into an entrance into this big enclosure on the air pictures so we prepare to open our third trench is this some sort of entrance way and what's its relationship with karenza's boundary stop back two and then do it at the right angle so nursing a slip disc so he's into supervising this weekend but John Gator's pretty sure he knows what he's doing the one ditch coming through on this line yeah and then the curve coming round and you'll get the two separate ditches and where they cut each other wow and I reckon that the straight one is lighter oh you give me the dates for him as well eh in the incident room we're working on the skull found in trench two it's medieval and was probably buried here five or six hundred years ago up at the trench we've uncovered a floor from the same sort of period this is Lovely isn't it yes this is fantastic it's a 15th century glazed medieval floor two colors and it's all imported it's all come from Holland and low countries brought over in huge quantities in boats just think of all that weight coming over across the North Sea Andrew you're pretty excited about this aren't you indeed I am but I've actually got something even better here part of a slightly older tile 14th century and it's got um the words Thomas stamped on it am I was it backwards because the dye to make the stamp the tile was made by one person who could write but didn't think it would be reversed when he'd actually stand this floor is a wonderful Discovery I floor like this to and the outline of it gives us an idea of what the building may have looked like we can now show that the East End was rounded in Norman times but we don't have any evidence of buildings standing here before the Normans built this church so we closed this trench down and decide to look elsewhere just north of the church geophysics using a rather odd new electromagnetic system find a feature which could be a boundary ditch there's a lot of activity on the geophysics so we open a new trench trench 4. here in the incident room Mick and John Blair have been having a few more thoughts about how they can solve some of the Mysteries surrounding the layout of the place you're beginning to think it looks like some other sites yes I think it's fitting pretty clearly into a pattern of enclosed Anglo-Saxon monastic sites we can see this if you look at one that's very lighted here at bamson in Oxfordshire there's a very similar sort of enclosure just a bit smaller it's got a boundary ditch of the same sort of width about four meters it's near a water course over there on the left and it's got a church in one corner sitting on a natural Mound but there is one site at Brandon in Suffolk which has been excavated extensively we've got the whole Western half of an island very similar to this one in fact with a Causeway approaching it from from down there there's a waterfront on the Northern edge with industrial buildings there's a scatter of small domestic buildings and then there are two churches at the heart of the site one there inside the earthwork and one to the South two churches so the could be more than one in hours yeah there's often more than one on these so sometimes in line along the top of a ridge or sometimes parallel to each other upper trench four the trench is just getting longer seems to be John Gates's fault again but why we've got an amazing series of ditches some straight some curving boundary ditches possible trackway coming in here yeah and then outside of these ditches we've got this area of what I call noise strong magnetic signals and I just wonder whether that is actually a Bell Pit what's a Bell Pit where they cast the bells for the church they're making a hole in the ground to cast them so is that why we're digging this trench then yeah we're just putting in a small trench 25 meters by five come on why are we making it so big well the thing is we want to pick up the boundary and also look at these industrial type responses outside we know that these sites there was a lot of metal working making knives and so on they were also making bronze objects and of course they may they may have been making tiles they may have been lead working and there's often these areas around the outside so this actually could be a key tree yeah because you see so often people bother with the the church and forget the rest one day into this fantastic site and we've got trenches all over the place we've found two beautiful tiny Anglo-Saxon coins and this trench has been a great exercise with that fantastic floor but we still haven't got to the heart of the place what really was going on here that's a job for tomorrow it's a bit of an early start for Sue and for John if you just get the high point we've put a peg there and then it's 8 30 and already we're trying to open another trench we think that this could be an earlier building and it fits in with the layout of similar sites which suggest a line of churches across the top of the hill [Music] so we open a new trench trench 5 across the track from the church [Music] across the site at trench one our search for the boundary has widened [Music] I've opened a second trench 1A as we chase the boundary around the site we're looking for crucial dating evidence here down at trench 3 we're still trying to interpret these two ditches at least we can now date them one is actually coming together really well in that ditch there that Ray's got look at that that's that's our assured of Ipswich where 720 850. and that almost certainly makes that nice middle Saxon ditch right this feature on the other hand has got medieval Pottery coming out of it yeah and not only that you can demonstrate it stratigraphically Ray can you point out where the the cut of our medieval ditches you see it runs up that just that finger of yellow I'm sure you can see that Mick and so in other words we've got both the pottery and the stratigraphy coinciding that's great isn't it really good so we're going to just clean clean this one out as well oh yeah we've got to take some out of that right yeah but that's brilliant isn't it oh yeah critical bit of dating yeah so John Gator was right this ditch is Saxon but it sits just outside our boundary and doesn't join it so we close trench three and Phil moves up to trench five in our Saxon Village Hugh is beginning to get his hands dirty this is especially chosen because it's fine is it yes it's got very fine pieces and we'll pick out the fine detail in the wax good stuff is it Victor this clay it's very good stuff go easy now you spend hours on those he's making a mold by wrapping the wax tablet up in clay how am I doing hey that's pretty good this mold will be hardened in the fire and the wax inside will melt we then pour molten bronze into it to make the strap end upper trench 5 just across from the church is getting pretty busy we've found evidence of burials we've uncovered two skeletons and we have this strange little Mound what is this this is actually an oven I think because you see all burning around it and it's got a floor in it and then there's these little holes around stakeholders and what they've done is put a wicker work frame over the top like that what we've done down there and blasted it with clay and then you know you put your Furs or your quick burning twigs and things you get the thing hot and then when it's hot you shove your your bread in this oven is a great find and as it happens in the Saxon Village we were already partly through building one just like it when we found it this gives a good idea of what it would have looked like we're in a little house in fact we're part of a house can we see any more of the house is that part well this must be the floor because it's got no Pebbles and Nile thinks this is actually part of the wall running across here quite where it goes elsewhere we can't see because the trenches uh not big enough just beautiful though isn't it yeah it's a nice thing to find what I don't understand we ought to get down the incident room now is that originally we said that we thought this was going to be and the nastic site didn't we and and now what we're finding is a a rather sweet little village Hut yeah but it still might be monastic because they've got burials cutting through that building with the oven yeah that building in the oven is 12th century judging by the pottery that was found all over the surface yeah so at some stage they extend the graveyard out over that building probably up to another road at another boundary which is beginning to show up at the end of the trench and they cut they cut through it with all these burials but that doesn't mean that there's not something underneath the 12th century house and there's not really any natural that is the geology showing through there so there may well be you know a layer of occupation on top of what's there it's now early afternoon on day two so far we've opened five trenches and I'm having some difficulty in dealing with the scale of this side we've also had loads of finds coming in but they span an enormous period so where's our strategy we're coming to this really frustrating point that you get in every dig where in each individual trench everyone's saying yes I know absolutely what's happening but as far as the thing as a whole is concerned nobody really seems to know and I'm still missing the big picture John have you got any view of how this site's coming on what might have been here I'm trying to get a picture it's certainly High status it could be a Lord's residence personally I think it's much more likely that it's monastic with the churches and Main buildings on the top of the hill maybe with workers and Craftsmen on the periphery down at the bottom of the hill but it looks like a lot of trade it doesn't look like people living here somehow yeah but that's because on a site like this like many archaeological sites nine tenths of the evidence is rotted away you know all the woods gone all the level all the basket all that sort of stuff just disappears we're left with the the last bits that don't rot the inorganic stuff what about priorities well I think what we ought to do is make a real effort to get to the bottom of the a big ditch the big enclosure ditch try and get a date on that and if we can get started on that area to the east of the church where there might be a much earlier building yeah this is the area east of the church that Andrew wants to look at geophysics have found a feature which may be an earlier Church on a different alignment from the present Church big question why are you wearing this extraordinary wreath I'm I'm checking the alignment of the standing church with a compass and it seems it's pretty close in fact almost exactly true West East now Norman Rebuilders quite often realigned churches so they were closer to West East the Eastern feature we've got in the geophysics is on a different alignment and that might give us the early alignment of both churches before that one was rebuilt and how might that tie in with the line of churches which we're looking for on the other side well we're part of it you could perfectly well have two three even more churches with two close together here and another church out to the West so we opened trench six just east of the church if that is war Foundation potentially on the right line is it perhaps there's an earlier church building here meanwhile Phil's looking at a very early find tell us all about it well I'm in a little barge in town arrow and then early Bronze Age in it about what two and a half thousand BC 2000 BC so really that beautiful it is in very very good condition consider it been in the ground for what four and a half thousand years something like that how do you know how old it is what oh Barbed contained arrows are one of your classic Flint implements so I mean you know they are the IRA archetypal Arrowhead and they come in within the in the very early stages of the Bronze Age and as soon as you see one of these things you know instinctively where they are a beautiful phone well look can you find some more because you're doing my health the world is good across the site karenza is still chasing the boundary of our enclosure her two trenches have found this side without finding dating evidence now she's trying over here trouble is she got a bit carried away this is the longest trench we've ever opened on time team look here I've got material here I thought it was burning oh yeah all this Blackness I've got the geophysics back in here they've put the magnetometer across it they say it's not burning right so what we think it is now what is it it's Organics which are rotting with no air oh right so underwater underwater I'm in the middle of the Estuary here right so that's this idea of a whole area being this is underwater and as you go up the trench I'm having there's nothing in here of occupation it's all sort of it's just it's just estuary oh wow that's fantastic yeah I found it isn't it everything for as far as I can see everything that side of this is basically a ditch is Estuary and here I've got another ditch very similar to the other ones but I mean they're so similar on there it's that sort of clay chalky bag yeah yeah and then that ditch about five meters wide again with that black fill and there's some differences in it but I think a lot of the difference are the fact that we've got water coming at us here over there we're on the hill there's no water coming here we've got water coming at us so it's actually forming sort of a water defense so we now have some shape to this site we know that Banks were on this side up here and on this down here holding back the sea but what might it have looked like in Saxon times oh yes look at that lovely John does that tell us about our line of churches it shows the two churches we were hoping for we've got to remember that we don't yet have evidence for that church what we do seem to be getting is indications that it may be an easternmost church that would have been just about there so Victor might have to get his rubber out I think possibly yes well we'll see we know so little about what went on in these enclosures but it does seem like they were big Open Spaces with agricultural activities going on but we're fairly clear that it's got marshes and boggy ears and probably some sort of accessible to like that it may have been a little bit further away the other thing of course that's coming up is evidence for industrial activity in this sort of area isn't it so we'll just have to get Victor to rub that bit out put some industrial activity in there yeah and then it's perfect I'm good at rubbing up over at the Saxon Village things are hotting up the flask is ready for the molten liquid bronze what sort of temperature are we trying to get to here this one thousand degrees plus a thousand degrees absolutely what are we expecting to see under that lid if all has gone well a lot of liquid bronze foreign are we looking at liquid bronze good bronze to me excellent so we're gonna go to fill up a flask now stop pumping steady that is hot a bit of charcoal falling in is that a problem no problem wow look at that that is pouring whoa fill her up it's coming out oh dear split flask yeah these are the brakes luckily you've got some more we have indeed keep trying we've got five more flasks we've got 10 more hours we can do it we'll get there in the end don't worry about it we'll have another go back at trench five we're drawing the oven before lifting it and Margaret's picking over the bones we found earlier the graves here as you can see but unfortunately the human remains are incomplete in both of them they look in very good condition yeah the Bone's very very strong very firm um no feet apart from the big ankle bones which is not unusual in archaeological sites can you tell very much from what we got here not really no because we haven't got enough material this build for old fella down here had only got his head left yeah but he has actually got rather a distinguished face he's got a magnificent nose here if you can see these brow ridges they're very marked you know which again it's very clearly male and the this is the sort of start of the nasal bones here which suggests he's got a really high bridge nose which usually goes with being a fairly prominent feature um and he's also got a remarkable chin I I don't think I've seen quite such a pointed thrusting forward chin and somebody with teeth for a long time so I think it would have been quite a distinguished looking person seems like a sort of Mr punch [Laughter] and this is what we think he looked like meanwhile at trench 6 our hunt for an earlier church building is just becoming more and more frustrating well this trench has raised our hopes and then dashed them sadly if you look in the trench here earlier on today we found this very hard rock which we scraped this off and it looked very much like a wall and we got very excited the only trouble is that the wall actually kept going and going and going so in fact it actually extended out and out now it's just a lump of the Bedrock coming out the ground so we were very excited and then we were very disappointed so I have to say that despite our best efforts and the Geo physical confidence we hadn't actually got a great deal now what I don't understand is when I was here about 20 minutes ago this trench only went up to there all this is new what happened well we decided to extend this and go down a bit because um well because we weren't getting anything in there why not well I wasn't here but it wasn't really dig it long enough I think is the answer there was a slight ambiguity about the actual position of Virginia ambiguity look I'll show you excuse me treading on your trench just to show them originally it was thought that the line that this new building might take was over here we now think that it was more like over there is that right we knew it was going that way on the geophysics which we just didn't take it quite far enough that way somebody put the trench in wrong well I wouldn't go that far but more of a margin for error is what I'd like to put anyway we've got to take it down a bit more yet because it's not really showing anything at this end is it no it's still a little inconclusive but we are still exhausting every last possibility because it's so interesting it's strange potentially [Music] it's the end of day two and the Saxons are having a party spit roast hair and buttered warts just what we need at the end of a long day oh and a cheese called stinking Bishop [Music] also some Mead which helps [Music] this enormous site is beginning to take some shape now we know from the coins that there were Saxons here and we know that there was an enclosure ditch tomorrow we need to find dates and prove that this was a Saxon settlement we've now got about 10 trenches operating but the key ones are really all around here and I for one I don't know about you was getting pretty confused about what might be each one so I've armed myself with this grizzly old archaeologists with a grid to try and work out what's in each one now this is trench four that we've just walked in down north of the church it's just about here so trench four 24 in which we have corenza you remember we put in this trench at this trench initially to find the ditch which we did just where you've walked down from that seems to be a small enclosure going around the church down this end now we're finding huge amounts of medieval Pottery um from set of features seems to be cut into the sand and it's what we think it is it's a quarry for sand to build the church it's medieval rubbish there's a medieval landfill site basically but um it seems that the pottery is the same date as the building of the church and it's earlier than the trench up there so there's a shift in the settlement this is trench what six is it over here the six six and seven up the top yeah so why did we dig this one we dug we dug six because we had a geophysical anomaly which we thought might be an Eastern Church East of the present one yeah and we were interested in this line of churches but in fact Neil what do we get well we're the chief it's gonna suggested there might be a feature we found nothing so we just got Pure sand and no church and then we've got seven out at the front here which runs off it you can see that very large ditch that we're digging out and this is the ditch that seems to go around the church we've got some quite nice pottery coming out from the upper levels this is 14th century green glazed Pottery yeah but that's on the top so it doesn't actually help the date when the bottom of the ditch was filled in so we're digging right down to the bottom at the moment right okay okay now we're going on to Phil's trenches yeah five around the corner here and what was the point of putting this the point of that one was to test the idea of whether they were actually churches or the churches going along this Ridge in a line yeah uh and so we thought we'd look at one ear and see if we'd got any evidence of that and of course as is usual there's rather more in it it's rather more interesting than we thought in what way is it more interesting I can ask Phil yeah Phil what have we got here been really good here actually Tony what it looks like is we've got three phases of of activity here the the earliest one of these human burials which we we think might well be Saxon um and then they are replaced by the oven and this war Foundation is Cobble War foundation so we've got the burials then we get the domestic and then you can see that they revert back to putting human burials and you can see how they may cut into that wall there's a lot Happening Here people are moving in them so what do we do with it now well the main thing is carry on Excavating it needless to say record it and then lift it I mean we've got to get the whole story right the way through why do we lift it man well with there's still a possibility here a good possibility I think that there might be earlier structures or buildings under what you can see now why is that why'd you say that well we're not down to Natural anywhere are we no not really there's still a lot of disturbance so anything under here is earlier than 12 times if we were to get post holes or beam slots or anything that would indicate buildings that would be absolutely fantastic so our site now looks like this we have a boundary ditch on the outside we have an inner enclosure around the church with pottery and Industrial activity just outside it and we have a building to the west of the church which needs further exploring meanwhile Stewart has now found the area where the island joined the mainland it looks a bit dubious to me but he takes Sandy out to show her that it's there you've got me out here because Tony thinks you're barking mad and you think you might persuade me this is this is the truth that's right I'll always have in trouble because this entirely these things exist but if you look over here right it's a bit of High Ground take my word for it for a minute okay it's High Ground behind you you see it's actually going down you can see that though it's quite a long slope yep but you can't see over the other side but it is dropping down okay now in areas like this there is a technique for trying to help you see these things on the ground without geophysics without aerophotography and all the rest of it right so I'm gonna invite you to lie down [Laughter] lovely that yeah no no it's I just look look at the Horizon in front of you oh it suddenly looks like a proper Hill right now start just raise yourself up gently right and can you see how you can immediately in front of you about 10 meters away there's a little Ridge can you see it yes again yeah and go down to get it up a fitness regime but if we continue to do that you can see there's an earthwork and you can see lumps and bumps in there once you start to die you don't see those walking around you've got to get flat on it so is that a natural land bridge or something they made there's a nut it isn't that the whole thing it's a natural land bridge you can see over there where the Hedge goes up it actually comes from there right up to the island but on this land bridge there are various Earthworks as well they may have something to do with a site up there but I believe you even if Tony thinks you're mad thank you do you want to do some more or have you had enough of this no no the more you do it the more you see it so if you see a strange man in a stubble field going up and down like this if a fair idea what he's up to fabulous [Laughter] what am I doing here all right over at trench four we've called in a local Pottery expert to help date our fines um there's great there's a complete lack of glazed words here uh the glazewers start 1180. there isn't any glazed wear therefore this assembly has to start before 1180 and you appear to have the full range of domestic Pottery here uh you've got the spouted pitcher which would be used first the spout yes and did you see the handle there was broken off yeah there's large pieces of large storage jars this one huge because there's no curve on that is it no I mean this vessel would have been two or three feet high easily so it could have been sort of this high off the ground yeah for certain yeah good and for what water water flour anything really um the possibly even used as urinals in some cases or mouse traps found them buried in the Floor of Cellars so the mice would fall into them and they wouldn't be able to get out again get a huge number of mice inside I think so yeah um we've also got bits of cooking pots here there's uh you can see these two pieces are heavily encrusted with soot on the outside yeah lighter color if you turn them over so that would have sat on the fire possibly for boiling water and it cooking food we do get the residues of these things analyzed and we can get some idea of the diet at the time so basically we're talking settlements and lots of it I'm absolutely certain of this I think yeah you've got a lot of pottery a lot of big pieces of pottery um and it's all local stuff and it's all broadly contemporary these are the people who are living here while the patches so this Pottery gives us evidence of Norman occupation but still no sign of Saxons living here down at the Saxon Village we may have a bronze cast for our strap end we're ready to go we're going to crack this flask open and with the perfect timing there'll be some bronze pens in here if this is oh yes we've got a bit of bronze something that actually got a pattern on it this is it Hugh's next job is to decorate it in the style of the times it's a complicated twiddly job not without its problems let's pick up the piece nearest yeah this one here yeah there we go um drop it in sand panel oh god I've dropped it I don't know how you've got that you must have the patience of the saint to do this we're never going to find it watch where it flies next oh there we go which way around like that yeah there we go I don't think I'd make a master Craftsman how's that with practice that's not bad all right yeah yeah looking good I'm sure you've seen better I'm sure you do better every day with three pieces in place we only have to add the final decorative nielo thank you and then it's into the oven to harden it up foreign in the incident room karenza and Phil are trying to work out where to go next in our hunt for the boundary watch in the middle here and well this is the boundary we've been chasing around that we're wondering if it goes all around the church we've got it here and here in sections and here and the air photograph shows it coming around here and obviously this is the same thing carrying on in the geophysics what we don't know is what happens after that the logical thing I suppose is actually we really want to know what's happening you're in closure ditch down there I want to know whether it comes around and encloses the church in a huge area I think I'll speak to John and Chris and see if they can do some more if they can that might give us a Target if not I think we might just put a long trench in and try and find it yeah get it curving around yeah this is the area geophysics are looking at although time's running out John is having one last attempt at finding a date for our boundary ditch he's in a desperate race against the clock certainly got a 70 there I'm dropping down 50s 40s but back at trench five there's an exciting development what we've got is this amazing skeleton it's only just come up and importantly it goes underneath the 12th century settlement we've even got 10th 11th century Pottery to go with it it's a complete skeleton it's right at the bottom of the sequence and more importantly we can say exactly how it died go on Margaret tell him he's literally been lobbed across the forehead with somebody with a very heavy sharp edge sword who's pushed sliced off that chunk of bone which has been pushed back into a tear and his skin and and it would have killed him there's no question that that was the cause of this man's death punch and you say it it's almost a unique thing this is very very unusual pathology to actually have the slice of bone that's been slashed off retained presumably within the soft tissue is really unusual it's a very important skeleton of equal or more importance is what on Earth this person what the context of that is is that a battle victim or is it somebody a result of a Viking Ray that knew her to use a sword this isn't two guys who got drunk one night and had a bit of a tiff this is serious it's a very difficult cut to me yeah that's great but important thing is we've got earlier than 12th century evidence of burials on the site so this trench has turned out to be crucial and the layers help us with our story these skeletons on the top are probably early medieval the building with the oven dates from the 12th century it's too big to be a house but it's very possible it was monastic and right at the bottom we have a Saxon man [Music] this all helps us paint a wider picture we can say that there were burials from the Norman churchyard stretching out to about here we know that there was a large building here and in the early 12th century when the church was being built there was a quarry here from which they took Sandstone to use in its construction and there may well have been a Bell Pit here at the Saxon Village our strap end is finished and it's been quite a challenge to make it in time this was the one it was modeled on the one found on the site this was our strap end as we last saw it baking and here is our finished product which I think is a pretty good attempt [Music] but we're not quite finished geophysics have come up with some great looking results and with two last trenches in they're sitting across a round feature and the intersection of these two ditches and they're producing results basically this side of the church Tony you can see all the blue and yellow and that just indicates industrial activity and there's an immense area here where it's chock-a-block full of industrial work and we've homed in on this one anomaly which we believe to be a kiln and well we've proved to be right why is it new John why is it exciting it's a wonderfully clear result here that we've got for this ditch and that's very important because in closing ditches are one of the most significant and distinctive features of Middlesex and monastic sites they've been found on several others absolutely we've got some Fantastic Finds I know this is very small but this is Middle Saxon Pottery this is Ipswich where what's middle Saxon uh well 650 to 850 that sort of time and it's right banging what we call the Dark Ages so are you saying you think now that there was a monastery here I think there probably was I don't think we could be certain but it seems to me it fits very clearly into a general framework of sites that are in prominent positions are enclosed have got prominently excited churches and over at the other trench we're also getting some results our last chance for a date Andrew hi this is the trench across this ditch we've been following really all weekend and last we've got masses of stuff coming out of it matches of bone shell slag and finally some good early days look at this that's more likely gosh yeah that's a loom weight isn't it that's a fired play of sort of pottery Saxon loomway and the shape of it suggests to me that it's more likely to be 8th and 9th century than either earlier or later so that's just the right sort of date that we were hoping for so this would have been hanging off the bottom of somebody's loom in the 8th century and basically gives us an 8th Century date for the whole of this thing that's right yeah fantastic right so wonderful wonderful this Loom weight is a crucial piece of evidence it gives us a Saxon date for occupation Saxons were living here we know from this pottery that people were cooking with these pots and using them for drinking and for storage in the 8th and 9th centuries the coins tell us that there were wealthy people here in the early 8th century and the loom weight from the same period shows us that they were weaving their clothes here the fact that we found this at the bottom of the ditch that surrounds the site also gives us an 8th Century date for our enclosure 1200 years ago inside this enclosure were Fields animals workshops and houses all of which may have been serving a monastery building they've been walking across this field for at least 4 500 years someone dropped an arrow head on it others dropped coins and left bits of domestic debris behind and we know that someone came to a rather gruesome end here 1200 years after the event we can reveal what happened killed by someone on horseback using a heavy sword The Horseman was traveling at speed our victim died instantly [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 121,434

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

Id: s1QvfeEBMlU

Length: 50min 19sec (3019 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023